The long history of ancient Near Eastern laws limiting women's access to marital property offers a new perspective on Abigail's bold actions in 1Sam 25:4–42 and on her husband Nabal's reaction. Why was Nabal so affected by what Abigail told him? A contributing cause may lie in looking at restrictive laws, attested over many centuries that represented deeply rooted customs. Examples are found among the Old Babylonian and Middle Assyrian laws; and the later continuity of these restrictions is seen in formal law statements preserved in the Mishnah (for Palestine), Talmud (for Babylonia), and Syriac-Roman lawbooks (Syria). While these explicit restrictions are not preserved among the extant biblical laws, the argument here is that similar, restrictive norms were nevertheless also operative in Israelite society and can be reconstructed into the background of the narrative, based on textual clues within the text.