At a very high level:
Abstraction of any kind comes down to separating concerns. "Client" code of an abstraction doesn't care how the contract exposed by the abstraction is fulfilled. You usually don't care if a string class uses a null-terminated or buffer-length-tracked internal storage implementation, for example. Encapsulation hides the details, but by making classes/methods/etc. abstract, you allow the implementation to change or for new implementations to be added without affecting the client code.
