And one of the sons of Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped, and fled after David.
Saul has just had the priests of Nob killed for helping David. One of them escapes, runs to David, and carries the priesthood with him — out of the reigning king's reach and into the hands of the rejected one.
Abiathar's arrival brought David both a report and a burden.
One son of Ahimelech escaped, however, and went to David, the only possible refuge at the time. He gave David the report of all that had happened. David felt responsible for causing the death of the priests, because, as he said, he knew Doeg would inform on him when he saw him at Nob (v.22). One wonders what David could have done to protect the priests. But no doubt he did not expect so great a slaughter. David's comforting words to Abiathar remind us of the Lord's care. He cares for those who take a place of rejection with Him.
Ahimelech came from the house of Eli, a priestly line already under sentence. God had said this line would be cut off long before Saul gave his order.
Remember that Ahimelech was of the house of Eli. God's judgment had doomed that house to be wiped out, because of the wickedness at Shiloh (1 Sam. 2:30-33; 1 Sam. 3:12-14). In keeping with this judgment, all of Eli's descendants died at Nob — with one exception. God had not forgotten the mercy Ahimelech showed to His anointed. So He did not yet make a full end of the line of Ithamar, or wipe Eli's family off the earth. He spared Abiathar to represent the younger branch of Aaron's house all through David's reign.
The judgment fell in stages, over a hundred years.
The Philistines killed Hophni and Phinehas in battle (1 Sam. 4:11). Sixty years later King Saul cut off the offspring of Eli's house (1 Sam. 22:18). And a hundred years after the prediction, King Solomon removed the last of Eli's house from the priesthood (1 Kings 2:27).
Saul aimed at David and struck the priests instead. The result was the opposite of what he wanted. The link with God left his court and followed the outcast.
The king stooped — no, Satan's power blinded him — to use his herdsman Doeg, an Edomite, against the priests of the Lord! ... Where was self-judgment for the sin which had forfeited the kingdom? Where was the sense of the honour God had put on him, and of his own misuse of it? Only a bitter, deadly hatred burns inside him. It breaks out now — not against the man he most wanted to destroy, but against those who had shown him kindness, priests of the Lord though they were. But it has one effect: this holy link with the Lord, the means of keeping up relationship with Him, is now found with David.
With Abiathar's arrival, David's company held everything the kingdom should have had.
Here he is in his place. All was there — royalty, prophecy, and priesthood. Saul, after having despised prophecy, turns against the priesthood. Yet David is not discouraged; he will protect Abiathar.
Abiathar did not arrive empty-handed. He brought the ephod — the way a priest asked God for guidance.
The revelation of God's mind, absent from Saul's court and from his people, found refuge with David's company. The king's murderous act against Nob drives Abiathar the priest to David (v. 20). Later he comes to him with the ephod in his hand (1 Sam. 23:6). The way to come near God, to ask His mind at any time, to enter into fellowship with Him — that is the happy privilege of these homeless wanderers, whom the world shames and despises.
One writer names what Abiathar was really protecting.
He realised that the one thing that mattered most was keeping connection with the Lord... We can be sure that persecution will make us want the Lord's mind on everything all the more.
One writer turns the escape into a direct appeal to the reader.
The first thing is salvation. In danger of his life, Abiathar fled to David. There he found salvation from the sword of Saul. And sinner, you must flee to Christ... "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
- Escape. One son of Ahimelech got away, and the only refuge open to him was the man Saul was hunting.
- Mercy. He lived because God remembered the kindness Ahimelech had shown His anointed. That was mercy inside a judgment already announced on Eli's house.
- Transfer. Saul's attack on the priests drove the link with God out of his court and into David's hands.
- Resource. Abiathar came carrying the ephod, so the homeless company could still ask God and get His answer.
- Refuge. What Abiathar found with David, the sinner finds in Christ: safety with the rejected king.
And Abiathar informed David that Saul had slain Jehovah's priests.
Abiathar reaches David's hiding place as the only survivor of a whole town of priests. He brings word that Saul has killed the men who fed David and armed him. The news raises two questions. What part did David's own conduct play in the slaughter? And what happens to Israel's worship now that the king has turned on God's priests?
David had gone to Nob, where the tabernacle stood, hoping to get help and to ask direction from Ahimelech. What came back to him was a death toll. One writer traces the whole chain from that visit to the moment of this verse:
He then fled to Nob, the place where the tabernacle was and the priesthood, and where he might inquire of the Lord from Ahimelech the high priest. Doeg, an Edomite official in Saul's service, was there at the time. He told his master about the help given to David. But he misrepresented it so wickedly that Saul suspected all the priests were in league against him. His vengeance was terrible. At his command Doeg slaughtered eighty-five of them, and Nob was devoted to destruction — every living thing in it, man and beast, put to the sword.
The killing began with words. Doeg had watched David's meeting with the high priest. He then shaped his report to Saul to do damage.
Doeg, intentionally or otherwise, misrepresents David's interview with Ahimelech. David describes that meeting in Psalm 52, and from it there can be little doubt that Doeg's own hatred led him to lie on purpose. Anything that would weaken the kingdom of Israel would please an Edomite. According to his account, Ahimelech was in the conspiracy to enthrone David. Ahimelech had inquired of the Lord for him, and had given him food and the sword of Goliath. But Doeg twisted even the parts that were true into a wrong meaning. So his whole story was false witness, and the result for the priestly house was disastrous.
David did not treat the news as someone else's crime. One writer weighs both his confession and its limit:
David had sinned at Nob. But he did confess his guilt to God, just as he confessed it to the grief-stricken Abiathar: "I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house." That confession came from an honest and good heart. He took the whole blame on himself and made no excuse. But he could not restore life to the dead Levitical families.
Another writer draws the wider lesson. Ahimelech himself was innocent:
The effects of one man's sin are seldom confined to himself... The effects touched him even to death, but he was guileless. David was the indirect cause of his death, and he afterwards admitted it; for at the time he suspected what the fatal result would be when he saw Doeg.
Saul had once spared the Amalekites, Israel's enemies. Now he destroyed God's own priests — and by that act he handed David the very thing he threw away:
Only a bitter, deadly hatred burns inside him. It now breaks out — not against the man he most wanted to destroy, but against those who had shown him kindness, priests of Jehovah though they were. But the effect is this: the holy point of connection with Jehovah, the means of keeping up relationship with Him, is now found with David... The man who spared the Amalekites now destroyed the priests of the Lord without mercy.
Abiathar did not come to David empty-handed.
Lastly, the king's murderous act against Nob drives Abiathar the priest to David. Later he comes to him with the ephod in his hand. These wandering people, whom the world dishonours and despises, now have a happy privilege. They can approach God, consult Him at any time, and enter into fellowship with Him.
Saul's rage and Doeg's sword were not the whole story. God was carrying out a sentence spoken generations earlier against the family of Eli the priest.
At Saul's command Doeg the Edomite killed eighty-five of the Lord's priests. That terrible slaughter was part of the judgment God pronounced on Eli's family. Only one, Abiathar, escaped and fled to David. He served as priest with David through the time of his rejection... God had pronounced that judgment on the family nearly a century before. It did not come quickly, but it still came, just as God had said.
- Sin — David's own sin at Nob set the chain going, and the effects of one man's sin are seldom confined to himself.
- Tongue — Doeg mixed true facts with false meaning, and his false witness destroyed a whole town of priests.
- Confession — David took the whole blame on himself and made no excuse. He still could not undo the deaths.
- Transfer — Saul destroyed the priesthood he depended on. The means of approaching God passed to the rejected king.
- Fulfilment — God's word against Eli's house waited nearly a century. Then it came, just as He said.
And David said to Abiathar, I knew it that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would certainly tell Saul I am accountable for all the lives of thy father's house.
Abiathar has escaped from Nob, where Doeg killed eighty-five priests at Saul's command. David's first response is to blame himself, not Saul or Doeg.
David is not saying he foresaw a massacre. He is saying he saw an informer and did nothing about it.
One son of Ahimelech escaped, however, and went to David, the only possible refuge at the time. He reported to David everything that had happened. David felt himself responsible for causing the death of the priests. As he said, he knew Doeg would be an informer when he saw him at Nob (v.22). One wonders what David could have done to protect the priests. But no doubt he did not expect so great a slaughter.
David's lie at Nob won him bread and a sword. It cost Ahimelech far more. Where the ESV says David occasioned the death of these priests, older translations say he was accountable for all their lives.
Ahimelech is too considerate to mention the lie David had used to get the bread and the sword. That lie would have compromised David in Saul's eyes. But it is this lie which finally leads to the ruin of the priest and all his house. David is well aware of this when he tells Abiathar: "I am accountable for all the lives of your father's house" (v. 22). So he judges himself.
David's journey to Ahimelech was a step of faith. What he said when he arrived was not.
David lied to Ahimelech. He believed that Saul's name carried more weight with the priest than God's name did. David went to Ahimelech in faith… But policy governed how he acted in front of the Lord's priest, and faith had no part in it. This is how the faith of God's saints has often failed. They judge rightly that no one can safely lean on man, so they shape their conduct to fit the circumstances of the time. But this is to forget God — to lose sight of Him as the shield and light of the way we walk now… Shifty dealing and lying are the natural tools of spiritual fear. God is the believer's strength. If we forget Him when difficulties come, crooked ways are the certain result.
One lie did not stop with the man who told it. It also shut a door the truth might have opened.
If David had told the whole truth, the priest might even then have joined his side, as his son Abiathar did later. Full trust in God would surely have spoken then the words of faith David later said to the son: "With me you shall be in safekeeping"… The effects of one man's sin are seldom limited to himself.
David's words to Abiathar are not only a confession to a man. Behind them is a confession already made to God.
David had sinned at Nob. But he surely confessed his guilt to God. He confessed it to the grief-stricken Abiathar too, saying, "I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father's house." The confession came from an honest and good heart. He took the whole blame on himself and tried to make no excuses for himself. But he could not bring the dead priestly families back to life.
David's guilt is real. Commentators also tie the massacre to a judgment God had spoken long before against Eli's family.
Doeg the Edomite killed the Lord's priests, eighty-five of them, at Saul's command. That terrible slaughter was part of the judgment God had pronounced on Eli's family (1 Sam. 22). Only one, Abiathar, escaped and fled to David. He served as priest with David through the years of David's rejection… God had pronounced this judgment on the family nearly a century before. It came slowly, but it came exactly as God had said.
- Seen — David saw Doeg at Nob and knew what the man was; the verse is his admission that he read the danger and let it pass.
- Said — The bread and the sword were not the fatal thing. The lie he told Ahimelech was, and it ruined the priest's whole house.
- Source — Behind the lie was a moment when Saul's name weighed more with David than God's. Policy replaced faith.
- Spread — One man's sin rarely stops with him. The truth might have won Ahimelech to David's side instead of costing him his life.
- Spoken — David takes the whole blame with no excuse, and offers the survivor shelter at his own side. Confession could not raise the dead, but it could still shield the living.
Abide with me, fear not; for he that seeks my life seeks thy life; for with me thou art in safe keeping.
Abiathar alone survives Saul's massacre of the priests at Nob, and he runs to David, who is himself hunted and homeless. David offers him no escape from danger, only a place at his side — so what makes a place safe?
Abiathar ran to the one man in Israel who could not protect himself. David first takes the blame for the deaths, and only then speaks about safety.
One son of Ahimelech escaped, however, and went to David, the only possible refuge at the time. He gave David the report of everything that had happened. David felt himself responsible for causing the death of the priests. As he said, he knew Doeg would inform on him when he saw him at Nob. One wonders what David could have done to protect the priests. But no doubt he did not expect such a great slaughter. David's comforting words to Abiathar remind us of the Lord's care for those who take a place of rejection with Him. David says: "Stay with me; do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life. With me you shall be in safekeeping."
By ordinary reasoning, joining David was the worst move available.
Sharp observers may have called Abiathar's move sheer folly — jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. After all, was not Saul's hostility toward the priests only secondary, since he saved his main hostility for David? That was true. Yet at that hour there was no safer spot in all Israel than standing at David's side.
The slaughter at Nob did not leave Saul with religion and David with nothing. It moved the priesthood over to the fugitive, where the prophet Gad already was.
There the prophet Gad joins him, and the plain testimony of God guides him directly. Soon afterwards the priest joins him too. So, rejected as he is, everything belonging to the testimony and the dealings of God gathers around him. He was the king; the prophet was there; the priest was there also. The outward forms were elsewhere.
Abiathar later comes to David carrying the ephod, the priestly garment used to ask God's guidance. Writers read this as a picture of what belongs to people who throw in their lot with a rejected Christ.
Finally, the king's murderous act against Nob drives Abiathar the priest to David. Later he comes to him with the ephod in his hand. These homeless people, whom the world dishonours and despises, have a happy privilege. They can approach God, consult Him at any time, and enter into fellowship with Him.
Commentators hear in this promise the voice of One who kept His own safe by giving Himself up.
These were the words of David, God's anointed king. Saul's persecution of him was so bitter that he calls himself a "dead dog" and "a flea". Even so, he can promise security to a man whose whole family had been killed and who came to him for protection. It is a wonderful picture of Him. Some were appointed to death and judgment, yet they hear His word and receive Him. Of them He could say, "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." … They came for Jesus of Nazareth. He would give Himself up to the murderers to carry out His Father's will, and still He commanded, "If you seek me, let these men go."
The promise was tied to staying. Abiathar's later record shows how much that mattered.
True, David had shown him special favour and affection. He tried to calm his troubled spirit by saying, "Stay with me; do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life. With me you shall be in safekeeping." And is it possible that after this he was not found true to the king? Indeed he was not. When the usurper Adonijah said, "I will be king," Abiathar, along with Joab, fell away and helped Adonijah. Later Solomon took the kingdom in righteous rule, and Abiathar was not commended. He was publicly humbled: Solomon removed him from the office of priesthood.
- Danger shared. David does not offer Abiathar an escape from Saul; he offers him the same enemy. Safety is not the absence of threat but the presence of the right person.
- Refuge given. David owns his part in the deaths at Nob, then takes in the one man left alive.
- Company gathered. With the outcast were prophet, priest and king together; Saul kept only the outward forms.
- Security guaranteed. The promise points to Christ. He gave Himself up to His captors so His own could go free, and He says no one will take His own from His hand.
- Abiding required. Abiathar later sided with Adonijah and lost his priesthood — the safeguard lasts only while you stay with the one who gives it.