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went to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Abimelech was terrified when he met David. He said to David, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?”
2 David answered Ahimelech the priest, “The king has commissioned me with a certain matter and said to me, ‘Do not let anyone know anything about the business on which I send you, or what I have ordered you to do’. So I have told my young men to meet me at a certain place. 3 Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.”
4 The priest answered David, “I don’t have any regular bread on hand; however there is some consecrated bread here—provided the young men have kept themselves from women.”
5 David answered the priest, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as is always the case when I go out on a mission. The young men’s bodies are consecrated even when we go out on a regular mission. So how much more will they be consecrated today then?” 6 So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there other than the Bread of the Presence, which had been removed from before the Lord and replaced with hot bread on the day it was taken away.
7 Now one of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite; he was the chief of Saul’s shepherds.
8 David said to Ahimelech, “Is there a spear or sword on hand? I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s business was urgent.”
9 The priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, is here, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want to take it, then do so, for there isn’t any others here except that one.”
David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”
10 David fled that day from Saul and went to Achish king of Gath. 11 But the servants of Achish said to him, “Is this not David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one they sing about to one another in their dances:
‘Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands’?”
12 David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. 13 So David pretended he was insane in their presence, and he scratched marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.
14 Achish said to his servants, “Look, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? 15 Do I lack for madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Must this man come into my house?”
1 Samuel 22:1 David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When David’s brothers and all his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there.