Why did michal despised king david

Christmas Eve. Good Friday: Faithful Cross! Above All Other. All Saints Discover About Gottesdienst. Editors and Staff. Sabre of Boldness. Make a Donation! Contact Us. Gottesblog A blog of the Evangelical Lutheran Liturgy. Why did Michal despise David? He had won acclaim by slaughtering a terrifying Philistine soldier called Goliath. Wall engraving of a Philistine warrior, from Medinet Habu. Saul decided to keep David on side by offering his elder daughter Merab as a wife. Because this is the only time in the whole Bible that a woman is described as loving a man.

Her passion must have been apparent to all around her. Saul seemed to be pleased, and offered Michal to David. But he set a condition, that David offer a bride price of Philistine foreskins. Since the Philistines in questions would understandably be reluctant to part with their foreskins, there was an excellent chance that David would be killed, and Saul would be relieved of his presence.

Everyone, it seemed, was turning from Saul towards David, and it was only a matter of time before Saul would be ousted altogether. Michal was waiting for him. So Michal got a rope, and perhaps a basket, and lowered him down from an upper window. Michal did not flee with David. She stayed in the house to buy time, to give him a better chance of getting away. When the soldiers hammered on the door, demanding that she produce David, she confronted them and said that David was ill, upstairs in her bed.

Of course the soldiers demanded to see him, but Michal stuffed the household teraphim clay figurines representing the household spirit-guardians under the bed coverings so that it looked like a human figure.

In the muted light of a flickering oil lamp she was able to convince them it was David, hurt in the scuffle and now too weak to move. Saul knew that Michal loved David, and that she would take his side against her own father.

So he was not convinced. He now hated David so deeply that he did not care whether David was sick or not. He told the soldiers to collect David and bring him to the palace, even if it meant carrying him on a stretcher, or on the bed he supposedly lay on.

The soldiers returned, entered the bedroom, and saw they had been tricked. David was gone. They took Michal back with them to the palace. Saul, now beside himself with frustration and rage, demanded to know how his own daughter could have betrayed him.

This was almost certainly untrue, since her passion for David was still burning high, and David knew it. Threats would not have been necessary. She believed he would be grateful for what she has done, and want her with him. But David was now a fugitive, living rough in the countryside with a band of cutthroats, and a royal princess, even though she was his wife, would only have been an encumbrance.

The months passed, and then possibly years, and there was no word from him. Evidently his ardor for Michal was the same as at the first, and his desire to claim her proves how he wanted her as queen in Hebron. How pathetic it is to read of Phalti with whom Michal had lived for some considerable time. We see his sorrow as he went with her in tears, only to be rudely sent back by Abner!

We do not read of Michal weeping as she left the man who had showered so much affection upon her. It did not require much force to make her leave Phalti. The closing scene between Michal and David is most moving, for what love Michal might have had for David turned to scorn and disdain. Nursing her contempt Michal waited until David returned to his household. Like her father, Saul, she had no regard for the Ark of God 1 Chronicles What was sweeter than honey to David was gall and wormwood to Michal At the despicable sight [of David dancing] she spat at him, and sank back in her seat with all hell in her heart Michal is a divine looking-glass for all angry and outspoken wives.

Childless till her death was a punishment appropriate to her transgression. David was given many sons and daughters, and her sister Merab bore five sons, but Michal never achieved the great attainment of being a mother.

What can we learn from this story of Michal and David? Misunderstanding arose in their relationship because of a clash of temperament, outlook and purpose.