Showing overt interest in a man just wasn’t done in the time of King Saul. Especially if you were a princess. Michal was the second daughter of King Saul (1Sam.14:49) and she made no secret of her interest in the giant-slayer (1Sam.18:20).Daivid’s rise to prominence as a mighty warrior evoked jealously in King Saul (1Sam.18). This envy was probably the reason that Saul reneged on his promise to give his first daughter, Merab, in marriage to David (1Sam.18:19). When Saul was informed that Michal was in love with David, he reasoned it a good thing because she would be a “snare to him” (1Sam.18:21). Michal was a mere pawn in Saul’s mind. Michal’s bride price was to be 100 Philistine foreskins—David doubled it (1Sam.18:27). Saul was hoping the Philistines would kill him in the process. But it didn’t happen.Saul’s problems grew worse when finding that both Jonathan and Michal were on David’s side. So, he sent men to kill David. Michal helped him to escape and told the men he was sick. Having put an idol with goat’s hair in David’s bed she stalled for time. When found out, she lied to her father saying that she was threatened with death by her husband.With David now outlawed and exiled, Saul gave Michal in marriage to Paltiel (1Sam.25:44).When David was made king after Saul’s death, he wanted Michal returned. Her restoration was part of a peace deal between the house of Saul and the House of David. Paltiel followed his wife as she was being taken away. His loud weeping was met with a curt warning from Abner to “Go back home!” Machel’s final scene is a sad ending. As she watched David in exuberant joy dancing before the ark of the covenant as it was being brought into Jerusalem, “she despised him in her heart” (2Sam.6:16). Not content just to think it, she told him what she thought (2Sam.6:20-21). David was not going to live another minute with a wife who showed the same disrespect for him as her father (the king deposed by God Himself). Her punishment was severe. Never would she be known as the mother of a child that would unite the houses of Saul and David. “And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death” (2Sam.6:23).She was the Queen that never was!
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