to feed David’s shepherds, and David has made up his mind therefore to slay him and his offspring, she takes provisions and meets David and induces him not to commit that crime; she does this not from love for her husband, for when David has received her presents he says to her, “See, I have hearkened to thy voice, and have accepted thy person.”  Ten days later, Abigail’s husband died, and when David heard of it he

“sent and spake concerning Abigail, to take her to him to wife....  And she rose and bowed herself with her face to the earth, and said, Behold, thine handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.  And Abigail, hasted, and arose, and rode upon an ass, with five damsels of hers that followed her; and she went after the messengers of David, and became his wife.”

And as if to emphasize how utterly unsentimental and un-Christian a transaction this was, the next sentence tells us that “David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel; and they became both of them his wives.”

ABISHAG THE SHUNAMMITE

The last of the stories referred to by Dr. Trumbull, though as far from proving his point as the others, is of peculiar interest because it introduces us to the maiden who is believed by some commentators to be the same as the Shulamite, the heroine of the Song of Songs.  After Solomon had become king his elder brother, Adonijah, went to the mother of Solomon, Bath-sheba, and said: 

“Thou knowest thy kingdom was mine, and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign:  howbeit the kingdom is turned about, and is become my brother’s:  for it was his from the Lord.  And now I ask one petition of thee, deny me not....  Speak, I pray thee, unto Solomon the king (for he will not say thee nay) that he give me Abishag the Shunammite to wife.”

But when Solomon heard this request he declared that Adonijah had spoken that word against his own life; and he sent a man who fell on him and killed him.

Who was this Abishag, the Shunammite?  The opening lines of the First Book of Kings tell us how she came to the court: 

“Now King David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.  Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king, a young virgin, and let her stand before the king and cherish him; and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.  So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king.  And the damsel was very fair; and she cherished the king, and ministered to him; but the king knew her not.”

THE SONG OF SONGS

Now it is plausibly conjectured that this Abishag of Shunam or Shulam (a town north of Jerusalem) was the same as the Shulamite of the Song of Songs, and that in the lines 6:11-12 she tells how she was kidnapped and brought to court.