We continue today with our review of the Old Testament, discovering the stories of these women and intending to offer readers a wide range of female names from the Bible if they are looking for one for their babies.
We were left with David escaping from King Saul and leading a revolution in Hebron, with the goal of being king of a united Israel, for which the prophet Samuel had anointed him as God’s chosen one. In Hebron David will take successive wives that will strengthen his position in the region.
The wives in Hebron: Ahinoam, Egla, Maachâ, Haguit and Abital
Ahinoam is the second of the wives that David takes after having separated from the first, his name comes from the Hebrew Achîno’am, which could be translated as “my brother is kind / happy”. There is not much information about her, she had the same name as Saul’s wife, but nothing indicates that she was clearly the same person. We are told that it came from the city of Jezrael, one of the places where David, as a guerrilla, settled after fleeing from the king. It was Amon’s mother.
Other of the wives that David would take while living in Hebron, before being victorious and taking all of Israel, will be Maachâ , daughter of Talmai, king of Gesur , Haguit, Abital and Egla . The girl Tamar and the beautiful Absalom of Maachâ, Adonías, of Haguit, Sefatías, of Abital and Itream, by Egla will be born. They are related to small kingdoms and tribes in the area, which were added to David.
Their names are hardly used today and the translation is complicated. They come from Hebrew verbs that perhaps, at that time, had other meanings that gave meaning to the names.
Maachâ’s name seems to be identified with Miryam. Haguit means rejoicing. Abital comes from the Hebrew “Avital”, and it would be translated as “fresh” (in the sense of freshness). Egla comes from the root “igl” in Hebrew which means “to rotate” and probably the name would mean “to be surrounded” or “to surround”, although it is difficult to know.
When David manages to become the sole king of Israel, they will follow him to Jerusalem and will be part of the haren to which other legitimate wives and also concubines will join.
As will happen in so many eastern kingdoms in which the king was polygamist, the problems in the succession will be sown with quarrels, murders and uprisings of the children. It is not difficult to imagine the courtly intrigues between David’s wives and children to gain influence and gain the throne. However, as you surely already know, none of the children born to these women will come to inherit David, but rather the son of a Jerosimiltana, Bathsheba, of whom I will tell you the story later.
Abigail
Another of the wives who joined David during his stay in Hebron is better known. It’s about Abigail .
Abigail was not single, nor was she a virgin, and although she appears to have had no children, she was married to a man named Nabal, who lived in the Carmel region. It was about a wealthy man who lived in an area controlled by David’s army but who refused to pay tribute to him. David, furious at the opposition, organized a campaign to punish him and was determined to finish him and all his people with a bloodbath.
But Abigail was unwilling to let her husband take her life and everyone’s life, so she left without saying anything, riding a donkey and carrying gifts to placate the king. Arriving before David, he fell on his knees, recognized him as chosen by God and begged him not to let his victory be tarnished with innocent blood.
David was impressed by the woman, no doubt. Not only was she courageous and sensible, but she gave good advice and also clearly recognized it as God-appointed. Possibly Abigail, if she was married to a wealthy man, would belong to a family with a position of influence in the area and, in a sense, offered him an alliance.
Abigail ended her passionate speech by begging the king to remember her, his servant, when the conquest will end, which, perhaps, was a veiled offer of marriage. We do not know what motivated Abigail’s behavior, perhaps fear, perhaps considering her husband to be dangerously stupid and being tired of him endangering his life and that of his family by not wanting to accept the situation of conquest. We do not know.
But of course she was brave and smart, she knew how to speak to David in a way that calmed him down and made him regain the behavior of a king and not of a bloody savage. And she saved her people and herself.
When Abigail returned home she found her husband too drunk to talk to him, having been celebrating the shearing party. In the morning he told him clearly what he had done and the Bible tells us that the man suffered such a severe emotional blow that he did not recover and died a few days later. It gave him a deathly disgust, it is not known if because of the betrayal, because of listening to what the wife thought of him, out of shame or anger, the thing is that the poor man was struck down.
When David learned of the death of his enemy, he was glad that he had not had to fight or cause harm to innocents and, grateful, sent Abigail envoys proposing marriage, something that she, with submissive words, immediately accepted, mounted on his donkey and left. with her maids, leaving the dead husband behind and it seems like all her previous life
We won’t know much more about Abigail. She followed her husband to Jerusalem and would bear him a son, sometimes named Daniel and sometimes Kital.
Abigail’s name comes from the Hebrew words “ab”, which means father and “giyl” which is joy, so we could translate it as “father’s joy”.
Ahinoam, Abigail, Maachâ, Haguit, Abital and Egla will settle in Jerusalem with King David and will be joined by Michal, the first abandoned wife, of whom I have already spoken, and, later, the beautiful Bathsheba and the last, the very young Abisag. , the Shunammite.
With this we finish our review of David’s first wives, the ones he met while living in Hebron. In the next topic we will continue with his family and we will offer you new stories of biblical heroines . We hope you find these Old Testament female names inspiring and you enjoy the stories of these women.
In Babies and more | Female baby names: Old Testament characters (I), (II) and ( III ), (IV), (V), VI, VII
