“‘Now, what do you have on hand? If you can spare five loaves of bread, give them to me, or whatever there is.’ The cohen answered David, ‘I don’t have any regular bread; however, there is consecrated bread — but only if the guards have abstained from women.'”-1 Samuel 21:4-5
There’s one thing I forgot to point out yesterday.
The brother of Ahimelech (the current High Priest whom David is approaching) whose name was Achiyah (meaning “My brother is king”) was actually Saul’s personal priest!!!
And David was aware of that fact.
That’s why the ever-alert David wasn’t one hundred percent sure whether or not he could trust Ahimelech.
That’s also why he started lying through his teeth.
He told Ahimelech some made-up story that he was on a secret mission and that his men were in hiding so as not to stir up attention.
Then David asks for five loaves of bread for him and his men.
If he told Ahimelech the bread was only for him, the High Priest would have known for sure something was up.
Ahimelech answers David by telling him the only type of bread available at the moment is the consecrated bread in the sanctuary.
Of course, he is talking about the holy Shewbread.
You remember what we learned about the Shewbread, don’t you?
They were the specially prepared twelve loaves of bread baked and placed before the Lord.
And when I say “Before the Lord”, I mean they were placed at the Sanctuary.
Every sabbath day, they were replaced by fresh loaves with the priests being allowed to eat the week-old bread.
So David is about to partake of this holy bread normally only reserved for the priests.
Was it okay?
This connects back to the question I raised yesterday concerning whether it’s okay under certain circumstances to sin or not.
Let’s consider war for example.
Actually, let’s consider a hypothetical example based on a real situation.
On October 7th, when Hamas attacked innocent Israeli civilians, they also kidnapped close to 200 hostages.
Now let’s say an IDF soldier, one who possesses native-level fluency in Arabic…
In order to rescue some of the hostages being held in some hidden location…
He dresses up as a Hamas terrorist…
Then employs all manner of deception to gain key intel about where the hostages may be located.
He is lying through his teeth left and right during the entire operation.
Given the current circumstances, is he in the wrong?
My answer is hell to the NO he ain’t in the wrong.
This is war…
And during war, sometimes you’ve gotta do unseemly things that under normal circumstances would not be cool.
Ya feel me?
Now consider that David was on the run for his life from an evil king who was gonna stop at nothing to kill him.
Wouldn’t you consider that a kind of personal war that David was fighting?
A war that forced him to lie to Israel’s current High Priest (a high priest who came from an illegitimate line no less, so irony of ironies here!) so he could get some food that would normally only be reserved for the priests.
I think Steven Bruck, who commented on my post yesterday, said it right:
“I do not think it is ever OK to sin,
but it may be necessary at times.”
Stay frosty.
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