1 Samuel 21

After Eli and his sons died, priests in Eli’s hometown of Shiloh apparently moved to Nob, a town next to Jerusalem. It’s associated today with the town of Shuafat. Nob is best known for what Saul did in 1 Samuel 22: he massacres the priests living there. Saul thought they were helping David, whom Saul was trying to kill. David was winning the popularity contest among the common folks, and the Bible writers said Saul became insanely jealous. One priest survived Saul’s massacre at Nob: Abiathar, son of the high priest. He escaped to David. He became high priest when David became king. He was the last priest from Eli’s family. Solomon fired him for supporting another one of David’s sons to succeed him as king (1 Kings 2:26).

Ahimelech was the great-grandson of the priest who raised Samuel: Eli. Young Samuel told Eli that God was going to punish Eli’s family for Eli’s sins and for those of his two sons. Everyone in the family but one would be killed by the sword (1 Samuel 2:33).  Ahimelech would become one of those victims. See additional note for 21:1.

Priests kept 12 loaves of sacred bread in the sanctuary of the worship center, whether the worship center was a tent or, later, a Jerusalem Temple. Priests ate the bread at the end of each week and replaced it with fresh bread (Exodus 25:30; Leviticus 24:5-9). People had to be ritually clean to worship at the site, and certainly to eat the sacred bread typically reserved for priests. But men became ritually unclean during sex. Touching a warm body that way was as ritually unclean as touching a corpse. To cleanse themselves, men had to wash their bodies and their clothes and then wait until the next evening (Leviticus 15:16-18; 31).

The meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain. Some suggest Doeg was the leader of royal runners, men who ran alongside the king’s chariot. Whether a shepherd or a runner or something else, he shows up in chapter 22 as an official who meets with the king (verse 9).

Edom was just south of the Dead Sea, mostly to the east, in what is now the nation of Jordan. Edom’s people were related to the Jews, as descendants of Jacob’s brother, Esau. Hard to tell, based on charges leveled against them later by Obadiah and other prophets: “Those people are tagged for destruction” (Isaiah 34:5). God, apparently through a vision to Obadiah, accused the people of Edom with:

• Collaborating with invaders who decimated Jerusalem in 586 BC
• Gloating over the fall of the Israelite nation
• Arresting people of Judah as they tried to escape
• Turning them over to the enemy
• Pillaging Jerusalem’s ruins for leftover valuables

Obadiah said their doomsday was now on God’s calendar: “You killed the people of your brother, Jacob. For that, I’m shutting you down forever” (1:10).

We have to guess what priests were doing with Goliath’s spear at the worship center. It may have been a war trophy, used to brag about the power of God over the Philistine idols and over the military power of Philistine soldiers.

“Apron” is a guess. Scholars aren’t sure what an ephod looked like. Several centuries before Samuel, in the time of Moses, an ephod was an apron or vest worn by the high priest. Some scholars describe it as a skirt or a shift-like garment that covered the body from about the waist to the mid-thigh. Some scholars suggest the Hebrew word ephod was related to the Akkadian word epattu. Assyrian writings say epattu were idols dressed in expensive clothing worn by high officials.

What a surprise to see the Giant Killer go to the home of the giant he killed. Gath had been the hometown of Goliath, the Philistine champion David killed with a stone and a sling.