The Hebrew word םול has multiple meanings; it is a complex idea which encapsulates a ש general idea of well-being, used as a blessing or a greeting or a parting. Shalom typically is translated in two ways: the first meaning denoting prosperity, and the second, peace. Both these meanings are important for understanding the narrative in 1 Samuel 25. Shalom is the word that David uses in his message to Nabal in verse 6. And although shalom is the traditional greeting at the time, it also takes on layers of meaning and could even be ironic. When read in context in the Abigail story, it raises the following conversation topics: How does Abigail go about creating peace in a context of trauma? How do we? Before positing an answer to these questions, the various layers of meaning with regards to shalom, needs closer inspection.
The entire story in 1 Samuel 25 is concerned with material goods, with shalom in the sense of prosperity, with the stuff of which a rich man’s life is made: his sheep and his goats, his servants and his wife, his table and the food he eats from it. Riches and wealth is thus an important theme in the plot of the narrative, so much so that it can be said to have become
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another character. Because material resources are what David wants, even if he has a right to it underscored by divine promise (1 Samuel 16). It is ironic though, that the strong character, the woman called Abigail, the one who influences the chain of events, also in the story, can be considered to be part of the rich man’s belongings (that in ironic fashion in the end of the narrative is going to change hands).
Even though Abigail, as the wife of a rich landowner, most certainly cannot be described as poor, she does find herself in a precarious situation (Claassens 2016: 25). Apart from being perceived as a man’s property, women in the Ancient Near East could not own property or assert political power within the normal framework of society. If her husband would die, or if all the men in her household were to be slain as David had vowed to do, her situation would worsen exponentially, threatening her very existence. One should not underestimate the gravity of the story only because it has a happy ending.
Abigail is thus also responding from her own sense of precarity. Her action is for the well- being of herself and her household, as much as it is for David and his men. The reader cannot miss the irony in the greeting of David, and may even hear it as a foreshadowing: prosperity to David, and loss to Nabal.
When thinking about the response of the reader to this story, we should remember that every reader comes from a specific economic background. Theologians that embrace a liberation theological perspective have long considered the poverty of the ordinary reader an important hermeneutic key and advantage, since God is on the side of the poor, the neglected, and the powerless (West 2007: 2). Some readers of this story may consider themselves poor, others may consider themselves rich, and the amount of money available to a person is only one of the aspects they use to evaluate their own prosperity. When entering the circle of an ICBS, this is one of the potential discussion topics: some participants may be of a group who
experiences a great deal of prosperity, the other may come from a group who has very limited resources. Even though the notion of poverty and wealth may be a difficult topic that may even be described as having the potential to be volatile in nature, questions about poverty and wealth in a greatly divided context, about the role of poverty and wealth in our lives, and also, the damaging effects of both poverty and wealth need to be discussed. Can material goods and wealth be used to contribute to unity and harmony in a community, or is it cursed to forever be a source of division?
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The second meaning of shalom may be even more applicable in the development of an ICBS that is also indicated by the title of this study: “Peace Talks.” Again, we find the irony in David’s greeting: this story is about bands of brothers fighting, about swords and horses and war. Abigail’s world is indeed, as Claassens (2016: 17) argues, “marked” as well as “marred by violence.” Considering the context of the book of Samuel, we may trace the trail of violent stories easily: almost throughout, King Saul is doing his utmost best to kill his rival, the future King David. In 1 Samuel 22, Saul has commanded Doeg the Edomite to kill eighty-five priests of Nod, just because they helped David. A few chapters later, in 2 Samuel 21, Saul’s descendants will be wiped out when David allows the Gibeonites to brutally kill Saul’s sons and grandsons, leaving their bodies in the open field without a proper burial (Claassens 2016: 18). If Abigail did not take swift action in the narrative of chapter 25, the whole household of Nabal would also have been obliterated. Indeed, readers of ancient literature which includes the Bible, are no stranger when it comes to narratives such as these that are riddled with violence.
But just because violence is abundant in these narratives does not mean that we should give in to the temptation to look away from it. To really apprehend Abigail and her story, we also need to fathom what it means to live in a world like hers. The World Health Organization’s Global Consultation on Violence and Health defines violence as follows: “Violence is the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, or against a group or community that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.” (WHO, 2014). This is a broad
definition, but one that opens the scope of effects that violence, or the threat of it has on our world.
When considering this denotation of violence, one begins to understand that peace, shalom, is not only the absence of violence, but encapsulates wellness and flourishing. And when broadening our definition in this way, we recognize that our world is not that different from Abigail’s.
It is significant to realise, like explained above, the concept of peace/shalom in the Old Testament is far-reaching. One more notion deserves attention: the fact that, in the Old Testament, shalom as wellness is most often linked to justice and righteousness. Yoder (1997: 6) writes convincingly that our contemporary interpretation of peace should match the
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Biblical one: the contrast should not be firstly between shalom and violence, but between shalom and injustice.
The notion of shalom also offers an important intersection of context with the gender, health and theology of this MTh program. In recent years, systematic theologians have helped us find fresh expressions and new metaphors to an urgent contemporary theological discussion on the nature and significance of flourishing. The challenge to theology has lately been threefold: there has been the accusation that God’s power implies the lack of human power and flourishing; the question about how theology responds to the violation of the integrity of earth and her ecology; and the challenge to theology on how to deal with the violation of human dignity, so rife in our world (Marais 2011: 2). This study relates specifically to the last of these three.
Christian theology’s affirmation that human beings flourish in their relationship with God, provides fertile ground for rethinking theological anthropology (Kelsey 2008: 1). Kelsey has written extensively on this topic, and has a theocentric view on human flourishing, thus he accentuates that blossoming and growing is always a gift from God. For Kelsey (2008: 3), flourishing has no coherence or power apart from the confession that God initiates
relationship with humans and then stands in such a relationship. But he also admits and develops the idea that flourishing or thriving means “to have oneself in hand”, and used metaphorically for a certain type of human life, it is also theologically appropriate.
Kelsey (2008: 7) prefers not to link flourishing with health or wealth because of the obvious theological pitfalls that such connections have: that would mean that no sick or poor person could flourish, which we know is not true. Human beings reflect the glory of God not only when they are healthy and wealthy. But he chooses to highlight the sociality and
responsibility of human flourishing, of persons themselves, their neighbours and their contexts (Marais 2011: 110). Thus, flourishing calls for human responsiveness and
responsibility: we also flourish when we act intentionally in an appropriate response to God and other people.
Since shalom does not only mean the absence of war, but includes ideas of well-being and peace and especially justice, one can relate the theological ideas regarding flourishing with the Abigail story in a striking way. It is interesting to note that in contrast to some of these other stories in the book of Samuel, 1 Samuel 25 is different in that the outcome contains no bloodshed and a moment of peace. One finds in this narrative that Abigail flourishes in that
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she acknowledges her relation to God: she is the only one who speaks prophesy, who has perspective. And she flourishes in that she is appropriately responsive to a threat and takes responsibility to act in the best interest of God and the people around her. Through her action, she gives a household a second chance, and to David a clear conscience. Her gift to them all is a new possibility to flourish, to be alive and reach their potential.
The ideas of flourishing and how it manifests in the Abigail story, also intersects easily with the world in front of the text, offering some important possibilities for an intercultural bible study. The title of this study, “Peace Talks,” thus does not only point to the act of dialogue so that war will be averted (like Abigail). It also acknowledges that communities need to talk about the shalom, the flourishing of individuals in communities, and the wellness of communities, as a whole. It acknowledges that we are not only responsible for our own relation to God, our own flourishing and our own health and well-being. We also have to be appropriately responsible for our neighbour’s flourishing.
An ICBS under this heading would ask questions about war. For some people in my
community, war is not more real than a news report on a cable news network from a faraway country. But for others on our continent, and even in our community, the fight for survival in a context of robbery, rape and other crime; a context of gangsterism and firearms, is actual. We would need to talk about the systemic violence that caused great deprivation and
underdevelopment to some of our people during the era of Apartheid. We would need to talk about the psychological harm that people suffered because of the profound and far-reaching violence of a system of legalised racism.
The multiple levels of pain and its consequences that should be regarded when reading this text with a context of trauma in mind, is explained well by Claassens (2015: 5). We need to consider the violent world in which Abigail finds herself in the narratives of the books of Samuel. It is important to keep in mind that the death of their revered prophet and leader is the point of departure for this story (1 Sam 25:1), which provide a general sense of loss, adding to the trauma. This loss of the prophet furthermore occurs within multiple layers of understanding the context of the author/redactor: during the aftermath of the Babylonian exile, the Jews were also a community processing a history with too much violence. It may be that a story such as the one of Abigail tries to imagine an alternative, a different way, to dream about ways to change the real world (Claassens 2015: 5).
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Again, these hermeneutical perspectives intersect the world in front of the text, and could inform reader response in a very specific and exciting way. An ICBS on this story should provide a safe space where readers could share their own experience of trauma and how it impacts their lives. It could be a space of conflict (hopefully constructive) or reconciliation for perpetrator and victim. It could be a space where participants, by telling and sharing, wrench what is left of a full life from the trauma. It should be a space where readers start to dream about a world that is better, a world where they can flourish and help others do the same.