1 Samuel 21
1 David set out, and Jonathan returned to the city.
2 David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and asked him, “Why are you alone, with no one with you?”
3 David answered Ahimelech the priest, “The king has given me a commission and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything about the matter for which I am sending you and the orders I have given you.’ I have arranged to meet the young men at a certain place.
4 Now, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.”
5 The priest answered David, “I have no ordinary bread on hand; there is only consecrated bread, provided the young men have kept themselves from women.”
6 David answered the priest, “Yes, women have been kept from us, as on the other times when I went out. The young men’s gear is consecrated, even though this is an ordinary journey. How much more, then, will their gear be consecrated today!”
7 So the priest gave him consecrated bread, for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the LORD to be replaced with hot bread on the day it is taken away.
8 One of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the LORD. His name was Doeg the Edomite, chief of Saul’s shepherds.
9 David asked Ahimelech, “Do you have a spear or a sword on hand here? I brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s order was urgent.”
10 The priest answered, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, is there, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want to take it, take it, because there is no other here besides it.” David said, “There is none like it. Give it to me.”
11 That day David set out and fled from Saul, and went to Achish, king of Gath.
12 Achish’s servants said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one they sang about in their dances: ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?”
13 David took these words to heart and was very afraid of Achish, king of Gath.
14 So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands. He scratched at the doors of the gate and let saliva run down his beard.
15 Achish said to his servants, “You can see that this man is insane. Why have you brought him to me?
16 Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this one to act mad in front of me? Is this fellow going to enter my house?”
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