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Abital was one of King David's wives and the mother of his son Shephatiah.
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Abital was one of the wives of King David, the second king of Israel. She is mentioned in the lists of David's wives and children in both 2Sa.3.4 and 1Ch.3.3. Abital gave birth to one of David's sons, named Shephatiah.
The biblical text does not provide any further information about Abital's background, her relationship with David, or her role in the royal household. She is one of several wives mentioned in the genealogies, highlighting David's practice of polygamy, which was common among kings in the ancient Near East.
Abital's son Shephatiah is listed among David's sons born in Hebron, where David reigned over Judah for seven years before becoming king over all Israel (2Sa.2.11; 5.5).
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Father of dew; i.e., “fresh”, David’s fifth wife (2 Sam. 3:4).
(father of the dew), one of David’s wives. (2 Samuel 3:4; 1 Chronicles 3:3)
the father of the dew; or of the shadow
Easton (1897), Smith (1863), Hitchcock (1869), Hastings (1898) and Schaff are in the public domain. Parsed text: neuu-org/bible-dictionary-dataset (CC BY 4.0). Headwords and whitespace normalised for this site.
2 verses in 2 books · English text: BSB (change it from the menu at the top) · Strong’s H0037
his fourth was Adonijah, the son of Haggith; his fifth was Shephatiah, the son of Abital;
the fifth was Shephatiah by Abital; and the sixth was Ithream by his wife Eglah.
Names, family links and references: STEPBible TIPNR (Tyndale House Cambridge, CC BY 4.0). Short descriptions were drafted with AI assistance by STEPBible. Family links follow STEPBible’s scholarly decisions where genealogies are ambiguous.