And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep.
And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep.
And David heareth in the wilderness that Nabal is shearing his flock,
And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep.
1 Samuel — The transition from judges to monarchy. Samuel rises as prophet-judge; Israel demands a king; Saul rises and is rejected; David is anointed in obscurity and flees across the wilderness. Three lives overlapping — the prophetic-judicial-royal handoff.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
Voices2
When therefore David heard in the desert that Nabal was shearing his sheep, etc. When the Lord, conversing in the world in man, heard that the learned in the law were preparing their hearers either to cleanse themselves from sins or to offer their own …
Bede· Commentary on Samuel, 735patristic
And David heard in the wilderness,.... In the wilderness of Paran, where he was, and a wilderness it was to him, being in want of food, as the following relation shows: that Nabal did shear his sheep; when there was generally good living, and so a proper person, and a proper time, for David to apply for the relief of his wants.
John Gill· Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)reformed
The verses this one reaches3
Two years later, when Absalom’s sheepshearers were at Baal-hazor near Ephraim, he invited all the sons of the king.
When Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep,”
After a long time Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had finished mourning, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went up to his sheepshearers at Timnah.
The walk5
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first — the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
2 Samuel 13:23Two years later, when Absalom’s sheepshearers were at Baal-hazor near Ephraim, he invited all the sons of the king.
leads to
After a long time Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had finished mourning, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went up to his sheepshearers at Timnah.
For today he has gone down and sacrificed an abundance of oxen, fattened calves, and sheep, and has invited all the sons of the king, the commanders of the army, and Abiathar the priest.…
Now there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. He was a very wealthy man with a thousand goats and three thousand sheep, which he was shearing in Carmel.
Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder, and he would render to the king of Israel a hundred thousand lambs and the wool of a hundred thousand rams.
Now I hear that it is time for shearing. When your shepherds were with us, we did not harass them, and nothing of theirs was missing the whole time they were in Carmel.
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