2-3 David answered Ahimelech the Priest, “The king sent me on a mission and gave strict orders: ‘This is top secret—not a word of this to a soul.’ I’ve arranged to meet up with my men in a certain place. Now, what’s there here to eat? Do you have five loaves of bread? Give me whatever you can scrounge up!”

“I don’t have any regular bread on hand,” said the priest. “I only have holy bread. If your men have not slept with women recently, it’s yours.”

David said, “None of us has touched a woman. I always do it this way when I’m on a mission: My men abstain from sex. Even when it is an ordinary mission we do that—how much more on this holy mission.”

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Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.”

But the priest answered David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread(A) on hand; however, there is some consecrated(B) bread here—provided the men have kept(C) themselves from women.”

David replied, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual(D) whenever[a] I set out. The men’s bodies are holy(E) even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!”

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Footnotes

  1. 1 Samuel 21:5 Or from us in the past few days since