the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Encyclopedias
Michal
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Mi´chal (who as God?), youngest daughter of King Saul (). She became attached to David, and made no secret of her love; so that Saul, after he had disappointed David of the elder daughter [MERAB], deemed it prudent to bestow Michal in marriage upon him (). Saul had hoped to make her the instrument of his designs against David, but was foiled in his attempt through the devoted attachment of the wife to her husband. Of this a most memorable instance is given in . When David escaped the javelin of Saul he retired to his own house, upon which the king set a guard over-night, with the intention to slay him in the morning. This being discovered by Michal, she assisted him to make his escape by a window, and afterwards amused the intended assassins under various pretences, in order to retard the pursuit. When these were detected, Michal pretended to her father that David had threatened her with death if she did not assist his escape. Saul probably did not believe this; but he took advantage of it by canceling the marriage, and bestowing her upon a person named Phalti (). David, however, as the divorce had been without his consent, felt that the law () against a husband taking back a divorced wife could not apply in this case: he therefore formally reclaimed her of Ishbosheth, who employed no less a personage than Abner to take her from Phalti, and conduct her with all honor to David. It was under cover of this mission that Abner sounded the elders of Israel respecting their acceptance of David for king, and conferred with David himself on the same subject at Hebron ().
The reunion was less happy than might have been hoped. On that great day when the ark was brought to Jerusalem, Michal viewed the procession from a window, and the royal notions she had imbibed were so shocked at the sight of the king not only taking part in, but leading, the holy transports of his people, that she met him on his return home with a keen sarcasm on his undignified and unkingly behavior. This ill-timed sneer, and the unsympathizing state of feeling which it manifested, drew from David a severe but not unmerited retort: and the Great King, in whose honor David incurred this contumely, seems to have punished the wrong done to him, for we are told that 'therefore Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child to the day of her death' (). It was thus, perhaps, as Abarbanel remarks, ordered by Providence that the race of Saul and David should not be mixed, and that no one deriving any apparent right from Saul should succeed to the throne.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Michal'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/m/michal.html.
