Holy Bread and a Feigned Madness
1 Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech came to meet David trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no man with you?” 2 David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has commanded me to do something, and has said to me, ‘Let no one know anything about the business about which I send you, and what I have commanded you. I have sent the young men to a certain place.’ 3 Now therefore what is under your hand? Please give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever is available.” 4 The priest answered David, and said, “I have no common bread, but there is holy bread; if only the young men have kept themselves from women.” 5 David answered the priest, and said to him, “Truly, women have been kept from us as usual these three days. When I came out, the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was only a common journey. How much more then today shall their vessels be holy?” 6 So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the show bread that was taken from before Yahweh, to be replaced with hot bread in the day when it was taken away. 7 Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before Yahweh; and his name was Doeg the Edomite, the best of the herdsmen who belonged to Saul. 8 David said to Ahimelech, “Isn’t there here under your hand spear or sword? For I haven’t brought my sword or my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.” 9 The priest said, “Behold, the sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah, is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you would like to take that, take it, for there is no other except that here.” David said, “There is none like that. Give it to me.” 10 David arose and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath. 11 The servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David the king of the land? Didn’t they sing to one another about him in dances, saying, ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?” 12 David laid up these words in his heart, and was very afraid of Achish the king of Gath. 13 He changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands, and scribbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard. 14 Then Achish said to his servants, “Look, you see the man is insane. Why then have you brought him to me? 15 Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Should this fellow come into my house?”
A hungry fugitive eats the sanctuary bread, takes the giant's sword, and escapes an enemy king by drooling into his beard.
Now therefore what is under your hand? Please give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever is available.”
David arrives at Nob alone, hungry, and lying. The story about a secret royal errand 1 Samuel 21:2 is invented to protect a frightened priest and himself, and it will get eighty-five priests killed. Scripture reports it without a word of approval, and David's own verdict, when the news reaches him, is unsparing 1 Samuel 22:22.
So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the show bread that was taken from before Yahweh, to be replaced with hot bread in the day when it was taken away.
The bread of the Presence was for the priests alone Leviticus 24:5–9. Ahimelech's ruling — hungry men before ritual property — is one Jesus later cited as decisive, and cited in defense of hungry disciples accused of Sabbath-breaking: the incident is his proof that God's law was never designed to be kept against people Mark 2:25–27. A regulation about who may eat consecrated bread does not outrank a starving man, and the priest who worked that out under pressure understood the law better than the men who would later quote it at Jesus.
The priest said, “Behold, the sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah, is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you would like to take that, take it, for there is no other except that here.” David said, “There is none like that. Give it to me.”
And he leaves with the trophy of the day he needed no sword 1 Samuel 17:50 — an irony the narrator sets down without comment. The man who once refused Saul's armor now takes the giant's blade, because he is running on fear rather than on the confidence he preached in the valley.
Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before Yahweh; and his name was Doeg the Edomite, the best of the herdsmen who belonged to Saul.
The fuse, lit in one verse.
He changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands, and scribbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down on his beard.
Then the low point: Israel's anointed king in the enemy capital, recognized instantly as David the king of the land, terrified, saved by an impersonation of madness that persuades Achish to throw him out. Two psalms are headed with this episode and neither mentions the acting; they record instead a man who sought Yahweh, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears Psalms 34:4 Psalms 56:3. The prayers are true and the drooling is true. Fear and faith are not alternatives in the life of a real person, and the book that records David's psalms also records the beard.
settled What this mark means