Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” And David answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the LORD, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.
Comment: David is entirely alone but he knows where his own small company of soldiers are. They were no doubt hand picked and loyal to him. When asked he does not disclose where they are, but on the road has stopped at the worship centre in Nob and met the priest. David was well known, but something didn’t look right in the priest’s eyes. David wasn’t strictly honest. He was not ‘on’ but ‘fleeing from’ the king’s orders! The relationship of his soldiers to women maybe or may not have been true, but the answer he gives is sufficient for the priest and allows him to get food for himself and the troupe of soldiers he is heading towards. I don’t know how David would have known when he says ‘The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?’ Maybe the Jewish soldiers of that era were ‘purer’ than most soldiers seem to be. He expects to be going onto a ‘war-footing’ and then women will be last in their thinking. He is given food for himself and the journey.
Prayer: Is bending the truth ever right in Your eyes, my God?
As I read it! 
Thank you Barry for your comments on this passage. “Bending the truth” is something we see quite often in the Bible with people. There is Abraham who lied about Sarah being his sister and not his wife, there is Isaac who did the same thing, there is Rahab who sent the spies off in a different direction, so we see that they were all normal human beings who sometimes feel the need to do this. I imagine that most of us during our lifetime would have done this “bending the truth” on one or more occasion. We, as Christians, need to confess this to our Lord, ask for forgiveness, and seek His help in not repeating this sin. God bless you.
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