21 David later came to Nob+ to A·himʹe·lech the priest. A·himʹe·lech began to tremble when he met David, and he said to him: “Why are you by yourself and no one is with you?”+ 2 David replied to A·himʹe·lech the priest: “The king instructed me to do something, but he said, ‘Do not let anyone know anything about the mission on which I am sending you and about the instructions I have given you.’ I made an appointment with my young men to meet at a certain place. 3 Now if there are five loaves of bread at your disposal, just give them to me, or whatever is available.” 4 But the priest answered David: “There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is holy bread+—provided that the young men have kept away from women.”*+ 5 David answered the priest: “Women have certainly been kept away from us as on previous occasions when I went out on a campaign.+ If the bodies of the young men are holy even when the mission is ordinary, how much more so today should they be holy!” 6 So the priest gave him the holy bread,+ because there was no bread there except the showbread, which had been removed from Jehovah’s presence to be replaced by fresh bread on the day it was taken away.