Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 21:4

"And 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." — 1 Samuel 21:4 (ASV)

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.