Women In The Days of The Kings
"Michal"
Key Scripture: 1 Samuel 14:49; 18:20-28; 19:11-17; 25:44; 2 Samuel 3:13, 14; 6:16-23; 21:8; 1 Chronicles 15:29
Her Name Means: (pronounced "Michael") "Brook."
Her Character: Michal, although a princess, does not appear to have had a very commendable character.
Her Sorrow: She was caught in the fierce struggle over the kingship between her father, Saul, and her husband, David.
Her Joy: She enjoyed a young passionate love for David.
Pre-Story: Michal was the younger daughter of Saul, Israel’s first king. She became David’s first wife, was given to another man (Phalti) by Saul in David's absence. As the aunt of her sister Merab’s five sons, Michal cared for them after the somewhat premature death of her sister. *(This is where people often mistake Michal for having had children.)
After slaying Goliath, David’s growing popularity with the people so angered Saul that he began to seek ways of destroying him. God’s favor was clearly on David, and no longer on King Saul, who “remained David’s enemy the rest of his days.” (1 Samuel 18:29).
However, when the time came for Merab to be given to David in marriage, Saul double-crossed him and gave her to another man. (1 Samuel 18:19). Seeing that his younger daughter, Michal, loved David, Saul considered her a way to ensnare the future king. So Saul agreed to give her to David as a prize for another attack against the Philistines. (1 Samuel 18:24–25, 27). Saul hoped that David would be killed in the attack.
As the "bride-price," or dowry, for Michal, Saul demands that David bring him 100 foreskins from the penises of Philistine warriors. Instead, David presented Saul with 200 Philistine foreskins and claimed Michal as his wife. The young couple seemed suited to each other, and when Saul conceived another dastardly plan to kill David, Michal shrewdly thwarted her father’s scheme and saved David’s life. Michal risked her father's wrath by helping David to escape out a window. By helping David escape, she, unknowingly, made certain that David would survive to become king.
When David finally was forced to flee for his life and became an outlaw with a price on his head, Saul gave Michal to Paltiel. King Saul could sidestep the law of the land because he was the law of the land.
About 14 years later, when Saul was dead and David was preparing to step into his rightful position as king, he ordered that Michal be taken from Palti and brought back to him. David had other wives and children by this time, and there is no indication that he asked Michal’s input on this decision. She was forcibly returned to him, while her husband Palti followed after them, crying (2 Samuel 3:14–16). Michal again became the wife of David.
David’s eyes and heart were focused upward, worshiping his God. Michal’s eyes and heart were focused downward, despising her husband. Michal greeted David with a scathing speech: “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!” (2 Samuel 6:20). Her rebuke and his retort brought to a painful close a romance that once sparkled and glistened with the eternal hope of youth.
Michal’s romance with David, had a bright beginning and a sorrowful ending. Michal's story ends with a sad report. “And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death” (2 Samuel 6:23). Having no children would have brought great shame on Michal in that time and place. After 2 Samuel 6, Michal disappears from the list of the many wives of King David in the Bible.
Her Place in God's Divine Plan: Michal is important in biblical history because she fell in love with David, who's linage would lead to the birth of the Redeemer Jesus Christ.
Her Challenges Along the Way: She was a woman who was used as a pawn, first by her father, King Saul, and then by her husband King David in the Bible.
Her Victories: Michal and David loved each other in their young love.
Lesson We Can Learn from Her Legacy: What a different story might have been written of her if she had been a woman after God’s own heart! But Michal made no effort to understand her husbands love for God and so passed a wrong judgment upon him. How certain we should be of a person’s motive for his acts or attitudes before we condemn him. We can learn from Michal’s sad story what happens in a marriage when offenses go on for years, unaddressed. God placed stories like Michal’s in the Bible to remind us that heroes are also human and bitterness can destroy even a queen.
How many wives are guilty of speaking sharply to their husbands? Maybe you didn’t bring God into the conversation, but your words were mean-spirited and hurtful? If we hope to be a woman after God’s own heart, then honoring our husbands with our words and our actions must come first. As David himself wrote, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions” (Psalm 51:1).
Genealogy:
Born: 1041 BC Spouse: David
Parents: Saul (Father) Ahinoam (Mother)
Siblings: Jonathan (Brother) Ish-bosheth (Brother) Malchishua (Sister) Merab (Sister) Abinadab (Brother)
*Michal loved and became the first wife of David, who later became king of Judah, and later still of the united Kingdom of Israel.
*What brought about Saul’s demons – the demons that made them send for the singer? (See 1 Samuel 15 & 1 Samuel 16:14-23)
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