Why a priest was willing to break the law – 1st Samuel 21 & 22, Part 2

Here at Faith Church we have an unending stream of Tastykakes in our freezer because we happen to have an inside connection to Tastykake! If you’ve never had a Tastykake, you need to try Butterscotch Krimpets or Kandy Kakes. I especially love dark chocolate Kandy Kakes with cream filling. Mostly we use the Tastykakes for our fellowship gatherings, but we sometimes hand them out to people in need.  For example, we’ve had people knock on the church office door asking for help, and if they are hungry, while we are not able to give them a full meal, we can at least give them a snack. Mostly, though, we direct them to contact our local social services agencies, CVCCS or CV SEEDS, depending on the person’s situation, as those organizations are designed to help people in need. 

Similarly, David is one of those people in need, and he shows up at his church asking for food. In the previous post, we learned that because King Saul is hunting David, David went to the priests at the tabernacle for help. When he showed up alone, the high priest Ahimelek was suspicious, “Why are you alone?” Now we hear David’s response:

“David answered Ahimelek the priest, ‘The king sent me on a mission and said to me, “No one is to know anything about the mission I am sending you on.” As for my men, I have told them to meet me at a certain place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.’”

Is David lying?  David is not on a mission from the King.  He doesn’t have any men to take care of.  David is simply hungry!  He’s been on the run for days, and who knows when he last had a good meal.  David is a fugitive.  Of course, he is concerned about the basics of life.  Food, protection, safety.  That’s it.  So David comes to God’s tent hoping for help. 

It’s a very similar rationale that many people in our day use when they reach out to the church in their time of need.  But in David’s day, is the tabernacle designed to help people in need?  Let’s read Ahimelek’s response.

“But the priest answered David, ‘I don’t have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread here—provided the men have kept themselves from women.’”

David has put Ahimelek in a tough spot.  How so?  First, helping David at all could put Ahimelek on King Saul’s blacklist.  Second, if the priest had some regular bread left in the pantry, so to speak, he would have given it to David.  But that regular bread was gone.  All Ahimelek had was consecrated bread. 

What is consecrated bread?  If you peek down to verse 6, you’ll see the writer describe it as “the bread of the Presence.”  One of the regular duties of the priests in the tabernacle was to prepare bread every day which was presented as a sacrifice to God.  You can read about it in Exodus 25 and Leviticus 24.  This is very special bread.  It is God’s bread. 

When God first instructed Moses and the Israelites to include bread offerings to him, he told them that after the bread had been sacrificed to God, the priests could partake of it.  But only priests could partake of it.  It is quite interesting, then, that Ahimelek is willing to make an exception here.  And his exception is based on David and his men having kept themselves from sexual relations. 

What does that matter?  David is a married man.  Who cares if he has sexual relations?  Here’s what Ahimelek seems to be thinking. Ahimelek is willing to make an exception for the use of the consecrated bread, based on what he knows of one other event in the history of Israel, and a passage in the Mosaic Law.  In Exodus 19:15 just before God entered into covenant with the people of Israel, he commanded the people to consecrate themselves in advance of the meeting by temporarily abstaining from sexual relations.  Also, in the law, in Leviticus 15:18, we read that after having sexual relations, persons were considered ritually unclean, and they needed to go through a cleansing process to become ritually clean again if they were going to worship God.  So Ahimelek seems to be saying, “Okay, David, I’ll make an exception for you and your men.  You can have the consecrated bread, which symbolically connects you to worship of God, but you can only eat the bread if you are ritually clean.” 

Let me pause right there and say that what Ahimelek is doing here is amazing.  Why?  Ahimelek could have said, “Sorry David. Can’t help you.  All I have is the consecrated bread, and that’s for priests only.”  That would have been in keeping with the letter of the law.  There is no other provision in the law that says the priests can give out the consecrated bread to those in need, even if those persons in need are ritually clean.  Ahimelek’s interpretation of the text of the Mosaic Law is very creative, to say the least.  His is a gracious reading of the text.  It gets to the heart of the Law, because God himself is gracious.  We’re going to talk about this further in the final post this week, because this story of Ahimelek’s interpretational method comes up again hundreds of years later.  In fact, none other than Jesus himself refers to this story.  Why Jesus refers to this story and what Jesus says about it is deeply instructive for you and me.

For now, we can move through the rest of the story rather quickly.  I’m going to do some summarizing.  Sadly, the rest of the story turns very dark.  In verses 5-6, David responds to Ahimelek that he and his men (again sticking with his story) are ritually clean, and Ahimelek should not worry about giving David the bread.  This, too, is an interesting response.  Other people might have said, “Oh…all you have is consecrated bread?  Well, no, I could never take that.  That’s God’s bread. That’s for the priests and only for the priests.  No worries, Ahimelek, I’ll keep looking elsewhere.”  Rule-followers think like that.  Rule-followers want nothing to do with even the slightest bending of the rules. 

David, no doubt, is a man after God’s own heart.  In numerous future blog posts through this series on the Life of David, we are going to see David go to extreme lengths to follow God’s heart.  So it is a bit surprising that in this episode, when it comes eating God’s bread and lying about what is going on in his life, David seems okay with that. Should we be okay with that?  I don’t think so.  I think we can simply say that David was unethical.  But Ahimelek doesn’t know that, and Ahimelek gives him the bread. 

Then someone spots David.  In verse 7, we read that the king’s chief shepherd, Doeg, sees David there at the temple.  Keep that tidbit in mind.  Because the narrative moves on.

In verses 8-9, with his first major need cared for, food, we learn that David inquires of Ahimelek about his second major need, protection.  David is still working his story about being on a mission for the king.  He is really committed to this story.  Is Ahimelek the priest buying this story?  If he doubts David’s story about being a secret mission from Saul, Ahimelek doesn’t seem to give any indication of doubt.  Maybe he just plays along, and he says David can take Goliath’s sword for protection.  Somehow or another, the sword had been stored at the Tabernacle for safe-keeping, and David says, “Yes, I want that sword.” 

So David has food, and he has protection.  But he is still one man, a single fugitive on the run, in a nation crawling with spies who might want to report his whereabouts to the king and get on the king’s good side.  Where can David go to find safety? David has an idea of where he can find safety, a shocking idea, and we learn about that in the next post.

Photo by Kate Remmer on Unsplash