1 Samuel 21:1-9

Names of God Bible

David at Nob

21 ^[a]David went to the priest Ahimelech at Nob. Ahimelech was trembling as he went to meet David. “Why are you alone?” he asked David. “Why is no one with you?”

² “The king ordered me to do something,” David answered the priest Ahimelech, “and he told me, ‘No one must know anything about this mission I’m sending you on and about the orders I’ve given you. I’ve stationed^[b] my young men at a certain place.’” ³ David added, “Now, what do you have to eat? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever you can find.”

⁴ “I don’t have any ordinary bread,” the chief priest answered David. “But there is holy bread for the young men if they haven’t had sexual intercourse today.”

⁵ David answered the priest, “Of course women have been kept away from us as usual when we go on a mission. The young men’s bodies are kept holy even on ordinary campaigns. How much more then will their bodies be holy today?”

⁶ So the priest gave him holy bread because he only had the bread of the presence which had been taken from Yahweh’s presence and replaced with warm bread that day.

⁷ That same day one of Saul’s servants who was obligated to stay in Yahweh’s presence was there. His name was Doeg. A foreman for Saul’s shepherds, he was from Edom.

⁸ David asked Ahimelech, “Don’t you have a spear or a sword here? I didn’t take either my spear or any other weapon because the king’s business was urgent.”

⁹ The chief priest answered, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Elah Valley, is here. It is wrapped in a cloth behind the priestly ephod.^[c] If you want to take it, take it. There’s no other weapon here.”

David said, “There’s none like it. Let me have the sword.”