Consecrated Bread

1 Samuel 20:38-21:5 – Then he shouted, “Hurry! Go quickly! Don’t stop!” The boy picked up the arrow and returned to his master. (The boy knew nothing about all this; only Jonathan and David knew.) Then Jonathan gave his weapons to the boy and said, “Go, carry them back to town.” After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most. Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.’” Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town. David went to Nob, to Ahimelek the priest. Ahimelek trembled when he met him, and asked, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?” David answered Ahimelek the priest, “The king sent me on a mission and said to me, ‘No one is to know anything about the mission I am sending you on.’ As for my men, I have told them to meet me at a certain place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.” But the priest answered David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread here—provided the men have kept themselves from women.” David replied, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual whenever I set out. The men’s bodies are holy even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!”

Exodus 25:30 – Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times.

Exodus 3:5 – “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

Application:

• ·         “Consecrated bread” was the “bread of the Presence”, which was placed in the Holy Place in the tabernacle and later in the temple as a thank offering to the Lord, symbolizing His provision of daily bread. Although the bread was to be eaten only by the priests, Ahimelek agreed to give it to David and his men on the condition that they were ceremonially clean.
• ·         “Bread of the Presence” was traditionally “showbread”. The bread represented a perpetual offering to the Lord by which the Israelites declared that they consecrated to God the fruits of their labors and by which the nation at the same time acknowledged that all such fruit had been provided only by God’s blessing.
• ·         The ground Moses stood on was not holy by nature but was made so by the divine presence. Holiness involves being consecrated to the Lord’s service and thus being separated from the commonplace.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV