STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 27
1 Sam. 21:1-9
October 15, 2000
Text Comment
v.1 The sense seems to be that David went deliberately to Nob. That is, he didn’t simply find himself there on his flight from Saul. Nob is northeast of Gibeah, from whence David was running, though only three miles distant, and Gath, where he goes next is west. Nob represents a detour. David goes to Nob because he knows there will be food there, a sympathetic priest (when people call the church or stop by for financial help of some kind, they often want to talk to the “pastor” expecting, I gather, that he will be more sympathetic and a softer touch), and a weapon, Goliath’s sword which he, of all people, surely knew was being kept there (v. 9).
Nob is referred to as the “city of priests” in 22:19. The town came into greater prominence, apparently, after the debacle of chapter 4. [Gordon, Com., 169]
Ahimelech trembles at the sight of David. He wonders why David is alone. He knows of the disintegration of the relationship between David and Saul (the priests at Nob, no doubt, had heard about the prophesying at Naioth) and knows how dangerous Saul has become, how unbalanced in his fury against David. The fear of Saul’s retribution stalks the land. [Alter, Com., 131] He was absolutely right to be worried, as events will prove.
v.2 We have found deceit being practice all through this material. Jonathan practiced it against his father in the last chapter, Michal against her father in the chapter before. Here David begins an elaborate lie. Now some have thought that David should be seen here to be lying to protect Ahimelech from Saul’s wrath. He was providing a cover story for the priest when it was discovered, as it surely would be, that David had received help at Nob. However, I think the implication of 22:22 – after Saul had savagely vented his rage on Nob and its priests for having aided David – is that David knew full well he was putting Ahimelech and others at risk. If he was so concerned about their safety, he would have got his bread and weapon somewhere else!
Fact is, we don’t get anywhere in this material the sense that the narrator necessarily disproves of these deceits. The ethics of war are not the same as the ethics of peace. No one disproves of an army concealing its intentions, even attempting to convince its enemy that its intentions are otherwise than they are (Joshua sending the spies ahead of his army into Canaan; the allies regarding the invasion landing sites in Normandy). What we have here, of course, is the early stages of the war between the house of Saul and the house of David.
v.3 David is a master psychologist. The story of a top-secret mission is just the sort of story that people will believe and the sort of story that will make them want to have a part in this intrigue. David did have others with him apparently, as the Lord assumes in his comment on this event in Mark 2:25-26, and as the following conversation seems to confirm.
v.5 Ahimelech is willing to part with the consecrated bread – bread that was permitted only to the priests in the levitical law (Lev. 24:9) on the condition that the men are ceremonially pure. David assures him that it was always his custom to enforce sexual abstinence during military actions (cf. Uriah later!) and, how much more, therefore, on a special mission such as this one.
v.6 This bread was called the “bread of the presence” because it was set out before the presence of the Lord in the holy place of the sanctuary every Sabbath (Lev. 24:5-9) and, then, when replaced by fresh loaves, it belonged to the priests to eat. In the pagan religions round about the worshippers gave food to the gods, but in Israel this was a symbol of God’s provision for his people and came, at last, not to the gods, but to men. God’s grace not man’s works, even in the details of the ritual.
v.7 The significance of this mention of Doeg, of course, is that he will prove to be the rat who spills the beans to Saul and brings down Saul’s vengeance upon Ahimelech, the rest of the priests, and the entire town of Nob (22:9). It is an instance of “ominous foreshadowing” [Alter]. Doeg is an Edomite so has no loyalty to the priests of Israel, he is Saul’s official, and he happens to be there at just the right time to see Ahimilech help David.
v.9 In 31:10 we read that when the Philistines defeated and killed Saul at Gilboa, they took his armor and deposited it in their temple to Ashtaroth. There seems to be something of the same happening here. In any case, David now holds in his hand the evidence of God’s favor and his ability to conquer a superior enemy in the name of the Lord. We can well imagine him stealing, nerving himself just by looking at that sword and remembering what happened that day!
Now, as you remember, this incident is mentioned by the Lord in a conversation he had with some Pharisees who had complained when they witnessed the Lord’s disciples plucking grain as they walked along on the Sabbath day. The Lord replied by referring to David’s being given the consecrated bread, reserved for the priests in the law, and then summarizing the point with that immortal line: “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Clearly, in the Savior’s sight, what Ahimelech did in giving David the consecrated bread was right and what David did, both in seeking and then in consuming that consecrated bread, was right.
In other words, a principle is established in this text, a principle that clarifies certain legislation found in the law of God. The Lord will later make that principle even more explicit in Hosea 6:6: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” which is to say, mercy trumps ritual, or, better, the ceremonial law was never intended to be kept to the harm or the detriment of people. The people in Hosea’s day were imagining that because they were faithful at the rites of Israel’s worship, they could treat their neighbors however they pleased. No, the Lord said. Mercy is more important to me than sacrifices. Remember the Pharisees in the Lord’s day who used the regulations of “corban” to hide assets from their parents. Sorry, Mom and Dad, I can’t give you help because all of my disposable income has been dedicated to the Lord! That is a perversion of worship and the law of vows. But even when well-meaning folk may be in a position to wonder whether they should maintain a regulation or act on behalf of someone in need, this principle applies. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. It is not a violation of the Sabbath to help someone who has broken down on the Interstate or whose basement has just flooded. Ahimelech shows that he is not indifferent to God’s law. He wants to know that the men are ceremonially clean. But what he does is right. The Lord Jesus even says so. For though the consecrated bread was reserved to the priests, no true understanding of that law would think it right to keep the bread from starving men.
Now, what we are given here is a very important principle governing the interpretation of the Bible. This incident, recorded as it is in the Bible, is also torah. “Torah,” which is often translated “law,” and often refers to specific commandments in the Bible, is really a broader, richer term. Literally it means “instruction” or “teaching.”
For example, the instruction about life the father gives his son in Proverbs 1-9 is called “torah” there. “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction,” we read in Prov. 1:8. That word “instruction” is torah. “Do not forget my teaching,” the father says in 3:1. That word “teaching” is torah. In Psalm 78:1 we read, “O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth.” That word, “teaching,” is torah. And what follows in that psalm is not law and commandments, but history, the history of the people of Israel and of God’s way with them. In Isa 1:10 we read: “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom – as a reference to the rulers of Israel that is a severe reproach – listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah! That word “law” is torah, but what follows is not commandments but a sermon on Israel’s sin and her need for repentance. I could multiply examples of the breadth and depth of the use of this term torah. But you get the point.
This torah, then, includes the commandments of the law, but it also includes the history of Israel in its authoritative interpretation in the Bible, exhortations and sermons, the wisdom literature, and everything else. Indeed, in Romans 3.19, Paul refers to the entirety of the Old Testament as “torah.”
Now this is a point of some real significance in the interpretation of the Bible. For example, in Deuteronomy 7:3 we read that Israel is not to intermarry with the Canaanites when she conquers the land. But in Joshua 6-7 that commandment is qualified in the continuing history. Rahab, the prostitute, is accepted into the nation of Israel and, later, intermarries – indeed, becomes an ancestor of the Lord Christ himself. While, Achan, an Israelite, is executed for his faithlessness. Joshua 6 qualifies Deuteronomy 7, for the law written in its simple and absolute form in Deut. 7 did not have in view, we learn, a Canaanite who came to have faith in God. In the same way, the law forbids a Moabite to enter the community of faith. But in Ruth we see a Moabitess brought into the community and first one and then another godly man marrying her. But the law as we might have understood it in its absolute prohibition, is qualified by this history and we learn that it did not exclude a Moabitess who came to have faith in God.
The law and the qualification of that law that comes in another place are equally part of the “Torah.”
Now, in regard to the Sabbath, this is a very important point. A simplistic reading of the Sabbath law generates one understanding of Sabbath duty. An understanding based on all the Torah produces another kind of Sabbath sanctification. You can certainly take care of necessities (the ox in the ditch – because God does not want an animal to suffer and doesn’t want your obedience to be offered to the detriment of another, even an animal. Milking cows, police work, and so on.). You can also do that which is surely work in one sense of the word, to produce what is Sabbath pleasure for others. The Lord went to banquets on the Sabbath day and someone was preparing and setting out that food! There is nothing wrong with preparing all the food the day before, but one should not think that that practice is required by the Sabbath law in the Bible. It is interesting to me that in Mark 2 the issue surrounded the disciples plucking grain as they walked along on the Sabbath day. Now, no one thinks that it was a case of eat or starve. They could have waited to nightfall and the end of the day. They were grown men. They weren’t really in any danger of starvation. Their stomachs were growling; that was all. And, what is more, the twelve certainly could have prepared a lunch beforehand. I think many of us, reading the Sabbath commandments in the Bible might have supposed that the Lord would have said, “No plucking grain. Let’s give glory to God by suffering this little bit of discomfort in order to keep his day holy.” But he didn’t say that. He allowed his disciples to pluck grain and then said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
But, the main point here, is that these several incidents, these historical occasions that are reported in the Bible, also teach us how to understand the commandments and our duty to God! They too are Torah.
There is often a failure to appreciate this fact. For example, in our day, as the church has had to adjust to many more divorces among its people, there has been a natural desire to stem the flood of failed marriages and to turn back the clock as it were. And for many the tendency is to read the commandments themselves – which are, as always in the Bible, characteristically absolute in their form of words – in the strictest sense. Some are sure the commandments forbid divorce of any kind, or, if they ever permit divorce, never allow for remarriage. Does not the Lord say, “I hate divorce,” they ask.
But we don’t have the entire picture until we have the entire Torah before us. We not only have to interpret the specific commands touching divorce and remarriage rightly – and that is a controversy in itself – but we also have to add the other illuminating instruction that comes elsewhere. What, for example, of folk whose spouse simply up and leave them. What of them? Well, Paul addresses that question in 1 Cor. 7.
But, what of spouses who have divorced but not properly, not on biblical grounds? Well, there apparently were such people in the church in Corinth. People who were divorced but shouldn’t be. What of them? We might well have expected Paul to take strict line with them. We would not have been surprised if Paul had written in 1 Cor. 7:10-11, “If a woman separates from her husband and has no grounds to do so, she must decide: will I be loyal to Christ and so be loyal to my marriage, or will I throw off the yoke of Christ in order to throw off my marriage. If you want to be a Christian, you must live like a Christian. I’m on my way to Corinth. Those who have been improperly divorced, must remarry. When I arrive I expect them to be married to their former spouses again; if not, they will be put out of the church.”
But, of course, Paul doesn’t say that. He says rather, very interestingly, “but if they do divorce – without proper grounds, he means – then they must remain unmarried or be reconciled to their spouses.” Here again seems to be a similar case of mercy trumping a strict reading of the regulation. There is a sense in which the Lord seems to be telling us that there are situations that cannot be repaired, even in the kingdom of God, even among two devout people. There remain consequences, of course, – they must remain unmarried if they will not be married to one another – but they are not, at the last, told to remain married or get out of the church.
That is just like letting a Canaanite into the people of God when the command itself said Israel must not do that. It is like a pious man marrying a Moabitess when the law forbade a person from Moab entering the assembly of the Lord unto the tenth generation. It is like the Lord approving of plucking grain on the Sabbath.
We might not have thought this to be allowed by the commandment itself, but it is, and this qualifying material in the Bible teaches us that it is. It is all the same Torah, instruction: the commandments themselves, the history and its interpretation, the wisdom literature, the prophets and their sermons.
There is, in other words, a reading of the Bible that is too simplistic. It does not take into account all that is taught us in the Word of God. People who read the Bible that way are sure they are being loyal to God and often feel that the introduction of this other material is, somehow, pettifogging, simply a way to get around the Bible’s plain speaking. But it is not. It is taking the entire Bible seriously, everything it says! You don’t finally understand the commandments of God until you have seen clearly how they are enforced, how they are interpreted in the Bible itself.
And it is in this way that we get closer to the mind and heart of our God. He would never have his people keep a ritual law and see men starving as a result. He would never have people going hungry in order to keep his day holy. He would never have an animal suffer for the sake of Sabbath-keeping. All these laws and commandments: ritual purity, Sabbath keeping, and the like are highly important. But they are important as a reflection of God’s mind and heart and purpose. And that mind and heart and purpose values mercy more than sacrifice.
Now you know how to keep the Sabbath holy. Keep it as a day of rest, worship and fellowship, absolutely. But if the opportunity to give love and kindness to others is offered to you – however much labor may be involved – , then take it, for that is the truest kind of Sabbath keeping. That was the way the Lord spent many of his Sabbaths. There were large numbers of people in the Lord’s day who were healthy and happy again because the Lord “worked” on the Sabbath day! Working, yes; but always to show mercy to others.