An Unpopular Employer
"He is such a son of Belial, that a man cannot speak to him." -- 1 Sam. 25:17
Here we have an employé speaking of his employer. This employer was a rich old farmer, by the name of Nabal. "He had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats." To look after these sheep and goats, to sow his fields and reap his harvests, he employed a great many labourers. How these employés felt towards him is indicated by the testimony one of them bears against him in the text.
"He is such a son of Belial." "The personification of all that is bad", "reckless", "lawless", "unbridled", "good for nothing"—all this is implied by the appellation, "son of Belial." How mean and contemptible Nabal must have been, to have his employés apply to him such an appellation. He was a man of such vicious disposition, so overbearing in his manner, that his employés said of him, "A man cannot speak to him." The way employés feel about speaking to an employer, is usually enough to judge what kind of man he is and how he treats them.
Employés may misjudge their employer, and often do. But they have an opportunity to see and know him as others do not, and what they think and say of him can generally be relied upon as a pretty good index to this character and dealings. When an employer does not have the respect and goodwill of the people who work for him, he has failed somewhere along the line in his relations with them. As a rule, if a man is fair to his employés, if he shows a sympathetic interest in them, if he is kind and good to them, and will do them a favour when he can, they in turn will think well of him and speak well of him.
"He’s as mean as the devil," said one young man when asked how he liked his employer. The same question to another young man working for another employer, brought the reply, "I couldn’t work for a better man; he seems as much interested in me as if I were his own son." I pass these replies on as worth thinking about by every employer.
