1 Samuel 21 (Listen)
21:1 Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” 2 And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. 3 Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” 4 And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” 5 And David answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?” 6 So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the LORD, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.
7 Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the LORD. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s herdsmen.
8 Then David said to Ahimelech, “Then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s business required haste.” 9 And the priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it, for there is none but that here.” And David said, “There is none like that; give it to me.”
10 And David rose and fled that day from 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 to one another of him in dances,
‘Saul has struck down his thousands,
and David his ten thousands’?”
12 And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. 13 So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. 14 Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? 15 Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?”
Devotional:
David answered the priest Ahimelech, “The king gave me a mission…(I Samuel 21:2)
“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” This statement from Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmin is true – lies beget more lies. David is in a tough spot. He’s a fugitive, he’s hungry, and he doesn’t know whom he can trust. He chooses to sin. And just like us when we take our focus off the Provider of all things in the midst of a predicament, we tend to manipulate systems and situations for our benefit. The outcomes leave us wanting and typically wound in a mess of our own accord. The good news still remains: there is power and beauty in confession, not the obligatory, flippant, “sorry,” but the gut-wrenching, owning of our willful disobedience. A contrite heart is a broken heart. Today, check your heart. Let it be broken in repentance. God is the master rebuilder of cracked-up hearts.
Pray It: Father, forgive me for the lies that I tell others and tell myself. Help me to be a person who seeks, spreads and stands upon the truth at all times as pursuing the truth draws me closer to you. Amen.
Share It: Share a verse or thought from this passage with someone today.