Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 21

Then came David to Nob. —Before leaving his native land, David determined once more to see, and if practicable to take counsel with, the old high priest of Israel, with whom, no doubt, in the past years of his close connection with Samuel, he had had frequent and intimate communion. He hoped, too, in that friendly and powerful religious centre to provide himself and his few companions with arms and other necessities for his exile; and it is also probable that he intended, through the friendly high priest, to make some inquiry of the Divine oracle, the Urim and Thummim, concerning his uncertain future. The unexpected presence of Doeg, the powerful and unscrupulous servant of Saul, at the sanctuary, no doubt hurried him away in great haste across the frontier.

The town of Nob, situated between Anathoth and Jerusalem—about an hour’s ride from the latter—has been with great probability identified with the “village of Esau,” El-Isaurizeb, a place showing all the signs of an ancient town, with its many marble columns and ancient stones. There, in these later days of Saul, “stood the last precious relic of the ancient nomadic times—the tabernacle of the wanderings, around which, since the fall of Shiloh, had lived the descendants of the house of Eli.

It was a small colony of priests; at least eighty-five persons ministered there in the white linen dress of the priesthood, and all their families and herds were gathered around them. The priest was not as ready to befriend David as the prophet was (we allude to David’s reception by Samuel at Naioth by Ramah, 1 Samuel 19:0). As the solitary fugitive, famished and unarmed, stole up the mountainside, he received only a cold welcome from the cautious and courtly Ahimelech.” —Stanley, Lectures on the Jewish Church, Lect. 12

To Ahimelech the priest. —He was the great-grandson of Eli, as follows:

Died at Shiloh after news of the Ark’s capture,

Eli

Phinehas

Ahitub

Ichabod

Ahimelech

Abiathar.

Slain by Philistines in battle
Reign of Saul—High Priest,

Reign of David—High Priest, (See 1 Samuel 22:19–20.)

He was probably identical with Ahiah (1 Samuel 14:3); this, however, is not certain. Dean Payne Smith believes Ahiah was a younger brother of Ahimelech, who, while Ahimelech remained with the Ark, acted as high priest at the camp for Saul, especially in consulting God for him using the ephod with the breastplate (the Urim).

Why are you alone? —The priest, not unfriendly but cautious, who, though unaware of the final rupture between Saul and David, was of course cognizant of the strained relations between the king and his great servant, was uneasy at this sudden appearance of the king’s son-in-law—the well-known military chieftain, David—alone and travel-stained at the sanctuary.

The king has commanded me. —This is one of the sad episodes in a glorious life. Overwhelmed with dismay at his sudden fall, home and wife, friends and rank, all had been taken from him. He who had been on the very steps of the throne, the darling of the people, and strangely successful in all that he had until then undertaken, was now a proscribed exile, flying for his life. These things must plead as his excuse for his falsehood to Ahimelech, and his flight to and subsequent behaviour among the hereditary enemies of his race, the Philistines.

But here, as in so many places, the Holy Spirit who guided the pen of the compiler of this true history could not lie, but fearlessly tells the repulsive truth which must always be deeply damaging to the favourite hero of Israel. “The Holy Spirit has become the chronicler of men’s foolish, indeed, sinful actions. He has narrated the lies of Abraham, the incest of Lot, the simulation of the man after God’s heart.”— Lange.

I have appointed my servants. —This portion of his words to Ahimelech was, no doubt, strictly true. It is unlikely that one in the high position of David at the court of Saul, also possessing such powers over men’s hearts, would be allowed to go even into exile without any friends or attendants. Those alluded to here probably joined him soon after his parting with Jonathan. Our Lord, in Mark 2:25-26, speaks of the priest giving the shewbread to David and to those that were with him, when both he and they that were with him were an hungred.

There is no common bread. —The condition of the priests in the days of Saul was evidently pitiable. The terrible massacre related in the next chapter seems not to have provoked the outcry of indignation and sorrow that such a wholesale murder of the priests of the living God should naturally have elicited from the entire people. They were evidently held in little esteem, and their murder was regarded at the time not as an awful act of sacrilege, but simply as an act of political vengeance—punishment for what the king was pleased to call treason.

The almost destitute condition of the ministers of Israel’s principal sanctuary is evident from the high priest's quiet answer to David, telling him they had absolutely no bread except the stale bread removed from before “the Presence” in the holy building.

This “hallowed bread,” or shewbread, five loaves of which David petitioned for, consisted of twelve loaves, one for each tribe, which were placed in the Tabernacle fresh every Sabbath day. The law of Moses was that this bread, being most holy, could only be eaten by the priests in the holy place.

It is probable that this regulation had been relaxed, meaning the bread was now often carried away and eaten in the homes of the ministering priests. On urgent occasions, it was perhaps even given to the “laity,” as in this case, with the only proviso being that its consumers should be ceremonially pure. Our Savior, in Matthew 12:3, especially uses this example, drawn from the Tabernacle’s honored customs, to justify a violation of the letter of the law when its strict observance would stand in the way of the fulfillment of man’s sacred duty to his neighbor.

The natural inference from this incident would be that such a violation of the Mosaic Law was not an uncommon occurrence, as Ahimelech at once gave him the hallowed bread, making only a conditional inquiry about ceremonial purity—a condition expressed so readily that we feel it had often been made before. The Talmud, however, is most anxious that this inference should not be drawn. It points out in the treatise Menachoth, “Meat-offerings” (Seder Kodashim,) that this bread was not newly taken from the sanctuary but had been removed on a previous day. Furthermore, because it was stale and dry after a week’s exposure, the priests ate very little of it, and the rest was left. (See Treatise Yoma, 39.) It also points out that if such a violation of the Levitical Law had been common, so much importance would not have been attached to this incident.

The vessels.—Their clothes and light, portable baggage, answering to the modern “knapsack.” The Vulgate renders the Hebrew word as “vasa.” David means to say, “Since we have just left home, you may readily suppose that no impurity has been contracted; it would be different if we were returning home from a journey, when on the way—especially in war—uncleanness might be contracted by the blood of enemies or otherwise.” —Seb. Schmid, quoted in Lange.

The Septuagint, by a very slight change in the Hebrew letters, instead of “the vessels of the young men,” renders it as “all the young men.”

And the bread is in a manner common.—The original text here is very difficult, almost utterly obscure. The English Version of this clause is simply meaningless. Of the many translations that have been suggested, two at least offer a fairly good sense:

1. “And if it is an unholy way (namely, the way David and his band were going—his purpose or enterprise), moreover, it also becomes holy through the instrument” (namely, through me, as an ambassador of the anointed of the Lord), assuming the important royal mission on which David pretended to be sent. This view is supported by Keil and O. von Gerlach.
2. Lange, however, and Thenius, maintain that the words in question must contain a remark by which the priest is to be persuaded to give the bread, and would translate it as: “Though it is an unholy (ceremonially illegal) procedure (to take the shewbread), yet it is sanctified (today) through the instrument” (David or Ahimelech). The instrument here is David, the appointed messenger of the Lord’s anointed, or, even better, Ahimelech, the sacred person of the high priest.

No doubt, the words of Leviticus 24:9, which speak of the destination of the stale shewbread, “And they (Aaron and his sons) shall eat it in the holy place,” suggested the practice of the Church of England embodied in the Rubric following the “Order of the Administration of the Holy Communion”: “And if any (of the bread and wine) remain of that which was consecrated, it shall not be carried out of the church, but the priest, and such other of the communicants as he shall then call unto him, shall immediately after the blessing reverently eat and drink the same.”

Among the legendary Jewish lore that has gathered around the history of this transaction is one strange tradition that the holy bread thus given became useless in the hands of the king’s fugitive (See Stanley, Lectures on the Jewish Church, Lecture 22, quoting from Jerome).

A certain man. —Among the personages who surround Saul in the Bible story incidentally appears the keeper of the royal mules, and chief of the household slaves, the “Comes stabuli,” “the constable of the king,” as appears in the later monarchy. “He is the first instance of a foreigner employed in a high function in Israel, being an Edomite, or Syrian, of the name of Doeg—according to Jewish tradition, the steward who accompanied Saul in his pursuit after the asses, who counselled him to send for David, and who ultimately slew him, according to the sacred narrative—a person of vast and sinister influence in his master’s counsels.” (Stanley, Lectures on the Jewish Church, Lecture 21) Some traditions affirm that the armor-bearer who slew Saul on Mount Gilboa was not Doeg, but Doeg’s son.

The Hebrew words translated in the English Version, “the chiefest of the herdmen that belonged to Saul,” are translated in the Septuagint by “feeding the mules of Saul;” and in accordance with this reading, in 1 Samuel 22:9 also, they have changed “Saul’s servants” into “Saul’s mules.” The Vulgate and the other versions, however, translate as the English Version, “potentissimus pastorum,” although in some of the Vulgate manuscripts there is an explanatory gloss, evidently derived from the singular interpretation of the Septuagint, “ This (man) used to feed Saul’s mules.” There can be no foundation in tradition or otherwise for such a reading, as we never read until the time of King David of mules being used by royal princes. (See 2 Samuel 13:29; 2 Samuel 18:9.)

Before David’s time, the sons of princes used to ride on asses. (Judges 12:14.) Ewald, disregarding the current Jewish tradition respecting the ancient connection of Doeg with the house of Kish, considers that this influential chieftain of the king probably came over to Saul in his war with Edom.

Detained before the Lord. —Several interpretations have been suggested for these words.

1. He was at the sanctuary of the Tabernacle as a proselyte—one who wished to be received into the religious communion of Israel.
2. He was detained there for his purification on account of supposed leprosy, or simply in fulfilment of a temporary Nazarite vow.
3. According to Ephrem Syrus (who probably referred to some lost tradition), he had committed some trespass, and was detained there until he had offered the appointed sacrifice.

Any of these reasons—all sufficiently probable in themselves—would have occasioned a long or short residence at the sanctuary at Nob. At all events, when the fugitive David recognized the presence of one of Saul’s most unscrupulous servants, whom he must have known well, he must have had misgivings, and he, probably on this account, hastened to get away, and at once begged the old high priest to furnish him with any arms he might have laid up in the priestly homes.