You find people can get very sentimental. It seems to cover over the remorse they ought to have, or the regret they ought to face up to, when in fact they have rejected that person. When the person dies, sentimentality can cover up the way that they treated him. Sadly it was so with Samuel.
What follows is this very interesting passage here in chapter 25, and that one cannot help feeling that Nabal, the churl, the fool, is really only included in the record to form a contrast with Samuel. People often ask, what is this passage doing here? What is this strange encounter doing in the whole story? What significance is he? Well we have just read about Samuel, who sent out all the poor preachers, the evangelists, through the school of the prophets, who saw revival in his own time, who was a man of such selflessness and courage: never thought anything of himself. He dies, and in the same chapter Nabal dies: rich, selfish, mean, arrogant, useless man, hopeless man: just a contrast. Even as believers, it does us good to consider which set of characteristics we are closest to: Samuel or Nabal?
What a giant in the faith was Samuel! He was a great reformer, who saw revival, who founded the School of the Prophets, who was characterised by this great perseverance and courage, and who was engaged too in the reform of the courts. He founded the circuit courts, which commentators point out were copied in this country as the result of the efforts of Alfred the great, and he got it from who? From Samuel the prophet. The circuit judges and the system of circuit justice, and so on, was established then.