Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 25:2

"And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats: and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel." — 1 Samuel 25:2 (ASV)

Maon. — Maon mentioned above was in the hill country of Judah. The Carmel mentioned here is not the famous Mount Carmel in the north, but the small town, the modern Kurmeel, near Maon, of which we read in 1 Samuel 15:12, when Saul set up a place or monument after the war with Amalek.

And the man was very great. — The wealthy chief—the subject of the story—was a descendant of Caleb, the friend and comrade of Joshua. At the time of the conquest of Canaan, Caleb obtained vast possessions in the valley of Hebron and in the south of Judah.

The tradition has even preserved to us the exact number of his flocks, probably to enhance the churlishness of his reply to David when David asked him for some return for the protection his armed bands had afforded to these vast flocks in their pasturage on the edge of the desert.

The occasion of David’s mission to Nabal was the annual sheep-shearing of the rich sheep-master—always a great occasion, and accompanied usually on large estates by festivities.