Verse 4

The priest replied to David,“I don’t have any ordinary bread at my disposal. Only holy bread is available, and then only if your soldiers have abstained from relations with women.”

Referenced Verses

• Exod 19:15 : 15 He said to the people,“Be ready for the third day. Do not approach your wives for marital relations.”
• Exod 25:30 : 30 You are to set the Bread of the Presence on the table before me continually.
• Matt 12:3-4 : 3 He said to them,“Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry– 4 how he entered the house of God and they ate the sacred bread, which was against the law for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests?
• Lev 24:5-9 : 5 “You must take choice wheat flour and bake twelve loaves; there must be two tenths of an ephah of flour in each loaf, 6 and you must set them in two rows, six in a row, on the ceremonially pure table before the LORD. 7 You must put pure frankincense on each row, and it will become a memorial portion for the bread, a gift to the LORD. 8 Each Sabbath day Aaron must arrange it before the LORD continually; this portion is from the Israelites as a perpetual covenant. 9 It will belong to Aaron and his sons, and they must eat it in a holy place because it is most holy to him, a perpetual allotted portion from the gifts of the LORD.
• 1 Sam 21:6 : 6 So the priest gave him holy bread, for there was no bread there other than the bread of the Presence. It had been removed from before the LORD in order to replace it with hot bread on the day it had been taken away.
• Zech 7:3 : 3 by asking both the priests of the temple of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies and the prophets,“Should we weep in the fifth month, fasting as we have done over the years?”
• 1 Cor 7:5 : 5 Do not deprive each other, except by mutual agreement for a specified time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then resume your relationship, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.