David escapes to Nob; the priest helps him
21
📚Then David went to Nob to Ahimelech the priest, and Ahimelech was afraid at the meeting with David, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?”21:1 Nob was a town of priests (1 Sam 22:19) very near Jerusalem.⚜
2 📚And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king gave me orders about a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I am sending you, and what I have commanded you.’ And I have directed my servants to such and such a place.
21:2 Why did David invent this story? There seems to be two possibilities. Perhaps his faith and courage failed him. He may have feared that if he told the truth Ahimelech would not help him but report him to Saul. Or it could be that David was trying to protect Ahimelech. He may have thought that Saul would spare him if he was not knowingly involved in David’s escape. In either case, this deception was both wrong and unnecessary. God does not need man’s tricks to fulfill His purposes, but people often seems to think otherwise. See notes at Gen 12:13; 27:18-26.⚜
3 📚So now what do you have on hand? Give five loaves of bread into my hand, or whatever is there”.
4 📚And the priest answered David and said, “There is no ordinary bread at hand, but there is consecrated bread; if the young men have kept themselves at least from women 📖”.
21:4 Verse 6; Ex 25:30; Lev 24:5-9. This bread had been offered to God and so was only for the priests.⚜
5 📚And David answered the priest and said to him, “Certainly women have been kept from us about these three days, since I came away, and the vessels of the young men are holy. And the bread is, in a manner of speaking, ordinary, yes, even though it has been consecrated today in the vessel”. 6 📚So the priest gave him consecrated bread. For there was no bread there except the Showbread, that had been taken from the presence of the LORD, in order to put hot bread on the day when it was taken away.
21:6 See Matt 12:3-7. There the Lord Jesus showed that compassion is more important than the letter of the ceremonial law.⚜
7 📚Now a man who was one of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the LORD, and his name was Doeg. He was an Edomite, the chief of Saul’s shepherds.
21:7 Doeg went and reported the matter to Saul (1 Sam 22:9-10). This became the occasion of David’s writing Psalm 52. In that psalm he reveals that his faith had not failed (Ps 52:8-9).⚜
8 And David said to Ahimelech, “And is there not here a spear or a sword on hand? For I have not brought my sword or my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste”.
9 📚And the priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah, look, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you wish to take that, take it, for there is none here except that”. And David said, “There is none like that. Give it to me”.
David acts like a madman in Gath
10 📚And David arose and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath 📖. 11 📚And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing one to another about him in dances, saying, ‘Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands?’”
12 📚And David took these words to his heart, and was very afraid 📖 of Achish the king of Gath. 13 📚And he changed his behaviour before them and pretended to be insane in their hands, and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spit run down on his beard.
14 📚Then Achish said to his servants, “Look, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? 15 Do I have a lack of madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Should this fellow come into my house?”