David and Michal

Hey all, as you can tell, I’m on a bit of a bible kick lately. I’m working on a much larger project relating to the true nature of free will and predestination. Pursuant to that mission, I’ve been reading a lot of the Good book lately. I’ve been thinking about it even more.

One story that I happened across and found interesting was the relationship between David and Michal. So as usual, here’s some paraphrased background first. David is the second king of Israel after Saul. Michal is Saul's daughter. David is the one who slew Goliath. I could do a lot of writing on David’s life as a whole. He’s one of the most interesting characters in the Bible, however, instead of taking that time to do that, I’m more interested in looking at a few key aspects of the character of David. I plan to write more posts about him and his nuances in the near future.

Moving on, pretty much everyone knows at least a little about David. He was an insignificant child of Jesse who Samuel selected over David's older brothers to be king of Israel. This was because David had a heart after God. Samuel did this after Saul disobeyed God and lost the kingdom as a result. God has very little tolerance for people disobeying him. Fast forward a bit, David ends up playing the harp for Saul to soothe his nerves which were on edge because of some evil spirits God was harassing him with. Shortly after that, the Goliath episode occurs. That makes David famous. Then he starts soldering for Saul. That goes too well, and the young girls of Israel start singing songs about David killing 10,000s while Saul only kills his 1,000s. This makes Saul jealous and eventually, he starts trying to kill David. It turns into a whole thing and eventually, Saul gets himself killed. After that David becomes king.

I’ll write more about David in future posts but that’s enough for now. Michal, as opposed to David, is a much more obscure character in the Bible. She’s first mentioned in 1 Samuel 14:49 as far as I can tell. There we find out that she’s the younger daughter of Saul. She has an older sister named Merab but not much else is said. The next time we hear about her is in 1 Samuel 18:20. There we learn that she is in love with David. On account of this, Saul decides to give her to David in marriage.

It's interesting because Saul specifically thought, “I will give her to him so that she may be a snare to him and so that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” In exchange for giving David his daughter, all Saul wanted from David in return was 100 Philistine foreskins… Yes. You read that right. As I mentioned before, Saul was being tormented by evil spirits. Suffice it to say, Saul was not well.

David’s not much better. He and his band of marry men cheerfully headed off into the wilderness and killed 200 Philistines so they could bring the required number of Philistine foreskins back with a little extra. They counted out the full number to Saul. After that, Saul gave Michal to David in marriage. At this point, Saul basically has an adversarial relationship with David.

In 1 Samuel 19, Saul gets it in his head that it’s time to kill David. Jonathan, Saul’s son and David’s best friend, tries to talk Saul out of doing such a thing. It doesn’t work and Saul decides to go for it. Michal hears about this plot somehow and she warns David about it. She helps him escape. Then she puts an idol in her bed and disguises it to look like David.

When Saul’s men show up to capture David, Michal tells them that David is ill. Eventually, the men investigate and find out about the deception. Saul calls Michal out about this, “Why did you deceive me like this and send my enemy away so that he escaped.” To which Michal replies, “He said to me, ‘Let me get away. Why should I kill you?’”

Saul seems to accept that answer and then he storms off after David. He doesn’t catch him though because he somehow ends up getting overcome by the Spirit of God. Evidently, Saul stripped naked and spent all day and night laying at Naioth at Ramah prophesying. On account of this, David escapes for now and then he and Saul embark on a multi-chapter game of cat and mouse.

We don’t hear much about Michal again until 1 Samuel 25:44 when it is noted almost as an afterthought that she was married off to a man named Paltiel son of Laish from Gallim. One might think that’s the last we hear of Michal but surprisingly, it’s not.

While David is off playing cat and mouse with Saul, he has enough free time to pick up two additional wives. Yet despite this, he doesn’t seem to forget about Michal entirely. The Philistines conveniently show up and distract Saul. There’s a great battle and Saul and Jonathan both die which screws up the line of succession. David then takes this opportunity to stake his claim to the throne. His one and only demand is, “Give me my wife Michal, whom I betrothed to myself for the price of a hundred Philistine Foreskins.”

As you’ll recall, Michal is currently married to Paltiel. So, Ish-Bosheth, one of Saul’s sons, and David’s primary competition for the throne, takes Michal away from her husband Paltiel to give her back to David. That results in one of the most pathetic verses in the whole bible, 2 Samuel 3:16 which says, “Her husband [Paltiel], however, went with her, weeping behind her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, ‘Go back home!’ So he went back.” So, at this point, David now has Michal back.

It's unclear what good that does. Obviously, it gives David more of a claim to the throne, but the Bible doesn’t provide much guidance on what the state of the relationship is between Michal. I can’t imagine it would be great. For obvious reasons.

The whole story comes to a close with the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. David decides to bring the Ark back to Jerusalem because God was blessing whoever had possession of it. While the Ark was entering the city, with David leading the procession, Michal watched from a window. She saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord. 2 Samuel 6:16 says, “… she despised him in her heart.”

When David returns home from all of that, Michal comes to meet him and says, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”. To which David replies, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel- I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls, you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”

2 Samuel 6:23 then says, “And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.”

That’s how the Bible closes out the story of Michal. And so, with that, there’s a lot to unpack with this whole story. It’s beautifully complicated. Of the two characters, I find Michal to be more interesting. Personally, I don’t like David much. He rubs me the wrong way a lot. At the time of becoming king of Israel, David is 30 years old. That’s important because it sets up the dynamics of the Michal and David relationship.

In my head, I imagine Michal being much younger than David. The Bible doesn’t tell us what their respective ages are relative to each other but based on Jonathan being good friends with David and Merab being older than Michal, I think you can make a good case for her being younger than David. I picture her as being a teenage girl while a young, 20s-something David is over at the palace playing harp for her mentally ill father. I imagine her falling in love with David during all of that.

It was probably a dream come true for her when she was married off to someone she loved. It was undoubtedly unfortunate that it was all part of political maneuvering on her father’s part but at the same time, to a young girl, I doubt she’d care about that. She got the privilege of marrying someone she looked up to and had a crush on.

She seems to have cared about David deeply. When Michal caught wind of her father’s plot on David’s life, instead of siding with her father, she sided with David. She tells him about the plot to take his life and she lies to cover up his escape. Yet interestingly enough, she doesn’t go with him. To me, this kind of seems like she loves David but not enough to leave her quality of life. She was born and raised a princess. I like to think that if a girl truly loved me, she’d forsake all else for my sake. Michal doesn’t do this which makes it seem like her love for David was probably the fair-weather fairytale love that is all too common amongst girls these days.

It's interesting that we see it in girls today as well as Michal thousands of years ago. The preconditions for it are present in both eras. The average girl who grows up in middle-class America today has likely had just as much princess treatment as Michal did as a literal princess thousands of years ago. People with this background are happy to enjoy relationships while things are easy, but as soon as hardship arises, they’re quick to leave to find greener pastures.

Further adding to this line of thinking, when Saul asks Michal why she let David, his enemy, escape, she lies and says that David threatened to kill her. This puts all the blame on David, and it ensures that Saul views her as a victim and continues to give her princess privileges. Honestly, Michal played this whole thing rather well. She saved David’s life by helping him escape and buying him time, yet she also managed to ensure that she got to continue being a princess.

I think the right thing for Michal to do would have been for her to go with David. That would have said a lot. Not only would she have saved his life, but she also would have given up her life as a princess to chase around the desert with David. That path would have involved no lying or deception. Short of that, if she wasn’t going to go with him, she should have stayed and told the truth. What she actually ended up doing could be considered the middle of the road probably. After all, she could have sold David out entirely. That would have been quite a betrayal.

As a consequence of her staying, Michal gets married off to another man. This proves to be interesting. Paltiel seems to be a loser. That said, he seemed to be very attached to Michal. I imagine for him, Michal was out of his league. For Michal, Paltiel probably represented some serious settling. I doubt Michal had a choice in the matter. Overall, I can see why Saul did this because it would obviously reduce David’s claim to the throne. However, it basically ensures that Michal will forever have a mess of a life.

Moving on, I find it weird that David wanted Michal back when he became king. I think this must have been just another example of using Michal as a political chess piece. I’m guessing David wanted her back so he could cement his claim to the throne. That said, he certainly did pay a high price for her. After all, he and his men had to kill hundreds of Philistines, cut off their foreskins, and return to Saul with the disgusting trophies.

I don’t think he would have wanted her back because he cared about her or anything like that. After all, he already had several other wives so Michal didn’t really have much that she could offer him. At most, you could maybe say that he might have felt indebted to her for saving his life. Yet even then, breaking up her new marriage just so he can use her for power is cruel. Putting myself in David’s shoes, I can’t see myself getting my ex-wife back after she’s been with another man for years. I especially can’t see myself doing it if I have several other wives. Like, the very thought of it makes me just about yack. There’s a girl whom I dated years ago who’s gotten some pretty serious mileage since my time with her. Just asking myself, “Would you want her back now if you were king and you could order it?” is making me frown. I have a rough idea of where she’s been and what she’s had in her mouth. So yeah, maybe for politics, I could take her back, but I certainly wouldn’t be getting intimate with her.

This is the fate that Michal gets when she returns to David’s household. On the plus side, she’ll have a high quality of life. On the negative side, she’ll go the rest of her life without ever being loved. That’s how it would be without any drama whatsoever, but no drama would be asking too much.

The final thrust of this story is more drama. Michal and David have a fight and the Bible is kind enough to confirm for us that she dies alone and childless. I find this fight interesting though. Reading commentaries, some people want to blame Michal for it. They want to put her in the wrong. It kind of seems like that’s what the Bible wants to do as well but I’m not sure that I really buy that. I honestly kind of agree with Michal.

Her complaint against David was that he was flailing around in front of the Ark half-naked like a moron. David rebukes her and says that he was doing what he was doing for the sake of glorifying God. I agree with David’s sentiment but last I checked, humiliating yourself isn’t the same as humbling yourself. Normally, I’d be almost afraid to take a stance like this that’s in opposition to the way the Bible came down on an issue were it not for Jesus. When you read through the New Testament, you don’t get any inclination that Jesus spent a bunch of time dancing around half-naked.

To me, David’s actions seem a lot more self-centered and self-aggrandizing than glorifying to God. 2 Samuel 6:12 says, “Now King David was told, ‘The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.’ So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing.” Because of this verse, it seems a lot like David wanted the Ark’s blessings for himself. At any rate, I’m struggling to see how dancing with all his might glorified God. He could have played the harp with all his might, or sang with all his might, or done just about anything else but he picked dancing half-naked as his way of glorifying the Lord.

This is all to say that I have some sympathy for Michal. She saved David’s life. In exchange, he wrecks her second marriage, treating her like an object in the process. He also has other wives who have been with him longer even though she was his first wife. I can’t imagine she had a super high status in the palace. To me, her whole outburst toward David seems like the outcry of a woman who is jealous because slave girls are seeing her husband half-naked when she probably doesn’t even get to touch him on account of the fact that she was with another man after David left her in the palace during his escape years ago.

In response to this, instead of being understanding or thankful to Michal for the service she did him years ago, he ostracizes her for the rest of her life, and she dies childless. It’s kind of a sad story. If David didn’t get his comeuppance in a few chapters from doing this to Michal, I’d be rather sad about it. But overall, it’s an interesting and sad story.

It essentially follows the tale of Michal as she goes from an infatuated teenage girl to a bitter and disgruntled old woman. As far as I can tell, her sin was not going with David and instead lying to her dad. If she traded her comfort to be loyal to her husband, the whole story might have turned out differently. So that seems to be the lesson in all of it. If you’re a woman, be loyal and don’t lie. Adding to that, the loyalty thing seems to be what does get her in the end. She wasn’t fully loyal to David during the escape. In the end, she also wasn’t fully loyal to him. Had she been on team David, she probably wouldn’t have received the cold shoulder treatment she got. Realistically, she could have been loyal to her second husband too.

I’m convinced that the main reason women are objectified is because they act like objects. Note how I said they act like objects and not that they are objects. If all women were so fiercely loyal that they’d die before selling people out, then people wouldn’t be able to treat them like objects. You couldn’t carry women off as spoils of war if all the women were willing to die in the war. Likewise, if Michal had died fighting before being given back to David, she wouldn’t have been given back to David.

So, on that note, this is another example of a story in which all of the characters are kind of crappy. Incidentally, that’s how you can tell it’s a true story. Real people, myself included, are rather crappy.