The stories in this chapter and the next are written in a very matter-of-fact way but David must have been under immense pressure. On the run for his life, having to bend the truth to get the holy bread for something to eat, having nowhere else to go other than Goliath's home town, being so terrified for your life that he only way you can think of getting out of it is to pretend to be mad! That incident may conjure up images of Blackadder with two pencils up his nose, but to actually pretend to be mad to escape must mean that the situation is totally desperate.
David wrote Psalms 34 & 56 about these incidents and knowing the background behind them adds even more weight to what he says there. verses like "the Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit" (psalm 34:18) are always an encouragement, but we need to recognise that David was not just writing some generic truth there - he is writing that because he is brokenhearted, crushed in spirit, desperate but he knows God will draw near to him.
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