1 Samuel 21

1Then he arose and went away, and Jonathan entered the city.

2David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech trembled when he met David and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no man is with you?”

3David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no man know anything about the matter for which I am sending you and with which I have charged you.’ And I have directed the young men to a certain place.”

4Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is available.

5The priest answered David and said, “There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.”

6David answered the priest and said to him, “Indeed, women have been kept from us as before, when I went out, and the young men’s vessels are holy, though it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will it be made holy in the vessel.”

7So the priest gave him holy bread, for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which had been removed from before Yahweh, to put hot bread there on the day it was taken away.

8A man of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before Yahweh; his name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s shepherds.

9And David said to Ahimelech, “Is there not here under your hand a spear or a sword? For I did not take my sword or my weapons in my hand, because the king’s matter was urgent.”

10And the priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down in the Valley of Elah—behold, it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that for yourself, take it, for there is no other here except it.” And David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”

11So David arose and fled that day from Saul, and he came to Achish king of Gath.

12And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is this not David, the king of the land? Is this not the one of whom they sang in the dances, saying, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?”

13David took these words to heart, and he was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath.

14So he changed his behavior before their eyes and acted like a madman in their hands; he made marks on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down onto his beard.

15And Achish said to his servants, “Look, you see a man acting like a madman. Why do you bring him to me?”

16Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this one to act like a madman before me? Shall this one come into my house?