RECIPES

MEAL:  Abigail Cooks to Appease

Abigail's Lentil Dish

3 cups water
1 bay leaf
3 sprigs parsley
1 onion, chopped
3 Tbsp. oil
1 cup cooked rice
ó tsp. mace
salt and pepper
1 ½ cups tomato sauce


Wash the lentils and soak in water for about an hour; do not drain. Add bay leaf and parsley and
cook until tender—about 1 hour. Meanwhile, brown the onion in the heated oil; then add the
remaining ingredients with the exception of the sauce. Heat through, and serve with sauce in a
side dish.
Yield: 8 servings



14 … One of the young shepherds told Abigail, Nabal's wife, what had happened: ´David sent
messengers from the backcountry to salute our master, but he tore into them with insults.
15 ´Yet these men treated us very well. They took nothing from us and didn't take advantage of
us all the time we were in the fields.
16 ´They formed a wall around us, protecting us day and night all the time we were out tending
the sheep.
17 ´Do something quickly because big trouble is ahead for our master and all of us. Nobody can
talk to him. He's impossible—a real brute!µ
18 Abigail flew into action. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five
sheep dressed out and ready for cooking, a bushel of roasted grain, a hundred raisin cakes, and
two hundred fig cakes, and she had it all loaded on some donkeys.
19 Then she said to her young servants, ´Go ahead and pave the way for me [with David]. I'm
right behind you.µ
20 As she was riding her donkey, descending into a ravine, David and his men were descending
from the other end, so they met there on the road.
21 David had just said, ´That sure was a waste, guarding everything this man had out in the
wild so that nothing he had was lost—and now he rewards me with insults. A real slap in the face