1 Samuel 21:1-9 - David Encounters The Priests Of Nob

¹ Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech came to meet David trembling, and said to him, "Why are you alone, and no man with you?"

² David said to Ahimelech the priest, "The king has commanded me a business, and has said to me, 'Let no man know anything of the business about which I send you, and what I have commanded you; and I have appointed the young men to such and such a place.' ³ Now therefore what is under your hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever there is present."

⁴ The priest answered David, and said, "There is no common bread under my hand, but there is holy bread; if only the young men have kept themselves from women."

⁵ David answered the priest, and said to him, "Truly, women have been kept from us about these three days. When I came out, the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was but a common journey. How much more then today shall their vessels be holy?" ⁶ So the priest gave him holy [bread]; for there was no bread there but the show bread, that was taken from before Yahweh, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away.

⁷ Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before Yahweh; and his name was Doeg the Edomite, the best of the herdsmen who belonged to Saul.

⁸ David said to Ahimelech, "Isn't there here under your hand spear or sword? For I have neither brought my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's business required haste."

⁹ The priest said, "The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed 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 no other except that here." David said, "There is none like that. Give it to me."