1 Samuel 21:1–7

David and the Holy Bread

^21rDavid came to Nob to the priest Ahimelech. Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, “Why are you alone and no one with you?”^{* 2}David said to the priest Ahimelech, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘No one must know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment^s with the young men for such and such a place. ³Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here.” ⁴The priest answered David, “I have no ordinary bread at hand, only holy bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.”^{* 5}David answered the priest, “Indeed, women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition; the vessels of the young men are holy even when it is a common journey; how much more today will their vessels be holy?”^{* 6}So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.^*

⁷Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord; his name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s shepherds.^*