In 1 Samuel 20, David had reason to suspect that if he attended a banquet of the new moon that King Saul might kill him, so he made an arrangement with Jonathan (Saul's son), who would attend the banquet to find out Saul's intentions, while David would hide in a field to wait for Jonathan's report (vs:1-23). At the banquet, Jonathan learned that his father did indeed intend to kill David, so Jonathan returned to David's hiding place and warned him of Saul's plot (vs:39). Upon hearing this, David began the flight from Saul that occupies the next four chapters of 1 Samuel, and Jonathan returned to the city (v:42).
When David reached Nob, he went to the priest Ahimelech to get food, and when Ahimelech saw him he asked, "Why are you alone and no one is with you?" (21:1). David then told Ahimelech that he was on a secret mission for the king with orders not to "let anyone know anything about the business," and so he had his men hiding in "such and such a place" (v:2). David then asked the priest to give him bread or "whatever can be found" (v:3).
Ahimelech told him that there was no "common bread" but only the "holy bread." Before he would give it to David, he wanted to know "if the young men [whom David had said were hiding in such and such a place] have at least kept themselves from women" (v:4). The concern of Ahimelech, of course, was that the holy bread not be given to anyone who had had defiled himself through recent sexual contact with women.
David told Ahimelech that "Truly, women have been kept from us about three days since I came out, and the vessels of the young men are holy" (v:5).
Upon hearing this, Ahimelech gave him the holy bread, after which David asked if there was a sword or spear that he could have. "I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me," David explained, "because the king's business required haste." The priest informed David that he had the sword David had used to kill Goliath, so David took it, "arose and fled that day from before Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath" (vs:8-10).
Now anyone reading this story would have no problems recognizing that David lied to Ahimelech in order to get his help. Clearly, David was not on a secret mission for the king but instead was fleeing from the king to save his life. David knew, however, that in order for Ahimelech to believe that he was on a secret mission for Saul, he would have to have men with him, so when Ahimelech inquired about David's men, David said that he had left them hiding. "This mission is so secret that I can't let anyone know anything" was David's story. To explain not having weapons or food, David said that he had had to leave in such haste that he had not had time to take these with him.
An objective reader of this story will understand, then that (1) David was not on a secret mission for Saul and (2) he was alone in his flight and had just made up the story of having men in hiding in order to make his case more believable to Ahimelech.
Surely no one would interpret this story in any other way were it not for a passage in Mark's gospel. When the disciples of Jesus were criticized for plucking grain on the sabbath, Jesus allegedly justified their actions on the basis of David's experience just summarized:
He [Jesus] said to them [the critics], "Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, *he and those with him*: how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and *also gave some to those who were with him?" (Mark 2:25-26). Jesus was using this story to justify a sort of "situational ethics" that he thought was involved in the actions of his disciples. They were hungry and needed food, so Jesus concluded, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (v:27).
Mark or whoever wrote this story had only a superficial knowledge of the story of David's flight from Saul, and this led him to make some serious mistakes. First, the priest that David dealt with was Ahimelech, who was the high priest at this time, and not Abiathar. Abiathar was Ahimelech's son, who succeeded to the high priesthood when Saul ordered the extermination of all the priests at Nob for the help that Ahimelech had given David. Abiathar was the only one to escape the massacre (1 Sam. 22:17-20). Abiathar fled to David who accepted him into the group of misfits who were allying themselves with David by this time (vs:20-23). Hence, the writer of Mark erred in saying that this incident had happened when Abiathar was high priest.
Inerrantists, however, are never at a loss to explain how it could have been, so they contend that Jesus said only that this had happened "in the days of Abiathar the high priest," so even though Abiathar was not yet high priest when it happened, it nevertheless happened in the days of Abiathar. If someone today should say that Desert Storm happened in the days of President Clinton, so the explanation goes, the statement would be correct, because even though Clinton wasn't president during Desert Storm, the war certainly happened "in his days." To say the least, this explanation is strained, because the title president before Clinton's name certainly implies that the speaker (writer) was thinking in terms of something that had happened at the time Clinton was president. Who reading a history book that said that the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan in the days of President Eisenhower would not immediately think that the writer had made a chronological error? The reference to President Eisenhower would be an obvious attempt to date the dropping of the bombs, so the same common-sense rules of interpretation should be applied to Mark 2:25-26. Referring to something that had happened in the days of Abiathar the high priest would be an obvious intention to date the event. If not, why not? To say that Jesus was simply referring to something that had happened in the lifetime of Abiathar makes for some very imprecise dating. After David became king, he reigned for 40 years, during which Abiathar was high priest, and after David's death, Solomon removed Abiathar as high priest. Since Abiathar was grown when the incident at Nod happened, and he lived at least some 40 years after this, the inerrantist explanation of Mark 2:25-26 has Jesus unable to fix a date more precisely than probably a span of 60 or 70 years.
Furthermore, this quibble ignores the fact that many translations say that David went into the house of God *when* Abiathar was high priest. An examination of the NKJV, for example, will show that "in the days of" is in italics to show that the equivalent of these words were not in the Greek text. The word so translated was "epi," which Strong defines as a preposition having various meanings and usages, just as some prepositions in English do. The word often denoted time in Greek, and most translations recognize this and translate it "when," as do the ASV, NASV, NIV, RSV, NRSV, and others. However, even if one could establish that the writer of Mark intended it to mean "in the days of," this would not eliminate the problem for reasons noted in examples above. It is very likely then that the writer of Mark was confused about who was high priest when this incident happened.
Besides that, we have the problem of the writer of Mark carelessly reading the original story and not understanding that David was alone, and so the lie that David told Ahimelech was mistaken as a fact that the OT narrative will not support. When Jonathan reported to David, who was hiding in a field, that Saul intended to kill him, David immediately fled (1 Sam. 20:42). Where then did David get the men whom he told Ahimelech he had in hiding? The answer is that he didn't have any such men. This was simply a lie he told Ahimelech, just as his tale about being on a secret mission for Saul was a lie. The writer of Mark didn't read the story carefully enough to see this, and so he made an error. At any rate, we must conclude that either the narrative in 1 Samuel 21 is correct and Mark was wrong, or we must conclude that Mark was right and the narrative in 1 Samuel 21 was wrong. They cannot both be right.
Farrell Till, Editor The Skeptical Review