The In-Dept Study of the Bible
Samuel 21
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?”