1 Samuel 21
Open in the reader1Then Beloved got up and departed, and He-Who-Is-Has-Given went back into the city.
2Then Beloved came to Fruit, to My-Brother-Is-King the priest. And when My-Brother-Is-King met Beloved, he trembled and asked him, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?”
3“The king has given me a mission,” Beloved replied. “He told me no one is to know about the mission on which I am sending you. And I have directed my young men to meet me at a certain place.
4Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.”
5“There is no common bread on hand,” the priest replied, “but there is some consecrated bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.”
6Beloved answered, “Women have indeed been kept from us, as is usual when I set out. And the bodies of the young men are devoted even on common missions. How much more so today!”
7So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there but the Bread of the Presence, which had been removed from before He-Who-Is and replaced with hot bread on the day it was taken away.
8Now one of Asked-For’s servants was there that day, detained before He-Who-Is. And his name was Anxious-One the Red-One, the chief shepherd for Asked-For.
9Then Beloved asked My-Brother-Is-King, “Is there not a spear or sword on hand here? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king’s mission was urgent.”
10The priest replied, “The sword of Exile the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Terebinth, is here; it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want, you may take it. For there is no other but this one here.” And Beloved said, “There is none like it; give it to me.”
11That day Beloved fled from Asked-For and went to Achish king of Wine-Press.
12But the servants of Achish said to him, “Is this not Beloved, the king of the land? Did they not sing about him in their dances, saying: ‘Asked-For has slain his thousands, and Beloved his tens of thousands’?”
13Now Beloved took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish the king of Wine-Press.
14So he changed his behavior before them and feigned madness in their hands; he scratched on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down his beard.
15Then Achish said to his servants, “Look, you can see that the man is insane! Why have you brought him to me?
16Am I in need of madmen, that you have brought this man to rave in my presence? Must this man come into my house?”