CHAPTER SUMMARY

David and Yehonatan part, David fleeing, and Yehonatan returning to the city. David goes to Nov, where Ahimeleh the priest greets him, wondering why he has no entourage. David claims that the king has sent him on a secret mission, and he has left the men who are on the mission with him in a certain place.

David needs food, five breads to be exact, but Ahimelekh notes that he only has bread of kodesh, sanctified bread, that he can only give to David if his people are ritually pure. David assures him that they are, and Ahimelekh gives him the lehem hapanim that had been taken off that day to replace with others.

The navi then stops to note that one of Shaul’s servants was in Nov that day. David and Ahimelekh’s conversation continues, with David securing Golyat’s sword from Ahimelekh. David then runs away, and goes to Gat, where Ahish was king. Ahish’s servants are surprised to see David safely in Gat, reminding the king that this is the David about whose myriads of kills Jewish women sing.

David hears this and is afraid of Ahish. He acts insane, speaking crazily, writing on the gates of the city, and drooling. Ahish, seeing him, has his servants expel him, since he has no need for more crazy people, which is how the chapter ends.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SYMPATHY AND EXPERIENCE

The first verse notes both that David left and that Yehonatan returned to the city, which seems superfluous, since Yehonatan does not figure in the rest of our story. After all, we only meet Yehonatan again when he fights in the last war with Shaul, the one where they all die. In Humash, when the first verse in Parshat Vayetse notes that Yaakov left Beer Sheva for Haran, Rashi famously asked why the verse tells us both that Yaakov left and that he came to Haran (you can look up the answer if you do not yet know it).

Here, I think the navi might be stressing the difference between Yehonatan and David. In the last chapter, Yehonatan stood up for David with Shaul, found out whether Shaul really intended to kill David, warned David, and then sent him on his way with a sworn pact of friendship. Yehonatan has, thus far, stood up for David as much as he could, and, indeed, is never in the rest of the book, mentioned with Shaul when he hunts for David.

That might lead us to think that Yehonatan is, in some way, suffering along with David. Both are serving under a king who has, by now, tipped over the edge into tyranny, and have to simply wait out the end of that monarchy. The point of noting Yehonatan’s return to the city, though, might be to differentiate him clearly from David. Yehonatan is going back to his house, his bed, his food, and his ordinary comfort levels. David is fleeing for his life, without any food, the clothing on his back, and no prospects of where to go. So one lesson of Yehonatan’s return is the difference between the person actually in danger and the person who only sympathizes with that danger (a difference I have been thinking of often these past 17 months, with the situation in Israel).

Perhaps as a further consequence of those thoughts, I wonder whether there might not be some criticism of Yehonatan implied here. To play "what if?", always a dangerous game, what would have happened if Yehonatan had sent a message to Shaul that he was running away with David? Would Shaul have continued to pursue David as he did, or would he have realized that he was wrong? Forgetting Shaul for a moment, is it possible that had Yehonatan gone with David, that he himself would have survived into David’s monarchy, a trusted advisor of the king of Israel? As Yehonatan goes back to the city, then, it strikes me as possible that the navi is noting the limits of his support for David.

I play this game first because I think the Navi calls for it, but also because it helps us remember that there may be responsibilities we unthinkingly neglect, but that others (and particularly Hashem) see, and hold us accountable for.

DAVID AND AHIMELEKH

The interaction between David and Ahimelekh is puzzling in several ways. First, Ahimelekh notes the oddity of David’s appearing alone, and yet appears entirely too believing of David’s rather lame excuse. Is it plausible that Shaul sent him on such an urgent mission that he could not even take food? What would be the value of such a mission, if the emissary starves before completing his job? Even if the food were not a problem, David’s lack of weaponry should certainly have roused his suspicions; what kind of mission would the king send his general on that would not involve a sword (or, if it did not involve a sword, why would David then ask Ahimelekh for one)?

Their discussion about the bread abounds with technical problems. Ahimelekh questions whether David and his men are ritually pure, since he only has lehem kodesh, sanctified bread. David says that they are all kodesh, and Ahimelekh gives him kodesh, for the only bread he had there was the lehem hapanim, the showbread in the sanctuary, which had been removed to allow for warm bread to replace it. Neither seems to notice that David and his fictional soldiers are not priests, and therefore should not be allowed to eat any of this bread.

Hazal suggest that had the bread actually been removed, there would no longer be a problem of me`ilah, of a non-kohen eating what belonged to the sanctuary. They also suggest that David had a life threatening illness, and therefore was allowed to eat even ordinary hekdesh. Neither of these options convince me, since even if there was no me`ilah for David, it still was not properly his (it is supposed to go to the kohanim), and if he was ill, there would be no issue of his ritual purity or not.

Rashi suggests that Ahimelekh’s questions about ritual purity were simply a way of mitigating the wrong he was doing by giving David the bread; giving it to a non-kohen was a problem, but giving it to a tamei was simply too much for Ahimelekh to contemplate. Rashi’s reading raises, but does not solve, the problem of their interaction. It perhaps suggests that Ahimelekh was trying to help David beyond the letter of the law, and therefore was struggling with how far he could bend.

Radak suggests that the bread was actually lahmei todah, breads given along with a thanksgiving offering, a suggestion that has problems as well. First, verse 7 says that there was no bread there other than the lehem hapanim. If Radak is right, we need to read that as meaning that there was no bread other than that of the lahmei todah and the lehem hapanim. In addition, though, it can no longer mean that there was no other bread in that room, but has to mean something along the lines of no other bread in the area, which would mean that all the food in the town was kodesh. That would suggest that kohanim who became impure (such as by having relations with their wives) would have to wait until nightfall to eat, since all the bread was kodesh, possible, but unlikely.

IN ON THE RUSE

A simpler answer, it seems to me, is that Ahimelekh really knew, or at least sensed, what was going on. If so, he knew that David was in danger, and was trying to help David get away. The search for food was for food in that room, since it was in the privacy of that room that Ahimelekh could hope to get away with helping David. Rashi’s comment then becomes clear—Ahimelekh isn’t comfortable, in halakhic terms, with what he is doing, and is trying to minimize the legal wrongs he is committing.

In that reading, we can understand the text’s mention of the presence of Doeg in verse 8. Those who know the next chapter will know that Doeg informs Shaul of Ahimelekh’s perfidy, but the text’s inserting it here might be more than foreshadowing. David, later on, will note that he knew Doeg was there, and feel some guilt for Ahimelekh’s death. Here, then, the text might have been letting us in on the point that David and Ahimelekh knew they were conspiring, and Doeg’s presence should have been a worry stopping them (or getting them to do it more secretly).

DAVID IN GAT

When David leaves Nov, he runs away to Gat, which is in the land of Plishtim. The king’s servants recognize him (which has always surprised me—shouldn’t people have been able to escape more easily in those days, without cameras, fingerprinting, etc.) and connect him to the songs the Jewish women used to sing about him. The impression these verses create is that Plishtim and Israel were culturally very close—the Plishtim not only know David (they had fought against him, presumably) but they know the victory songs of the Israelites.

David hears this and is afraid. What had he expected the reaction of the Plishtim to be? Had he thought he would get there anonymously? We will have to wait until later in the sefer for a full answer, but it might be that David was not sure he would be recognized and that even if recognized, that the Plishtim would not know the full extent of his leadership role among the Jews, so that they would ignore him as unimportant. When he hears the Plishtim fully recognize him, he knows that Ahish will not be able to leave him be, and he becomes afraid.

David’s solution, to feign madness, works well, and ties in with several legends that see David as questioning the value of various elements of creation—madmen, spiders, and bees. For the last two, the Midrash writes stories of David’s time fleeing Shaul in which Shaul is about to catch him and one of these creatures shows up. Once, a spider spins a quick web across the cave where David is hiding, so that Shaul assumed that no one could be inside, since they would have broken the web. Another time, when David was taking a bowl of water near Shaul’s head (to show that he could have killed Shaul had he wanted to), the Midrash assumes that Shaul moved his legs in his sleep, pinioning David. A bee stung Shaul, so that he moved his legs in his sleep, and David escaped.

While these stories give a partial answer to the original question—why God created seemingly useless parts of nature—it is only partial, since it seems unlikely that He created the whole species of spiders only for that one occasion. Rather, the emphasis seems to be on our realizing that God created everything for a reason and purpose, and we should not question that reason too carefully. Hashem’s point to David, in other words, is not that these were created to help David, but that they are simply part of the army of tools God has to make sure that events unfold according to the Divine Will.

Ahish, uninterested in dealing with madmen, lets David go (the Midrash suggests his wife and daughter were mad, hence his strong reaction). A question to raise now, but perhaps leave for another time, is why David went to Gat at all—isn’t that somewhat like jumping from the frying pan to the fire? This might connect back to the broader question of why it was important for David to spend time fleeing before he assumed the monarchy, a question I want to wait a bit before we try to answer. Shabbat Shalom.