Nabal the fool asks, “Who is David?” and then immediately proceeds to answer his own question, contemptuously referring to David as a slave fleeing from his master, along with his army of misfits. outlaws, and malcontents. (I Samuel 25:10 — it’s obvious that Nabal is lecturing David’s messengers as well on the importance of submitting to authority for its own sake. siding with Saul, the mad king to whom all should submit unconditionally. In this, Nabal shares the same resentment as Shimei, of Saul’s house, whose sense of entitlement was a fanatical fixation: only members of Saul’s family should rule Israel. (2 Sam. 16)
Nabal and Shimei, in belittling David, are symbolic of mortal mind’s mocking, accusatory insistence that man is not the Lord’s anointed, man is not image and likeness of Spirit and thus man must submit to matter’s rule (Saul), and man has no dominion over the works of God’s hands whatsoever, but exists only as a groveling slave at the tyrannical bidding of a Mind-less, insane master, matter.
David’s upward struggle in ascending to the throne to which God called him is symbolic of the Christian’s step-by-step scaling of the mount of attainment so graphically depicted in Mrs. Eddy’s “Allegory.” (MW 323)
Abigail’s absence from Nabal and subsequent presence with David is symbolic of the attainment of spiritual realization:
“Gender . . . is a quality, not of God, but a characteristic of mortal mind.” (SH 305:12–13)
“The Lamb’s wife presents the unity of male and female as no longer two wedded individuals, but as two individual natures in one; and this compounded spiritual individuality reflects God as Father-Mother, not as a corporeal being.” (SH 577:4–8)
“Look long enough, and you see male and female one — sex or gender eliminated; you see the designation man meaning woman as well, and you see the whole universe included in one infinite Mind and reflected in the intelligent compound idea, image or likeness, called man, showing forth the infinite divine Principle, Love, called God, — man wedded to the Lamb, pledged to innocence, purity, perfection.” (My. 268:29–5, emphasis added)
“Arise from your false consciousness into the true sense of Love, and behold the Lamb’s wife, — Love wedded to its own spiritual idea.” (SH 575:1–3)