Then all the people returned to their homes, and David went to pronounce a blessing on his family. ¹ 

“The following tribes ¹  must stand to bless the people on Mount Gerizim when you cross the Jordan: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.

But one of the servants told Nabal’s wife Abigail, “David sent messengers from the desert to greet ¹  our lord, but he screamed at them.

Now you are willing to bless your servant’s dynasty ¹  so that it may stand permanently before you, for you, O Lord, have blessed it and it will be blessed from now on into the future.” ² 

Isaac had just finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had scarcely left ¹  his father’s ²  presence, when his brother Esau returned from the hunt. ³ 

¹ When Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, ²  he did not go as at the other times ³  to seek for omens, ⁴  but he set his face ⁵  toward the wilderness.

When David went home to pronounce a blessing on his own house, ¹  Michal, Saul’s daughter, came out to meet him. ²  She said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished ³  himself this day! He has exposed himself today before his servants’ slave girls the way a vulgar fool ⁴  might do!”

The king’s servants have even come to congratulate ¹  our master ²  King David, saying, ‘May your God ³  make Solomon more famous than you and make him an even greater king than you!’ ⁴  Then the king leaned ⁵  on the bed

All the people, ¹  rulers, ²  leaders, and judges were standing on either side of the ark, in front of the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord. Both resident foreigners and native Israelites were there. ³  Half the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and the other half in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the Lord’s servant had previously instructed to them to do for the formal blessing ceremony. ⁴