1 Samuel 21:1-9

David at Nob

1 David went to Nob, to Ahimelek the priest. Ahimelek trembled when he met him, and asked, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?”

2 David answered Ahimelek the priest, “The king sent me on a mission and said to me, ‘No one is to know anything about the mission I am sending you on.’ As for my men, I have told them to meet me at a certain place.

3 Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.”

4 But the priest answered David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread here—provided the men have kept themselves from women.”

5 David replied, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual whenever^[a] I set out. The men’s bodies are holy even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!”

6 So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the LORD and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away.

7 Now one of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the LORD; he was Doeg the Edomite, Saul’s chief shepherd.

8 David asked Ahimelek, “Don’t you have a spear or a sword here? I haven’t brought my sword or any other weapon, because the king’s mission was urgent.”

9 The priest replied, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, is here; it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want it, take it; there is no sword here but that one.” David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”

1 Samuel 21:1-9 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO FIRST SAMUEL 21

This chapter relates that David went to Nob, and pretending he was on secret business for the king, got shewbread, and the sword of Goliath, from Ahimelech the priest, 1Sa 21:1-9; and that passing from thence to Gath, where he was known, through fear feigned himself mad, and so escaped from thence, 1Sa 21:10-15.

Cross References

• 1. 1 Samuel 14:3; 1 Samuel 22:9,19; Nehemiah 11:32; Isaiah 10:32
• 2. 1 Samuel 16:4
• 3. Leviticus 24:8-9
• 4. Exodus 25:30; Matthew 12:4
• 5. S Exodus 19:15; S Leviticus 15:18
• 6. Deuteronomy 23:9-11; Joshua 3:5; 2 Samuel 11:11
• 7. 1 Thessalonians 4:4
• 8. Leviticus 24:8-9; S Exodus 25:30; 1 Samuel 22:10; Matthew 12:3-4; Mark 2:25-28; Luke 6:1-5
• 9. 1 Samuel 22:9,22
• 10. 1 Samuel 14:47; Psalms 52 Title
• 11. S 1 Samuel 17:51
• 12. S 1 Samuel 17:4
• 13. 1 Samuel 17:2

Footnotes

• [a] Or "from us in the past few days since"