Old Testament · History

1 Samuel chapter 21

David went to , to the . Ahimelech came out to meet David and asked him, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?”David told Ahimelech the priest, “The king sent me on a and told me, ‘No one is to know anything about the mission I’m sending you on or what I’ve ordered you to do.’ I’ve arranged to meet my men at a certain place.”“Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me , or whatever you can find.”The priest answered David, “I don’t have any on hand. The only bread here is . But the men can have it if they’ve .”David answered the priest, “Absolutely, women have been kept away from us. Whenever I go out on a mission, my men keep their bodies , even on an ordinary trip. How much more today!”So the priest gave him the bread kept for God, since there was no other bread there except the , which had been removed from before and replaced with fresh bread on the day it was taken away.Now one of Saul’s officials happened to be there that day, . His name was , the chief of Saul’s shepherds.David asked Ahimelech, “Don’t you have a spear or sword here? I didn’t bring my sword or any of my weapons because the king’s mission was urgent.”The priest said, “The sword of — the one you killed in the — it’s here, wrapped in a cloth behind the . If you want to take it, take it, because there’s no other sword here besides that one.” David said, “There’s nothing like it. Give it to me.”That day David got up and fled from Saul. He went to , the king of .The officials of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the ? Isn’t he the one they sang about in their dances: ‘Saul has his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?”David and became very afraid of Achish, the king of Gath.So he changed his behavior in front of them and while he was in their custody. He and let saliva run down his beard.Achish said to his officials, “Look at this — the man is ! Why are you bringing him to me?”“Am I so short of that you’ve brought this one to carry on in front of me? Should this man come into ?”