1Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And when Ahimelech met David, he trembled and asked him, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?”
2“The king has given me a mission,” David replied. “He told me no one is to know about the mission on which I am sending you. And I have directed my young men to meet me at a certain place.
4“There is no common bread on hand,” the priest replied, “but there is some consecrated bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.”
5David answered, “Women have indeed been kept from us, as is usual when I set out. And the bodies of the young men are holy even on common missions. How much more so today!”
6So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there but the Bread of the Presence, which had been removed from before the LORD and replaced with hot bread on the day it was taken away.
8Then David asked Ahimelech, “Is there not a spear or sword on hand here? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s mission was urgent.”
9The 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, you may take it. For there is no other but this one here.” And David said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”
11But the servants of Achish said to him, “Is this not David, the king of the land? Did they not sing about him in their dances, saying: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?”
13So he changed his behavior before them and feigned madness in their hands; he scratched on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down his beard.