1Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech was afraid when he met David, and said to him, "Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?"
2David said to Ahimelech the priest, "The king has given me a task. He said to me, 'Let no one know anything about the task I am sending you to do, or what I have ordered you.' I have told my servants to meet me at a certain place."
3"Now then, what do you have with you? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever there is."
4The priest answered David, "I have no ordinary bread here, but there is holy bread - if only the young men have kept themselves from women."
5David answered the priest, "Truly, women have been kept from us these three days, since I came out. The young men's vessels are holy, and the bread is in a way ordinary, even though it was made holy today in the vessel."
6So the priest gave him the holy bread. There was no bread there except the showbread, which had been taken from before the LORD, so that hot bread could be put in its place on the day it was taken away.
7Now one of Saul's servants was there that day, kept before the LORD. His name was Doeg, an Edomite, the chief of Saul's herdsmen.
8David said to Ahimelech, "Do you not have a spear or a sword here? I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's business needed haste."
9The priest said, "The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah - look, it is here, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it, for there is no other here but that one." David said, "There is none like it. Give it to me."
11The servants of Achish said to him, "Is this not David, the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another about him in their dances, saying, 'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands'?"
13So he changed the way he acted in front of them, and pretended to be mad while he was in their hands. He scratched on the doors of the gate and let his spit run down his beard.
14Then Achish said to his servants, "Look, you can see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me?"
15"Do I need madmen, that you have brought this man to act like a madman in front of me? Shall this man come into my house?"