They replied, “You have not wronged us or oppressed us. You have not taken anything from the hand of anyone.”

(Now the servant did not understand any of this. Only Jonathan and David knew what was going on.) ¹ 

He said to them, “The Lord is witness against you, and his chosen king ¹  is witness this day, that you have not found any reason to accuse me.” ²  They said, “He is witness!”

However, Saul said nothing about it ¹  that day, for he thought, ²  “Something has happened to make him ceremonially unclean. Yes, he must be unclean.”

These men were very good to us. They did not insult us, nor did we sustain any loss during the entire time we were together ¹  in the field.

David replied to Ahimelech the priest, “The king instructed me to do something, but he said to me, ‘Don’t let anyone know the reason I am sending you or the instructions I have given you.’ ¹  I have told my soldiers ²  to wait at a certain place. ³ 

Now I hear that they are shearing sheep for you. When your shepherds were with us, we neither insulted them nor harmed them the whole time they were in Carmel.

Now David had been thinking, ¹  “In vain I guarded everything that belonged to this man in the desert. I didn’t take anything from him. But he has repaid my good with evil.

The leaders of the Philistines asked, “What about these Hebrews?” Achish said to the leaders of the Philistines, “Isn’t this David, the servant of King Saul of Israel, who has been with me for quite some time? ¹  I have found no fault with him from the day of his defection until the present time!” ²