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In truth, David's wants had become most pressing.^194 He needed food to support him
till he could reach a place of safety. For he dared not show himself by day, nor ask
any man for help. And he needed some weapon with which, in case of absolute
necessity, to defend his life. We know that it was the Sabbath, because the
shewbread of the previous week, which was removed on that day, had to be eaten
during its course.
It affords sad evidence of the decay into which the sanctuary and the priesthood had
fallen, that Ahimelech and Abiathar could offer David no other provisions for his
journey than this shewbread; which, according to the letter of the law, only the
priests might eat, and that within the sanctuary (Leviticus 24:9). But there was the
higher law of charity (Leviticus 19:18), which was rightly regarded as overruling
every merely levitical ordinance, however solemn (comp. Matthew 12:5; Mark
2:25). If it was as David pretended, and the royal commission was so important and
so urgent, it could not be right to refuse the necessary means of sustenance to those
who were engaged on it, provided that they had not contracted any such levitical
defilement as would have barred them from access to the Divine Presence (Leviticus
15:18). For, viewed in its higher bearing, what were the priests but the
representatives of Israel, who were all to be a kingdom of priests? This idea seems
indeed implied in the remark of David (21:5): "And though the manner" (the use to
which it is put) "be not sacred, yet still it will be made" (become) "sacred by the
instrument," - either referring to himself as the Divine instrument about to be
employed,^195 or to the "wallet" in which the bread was to be carried, as it were, on
God's errand. By a similar pretense, David also obtained from the high-priest the
sword of Goliath, which seems to have been kept in the sanctuary wrapt in a cloth,
behind the ephod, as a memorial of God's victory over the might of the heathen.
Most important of all, David, as we infer from 22:10, 15, appears to have "inquired
of the Lord," through the high-priest - whatever the exact terms of that inquiry may
have been. In this also there was nothing strange, since David had done so on
previous occasions, probably before entering on dangerous expeditions (22:15).
But already David's secret was betrayed. It so happened in the Providence of God,
that on this special Sabbath, one of Saul's principal officials, the "chief over the
herdsmen," was in Nob, "detained before Jehovah." The expression implies that
Doeg was obliged to remain in the sanctuary in consequence of some religious
ceremony - whether connected with his admission as a proselyte, for he was by birth
an Edomite, or with a vow, or with some legal purification. Such a witness could not
be excluded, even if David had chosen to betray his secret to the priest. Once
committed to the fatal wrong of his falsehood, David had to go on to the bitter end,
all the while feeling morally certain that Doeg was his enemy, and would bring
report of all to Saul (22:22). His feelings as connected with this are, as we believe,
expressed in Psalm 7.^196
(^)