1 Samuel 21

CHAPTER 21

David Takes Consecrated Bread

¹Then David came to ^aNob to Ahimelech the priest; and Ahimelech ^bcame trembling to meet David and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one is with you?”

²And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has commanded me with a matter and has said to me, ‘^aLet no one know anything about the matter on which I am sending you and with which I have commanded you; and I have directed the young men to a certain place.’

³“So now, what ¹do you have on hand? Give five loaves of bread into my hand, or whatever can be found.”

⁴And the priest answered David and said, “There is no ordinary bread ¹on hand, but there is ^aconsecrated bread; if only the young men have ^bkept themselves from women.”

⁵And David answered the priest and said to him, “^aSurely women have been kept from us as previously when I set out and the ^bvessels of the young men were holy, though it was an ordinary journey; how much more then today will ¹their vessels be holy?”

⁶So ^athe priest gave him consecrated bread; for there was no bread there but the ^bbread of the Presence which was removed from before Yahweh, in order to put hot bread in its place when it was taken away.

⁷Now one of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before Yahweh; and his name was ^aDoeg the Edomite, the ^bchief of Saul’s shepherds.

⁸And David said to Ahimelech, “Now is there not a spear or a sword ¹on hand? For I brought neither my sword nor my weapons in my hand because the king’s matter was urgent.”

⁹Then the priest said, “^aThe sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down ^bin the valley of Elah, behold, it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod; if you would take it for yourself, take it. For there is no other except it here.” And David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”

David Flees to Gath

¹⁰Then David arose and fled that day from Saul and went to ^aAchish king of Gath.

¹¹But the ^aservants of Achish said to him, “Is this not David the king of the land? ^bDid they not sing of this one as they danced, saying,

‘Saul has struck his thousands,

And David his ten thousands’?”

¹²And David ^atook these words ¹to heart and greatly feared Achish king of Gath.

¹³So he ^adisguised his sanity in their sight and acted insanely in their hands and scribbled on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down into his beard.

¹⁴Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man behaving as a madman. Why do you bring him to me?

¹⁵“Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this one to act the madman before me? Shall this one come into my house?”