Setting Aside the Law
Opening Prayer
Lord, help me to discern the weightier matters of Your law and to recognize what is truly essential in Your sight.
Read 1 Samuel 21:1–15
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
David went to Nob, to Ahimelek the priest. Ahimelek trembled when he met him, and asked, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?”
2 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. 3 Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.”
4 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.”
5 David replied, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual whenever I set out. The men’s bodies are holy even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!” 6 So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the Lord and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away.
7 Now one of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the Lord; he was Doeg the Edomite, Saul’s chief shepherd.
8 David asked Ahimelek, “Don’t you have a spear or a sword here? I haven’t brought my sword or any other weapon, because the king’s mission was urgent.”
9 The priest replied, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, is here; it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want it, take it; there is no sword here but that one.”
David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”
David at Gath
10 That day David fled from Saul and went to Achish king of Gath. 11 But the servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one they sing about in their dances:
“‘Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands’?”
12 David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. 13 So he pretended to be insane in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard.
14 Achish said to his servants, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? 15 Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?”
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (1 Jer. 31:33).
It is clear in this incident of David and the holy bread that David represents the future God intends for Israel. Rituals and traditions, even those meant to display the holiness of God, must not stand in the way of God’s larger purposes but must give way to the needs of God’s kingdom. Ahimelek grasps this and gives holy things for God’s purposes in an unholy world. “What good are holy things if they cannot make a difference in a world where some seek to kill others and prevent the advent of God’s kingdom?” (Bruce C. Birch, NIB, Volume 2, 1141).
Jesus takes this otherwise obscure little incident and imbues it with eternal significance (Luke 6:3–5). Jesus’ immediate intention is to refute the Pharisees’ criticism of his disciples picking and eating grain on the Sabbath, technically harvesting and preparing food. Jesus reminds them that David and his men ate the Bread of the Presence, something restricted exclusively to the priests (Exod. 25:30; Lev. 24:5–9). To Jesus, feeding the hungry transcends a mechanical conformity to the Law. The new era Jesus inaugurates will be marked by the sweeping away of old conventions and a rereading of the Law—indeed a different perspective on all Scripture—which after him was to be understood in the light of the new revelation of God which the world was meeting in the person of Jesus.
As if to remind us that God’s purposes for the world coincide with its evil, the author casts a grim shadow over this account via the malevolent Doeg, a mercenary in Saul’s service. He is a witness to David’s actions and will later recount the incident to Saul (1 Sam. 22:9,10). David accepts the gift of Goliath’s weapon (1 Sam. 21:9). He will never stain it with Israelite blood. The same cannot be said of Doeg. In assisting David, Ahimelek has signed his own death warrant.
Apply
Do you feel God’s law in your mind and on your heart? How do you respond to this love?
Closing prayer
Help us, O Lord, not to ignore the law written on our hearts. Where evil attacks us, give us grace to follow the law of love rather than judgment.
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