Michal, Daughter of King Saul
Notorious Bible Study • Sermon • Submitted
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· 323 viewsAll relationships need investment and, at times, repair. When we live in a place of constant, critical fruitlessness-and all bitterness leads to barrenness-we are called to live kind, gracious lives.
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Introduction
Introduction
1 Samuel
Now Saul’s daughter Michal loved David. And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him.
Saul thought, “Let me give her to him, that she may be a snare for him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” Therefore Saul said to David a second time, “You shall now be my son-in-law.”
2 Samuel
And it was told King David, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.” So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing.
And when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal.
And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod.
So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn.
As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.
And they brought in the ark of the Lord and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.
And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts
and distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed, each to his house.
And David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!”
And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will celebrate before the Lord.
I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes. But by the female servants of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.”
And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Earlier in this journey we gave some consideration to worship as we reflected on the story of Cain and Abel. This session we will be looking at what should have been a time of united national celebration. There had been disastrous attempts to get the Ark of the Covenant back home, but King David had finally succeeded in securing it and returning it to its rightful place among the children of Israel.
Anything can be criticized, and in our day it often is. It does not seem to matter how good a thing or a person may be, there is always a detractor to be found within the crowd. King David’s act of worship was very extravagant and deliberate— every six steps the procession into the city stopped and fresh offerings were made. And it was a joyful, even boisterous celebration; when we read that David “danced before the Lord”, the Hebrew means to “Separate the limbs”. Volume was high too. Most of all, it was accepted by God— again, as we have seen before, worship is not about style or preference.
However, there was one member of the royal family that was not amused. We are told that David’s wife Michal, “despised” David.
While the nation and king celebrated the joyous occasion, Michal sulked as though former King Saul would have done a better job. But she had forgotten that it was Saul that had neglected the Ark of the Covenant in the first place (along with neglecting God) as he refused to heed the warnings of the prophet Samuel.
The picture that we have of Michal is one of angst and bitterness, but it had not always been that way. Twice in we hear of her love for David. But whatever the cause of her bitter and critical attitudes, things had changed, and the exchange between husband and wife showed that all was not well with their relationship. Both Michal and David were somewhat acerbic ( a comment or style of speaking— sharp and forthright) and sarcastic in their comments back and forth.
Relational harmony doesn’t just happen. Friendship calls for investment. Marriage takes time and sacrifice. And unity in the local church needs to be maintained, lest harmony and togetherness are eroded.
Perhaps some of us are on “cruise control” in a relationship, assuming that all will be well because all has been well in the past. Let’s not assume too much, and let’s move quickly to mend breaches in our relationships, lest we find them deteriorating beyond possible repair in the days to come. Better to invest today than to attempt to repair tomorrow.
And sometimes we can be wrong— even when we are partly right. One commentator noted that David might have been somewhat immodest as he got carried away in his enthusiasm.
Perhaps during his frenzied movements in the dance the linen ephod which he was wearing slipped so that his nakedness could be seen. In a state of ecstacy such happenings were not uncommon.
1 Samuel
And he too stripped off his clothes, and he too prophesied before Samuel and lay naked all that day and all that night. Thus it is said, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”
Israelite law forbids priests to expose their nakedness in holy places.
Exodus
And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.’
Exposing one’s nakedness openly was also taboo in all of Israel.
Genesis 9:22
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.
Leviticus
“None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord.
David’s ecstatic behavior was typical of Canaanite practice, and that could have been the reason why Michal could not appreciate it. David justified his behavior as self abasement before the Lord, as an expression of gratitude to God for all that God had done for him.
And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will celebrate before the Lord.
I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes. But by the female servants of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.”
We can be right about an issue; but but wrong in the way we communicate our concern about that issue. And some people make a continual habit of being critical:
Jude
These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage.
The original word for “grumblers” here is associated with the cooing of doves; like birds that never stop repeating the same noise, people who find fault always seem to follow the same script. It’s also possible that Michal was angry because she had been treated as a commodity, even by David:
2 Samuel
And he said, “Good; I will make a covenant with you. But one thing I require of you; that is, you shall not see my face unless you first bring Michal, Saul’s daughter, when you come to see my face.”
Then David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, saying, “Give me my wife Michal, for whom I paid the bridal price of a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.”
And Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband Paltiel the son of Laish.
But her husband went with her, weeping after her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, “Go, return.” And he returned.
But while we cannot choose the circumstances of life, we can choose how we will respond to them.
With her critical attitude, Michal was childless for the rest of her life. Here we need to tread very carefully, because mishandling this episode in Scripture could hurt those that battle childlessness. There is absolutely no suggestion that an inability to have children is the result of judgment upon some sin. But in Michal’s specific case, it appears that it may been an act of judgment, although we cannot be sure. It might just be that a son of Michal’s would have been a grandson of Saul’s which would have led to a clash in the dynasties. It might also be that withdrew from an ongoing sexual relationship from that time on. What we do know is that living a cynical, complaining life bears no good fruit, and to continue the metaphor, a root of bitterness can defile others.
Hebrews
See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;
In Shoah, Claude Lanzmann’s documentary on the Holocaust, a leader of a Warsaw ghetto uprising speaks of the bitterness that remains in his soul over how he and his people were treated by the Nazi regime. “If you could lick my heart it would poison you.”
By contrast, Corrie Ten Boom saw the power of ongoing bitterness tragically demonstrated. She learned that forgiveness was a daily act and that those who had found grace to forgive their former enemies were able to return to a sense of normality again and rebuild their lives, even when their physical scars were extreme. But those who, to use her phrase. “nursed their bitterness” remained dysfunctional. Corrie affirmed “It was as simple and horrible as that.”
Philip Yancey’s description of the books of two Nobel Prize winning writers illustrates the power of “ungrace and bitterness”. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, chronicles a marriage that disintegrates over the failure of a wife to put a bar of soap out for her husband! “Even when they were old…they were careful about bringing it up, for the barely healed wounds could begin to bleed again as if they had only been inflicted yesterday.” The Knot of Vipers by Francois Mauriac tells of another marriage breakdown, perpetuated by a husband and wife who both wait for the other to initiate the grace of forgiveness— in vain. Neither one ever breaks the cycle of gracelessness and forgives. The decision to forgive others who have hurt us is not just for their benefit: there is a sense of self-preservation about forgiveness, as failure to forgive will produce toxic effects in our own lives, including an inability really to accept God’s grace for our own failings.
Let’s live kind, gracious, and generous lives.