David needed food for his flight. He asked what the priest had on hand and named what he wanted: "give me five loaves of bread in mine hand, or what there is present." Gill explains the question as, "what food had he in his house?" and says the bread was for David "and his servants in such a place." Keil & Delitzsch say David asked for five loaves "because he had spoken of several attendants," and they report Thenius's view that he "probably wanted to make provision for two or three days." Matthew Henry notes that travel was hard in those days, when men "generally carried their provisions with them in kind, having little money and no public houses." David's request also rested on the story he had just told (1 Samuel 21:2).

Ahimelech answered, "There is no common bread under mine hand, but there is hallowed bread; if the young men have kept themselves at least from women" (1 Samuel 21:4). David assured him that "women have been kept from us about these three days" and that "the vessels of the young men are holy" (1 Samuel 21:5). "So the priest gave him hallowed bread: for there was no bread there but the shewbread, that was taken from before the LORD, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away" (1 Samuel 21:6).

Centuries later Jesus used this very event to answer the Pharisees when they accused His hungry disciples of breaking the sabbath. "Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?" (Matthew 12:3-4). Then He added, "if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless" (Matthew 12:7). Barnes says the case "proved that in cases of necessity the laws did not bind a man." Matthew Henry says that from David's plea "the Son of David approves it, and shows from it that mercy is to be preferred to sacrifice."

Jesus did not praise David's lie. His point was about hunger and mercy: God desires "mercy, and not sacrifice" (Matthew 12:7).