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The solution to Saul's bad precedent, part 11

When David fled from Saul, never to return, he became a fugitive and an outlaw from Saul’s perspective. His first stop was at the tabernacle that was in the town of Nob. 1 Samuel 21:1 says,

¹ Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest, and Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, “Why are you alone and no one with you?”

David claimed to be on a secret mission from the king and that his military guards were directed to meet him in some other location.

The Tabernacle and the Ark

Recall that after the Philistines returned the Ark of the Covenant, it was brought to Kiriath-jearim to the house of Abinadab, who “consecrated Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the Lord” (1 Samuel 7:1). It remained there for twenty years (vs. 2) in a private house apart from the tabernacle itself. Kiriath-jearim was one of the towns of the Gibeonites who had made a covenant of peace with Joshua (Joshua 9:15-17).

Hence, Eleazar’s guardianship over the Ark is part of the fulfillment of the prophecy (“curse”) on Canaan in the days of Noah, that Canaan was to be a servant to the Lord God of Shem (Genesis 9:26). We do not know who Eleazar was—not even if he was a Levitical priest. He was not the same as an earlier Eleazar, the son of Aaron, who had died much earlier (Joshua 24:33).

Abinadab is not listed in the descendants of Aaron in 1 Chronicles 6:3-8. Hence, this was an unknown Eleazar, and we cannot even say for sure that he was even an Aaronic priest. All we know for sure is that Kiriath-jearim was a Gibeonite city and that the Ark was therefore guarded by Gibeonites who had been called to serve the tabernacle (Joshua 9:27).

Scripture implies that after twenty years the Ark was moved to the town of Nob. Nob was a priestly city just north of Jerusalem in the territory of Benjamin. Perhaps Saul moved the Ark to Nob after he was crowned king.

In Antiquities of the Jews, Book VI, Chapter 1, Josephus writes:

“Now he [Samuel] governed and presided over the people alone, after the death of Eli the High Priest, twelve years, and eighteen years together with Saul the King.”

Hence, Samuel was the last of the Judges and forms the transition from Judges to Kings. Samuel ruled alone for 12 years and then crowned Saul as king. This is why Samuel believed that the people, in desiring a king, had rejected his own personal rule as a Judge (1 Samuel 8:7).

Josephus tells us that Samuel ruled with Saul for the next 18 years, until the battle against the Amalekites, which occurred in Saul’s 18^th year. Because of Saul’s rejection of the word of the Lord, Samuel then retired and let Saul rule Israel by himself (1 Samuel 15:35), fully ending the rule of the Judges. The Ark of the Covenant, then, remained in Kiriath-jearim for twenty years until the 8^th year of Saul’s reign, when it was moved to Nob. This was the point where the Ark was reinstated in a rebuilt tabernacle after its destruction at Shiloh.

David himself was born two years later in the tenth year of Saul’s reign.

Bread from the Table of Showbread

Ahimelech was the son of Ahitub (1 Samuel 22:9). Ahimelech’s son was Abiathar, who functioned as David’s high priest. Early in the reign of Solomon, Abiathar was replaced by Zadok for backing Adonijah.

When David came to Nob, he requested provisions (1 Samuel 21:3) for himself and his followers who had also left Saul’s service. Apparently, few people had been tithing to support the tabernacle and its priests, so the only food available was from the Table of Showbread. David said in 1 Samuel 21:3-5,

³ “Now therefore, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.” ⁴ The priest answered David and said, “There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is consecrated bread, if only the young men have kept themselves from women.” ⁵ David answered the priest and said to him, “Surely women have been kept from us as previously when I set out and the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was an ordinary journey; how much more then today will their vessels be holy?”

Ahimelech’s only concern was that the men should be ritually clean according to the laws of purification. The question here was not about sexual immorality but about relations with their wives. Sexual relations, even within marriage, rendered a person unclean for a day (Leviticus 15:16-18).

Why would lawful sexual relations render a man unclean? Was it a sin to be married (as some believed in later times)? No, for Adam was commanded to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). However, this command was given before Adam sinned. If he and Eve had procreated before they lost the glory of God, they would have produced sons of God. Yet their children were born afterward, and by the law of “like begets like,” they produced sons in their fallen image. Hence, thereafter, sexual relations always failed to bring forth the sons of God, and for this reason they were ritually unclean for a day.

The Melchizedek Priesthood

The larger question, of course, is how David and his men were able to eat from the Table of Showbread, when this was normally reserved only for Aaronic priests (Leviticus 24:9). Jesus referred to David’s actions in Matthew 12:3, 4,

³ But He said to them [Pharisees], “Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions, ⁴ how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat nor for those with him, but for the priests alone?

The Pharisees had no answer, and Jesus did not explain how David could eat consecrated bread. The answer is found in Psalm 110:4,

⁴ The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

David could eat from the Table of Showbread because he was a priest—not an Aaronic priest but a priest of a higher order. The two priesthoods existed side by side throughout the Old Testament and they continue to the present day. But the Melchizedek order preceded the Aaronic order, thereby making it greater.

Thus, Jesus, the Son of David, being of the tribe of Judah, could become our great High Priest, even though the law appeared to forbid such a thing (Hebrews 7:14). The coming of the Messiah brought about a change of priesthood (Hebrews 7:12). No longer was it based upon physical requirements, such as genealogy, “but according to the power of an indestructible life” (Hebrews 7:16).

The Prophetic Lesson

The bread from the Table of Showbread shows us that we are to “eat” the true Bread of Life (John 6:35), that is, the body of Christ (John 6:53). In other words, we are to hear and assimilate His words, the gospel. The Hebrew word for gospel is basar, which has a double meaning: flesh and gospel (or good news). Those who believe the gospel are those who “eat” His flesh, so to speak.

The Aaronic priests lost their calling when they rejected Christ and His New Covenant. They were replaced by the Melchizedek order, giving us all the right to eat from the Table of Showbread. David’s actions at Nob foreshadowed this, because he was a priest of the order of Melchizedek.

On the other hand, Saul was not of the Melchizedek order. He was not eligible to eat from the Table of Showbread in his day. Saul represents the church as a whole, which knows little today of the Melchizedek priesthood. In fact, all those who support the reinstatement of the Aaronic order of Jewish priests, those who think that the Aaronic priesthood will minister to Christ in an earthly temple with animal sacrifices in the age to come—these proclaim by their own beliefs that they are not of the Melchizedek order.