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Do you have any food you can give me? Could you spare five loaves of bread?”

“The only bread I have is the sacred bread,” the priest told David. “You can have it if your soldiers didn't sleep with women last night.”[a]

“Of course we didn't sleep with women,” David answered. “I never let my men do that when we're on a mission. They have to be acceptable to worship God even when we're on a regular mission, and today we're on a special mission.”

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Footnotes

  1. 21.4 night: Having sex was one of the things that would make someone temporarily unfit to take part in worship or a sacred meal (see Exodus 19.15; Leviticus 15.18).

Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.”

But the priest answered David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread(A) on hand; however, there is some consecrated(B) bread here—provided the men have kept(C) themselves from women.”

David replied, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual(D) whenever[a] I set out. The men’s bodies are holy(E) even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!”

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Footnotes

  1. 1 Samuel 21:5 Or from us in the past few days since