Monday, July 4, 2022

The Second Book Of Samuel. Day 23, David's Wife Michal Despises Him

David and all the people who went with him to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant arrive in Jerusalem. Everyone in the city can hear this approaching crowd, including David's first wife Michal who views the scene through her window.

"As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart." (2 Samuel 6:16) The sight of her joyful husband causes intense feelings of contempt to rise up in her. The question is: why?

A possible reason is that she doesn't love the Lord the way David loves the Lord. My pastor is fond of saying, "Anybody who calls you a Jesus 'fanatic' is just somebody who doesn't love Jesus as much as you do." So it could be that Michal doesn't share David's zeal for the Lord. Her father, King Saul, never displayed much love for the Lord and she may consider emotional displays of religious fervor to be a sign of weakness, not strength. 

Another theory for her scorn, to which our text later today gives credence, is that she feels it is undignified for the king of Israel not only to dance with joy in the streets but to appear at such a momentous occasion without wearing his full kingly regalia. As we learned yesterday, he's wearing the same outfit as all the priests, musicians, and singers with him. He's not distinguishing himself from the crowd by having a crown on his head, royal arm bands on his arms, and the lavish robes of a king. Perhaps Michal feels it reflects badly on David (and on herself as his first wife and queen) that he looks like everyone else. 

A third theory is that she already resented him a great deal for making her come back and be his wife and seeing him dancing and singing with joy pushes her resentment all the way to disgust. If she does resent him for making her come live with him again, I think we can understand her feelings on that subject. You'll recall that at one time she was in love with him. Saul arranged a marriage between her and David but the bride price David would have to pay was the foreskins of a hundred Philistine soldiers. Saul didn't believe David could do it; he was hoping the Philistines would kill David. But David killed two hundred Philistines and returned safely. Saul had no choice but to keep his promise but he still kept seeking a chance to kill David, so Michal helped him escape from Saul's capital city while lying to and stalling her father's soldiers. Michal and David were newlyweds and she may have expected him to come back for her. How he was to accomplish rescuing her from Saul's heavily fortified capital city, where she was probably under guard twenty-four hours a day, is not known but she may have harbored the romantic notion that David would do anything for love. The problem is, we don't know if he ever loved her. Even if he wanted to rescue her, it's highly unlikely he could have made an attempt without losing his life. 

During David's years in exile, Michal's father gave her in marriage to another man, Paltiel, who evidently did love her. Whether or not Michal loved Paltiel cannot be known but at the very least she likely enjoyed being cherished and being treated well. You'll recall how much Paltiel protested and wept when, after David became king of Judah and Abner promised to gather support for him from all Israel, David demanded that Abner retrieve Michal from Paltiel. So Michal probably lost her love for David many years ago, she possibly loved her second husband Paltiel or at least had a pleasant life with him, she knew David didn't love her, and she knew that he took her back as his wife for the purpose of looking politically strong. David didn't want anyone saying he wasn't man enough to get back the wife who was wrongly taken from him. In addition, he wanted to bolster his claim to the throne by being married to the daughter of the first king of Israel. Some scholars make the statement that David was motivated primarily by spite. That could be the case, for he felt wronged by Saul in this matter. But two wrongs don't make a right, as the saying goes, and David hurt both Michal and Paltiel when he insisted on having Michal back.

Now we move on with our text. "They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord. After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty. Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes. When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, 'How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls as any vulgar fellow would!'" (2 Samuel 6:17-20) Have you ever been so worried or so upset about something, and so eager to tell somebody about it, that as soon as your spouse or other family member got home you met them on the porch or in the driveway? Michal is so annoyed that she can't wait for him to walk through the door; she goes outside to meet him. 

Michal accuses him of being "half-naked" even though our parallel passage from 1 Chronicles clearly described David and all the other men as wearing long linen garments with an ephod (an apron-like garment) tied over them. I cannot for the life of me imagine David or the priests or the musicians going out in public "half-naked" to retrieve the ark or to do any business of a more common nature either. David was not wearing an outer robe or overcoat and I think that's what she's objecting to, and perhaps the long linen garment with the ephod tied around it emphasized David's muscular warrior's physique. The Bible told us quite some time back that David was very handsome and I'm sure he was also in tip-top shape. Many a woman probably had a celebrity crush on him. Michal might have seen other women looking her husband over with admiration as he marched through the gates with the procession. She accuses him of being low class by going out without all the royal regalia. She accuses him of wanting women to look lustfully at him. 

Michal is making a personal attack on David but he's not going to answer her in the same manner. He reminds her that the Lord chose him to be the king of Israel and that the Lord chose him when he was still a young and humble shepherd boy, wearing the plainest of clothes---clothes that got torn and dusty as he led the sheep---and that the Lord chose him because he has the kind of heart that the Lord wants in a king, not because he had the clothes of a king. David is the king of Israel whether he's dressed in ornate robes and a crown or whether he's wearing a plain white choir robe. In God's eyes, it's not the clothes that make the man, it's the heart that makes the man. "David said to Michal, 'It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when He appointed me ruler over the Lord's people Israel---I will celebrate before the Lord.'" (2 Samuel 6:21) He says something like, "I was dancing and singing in the joy of the Lord, not to be admired by women. I wore the same white robe as all the other men because we are all of the family of God; I felt no need to distinguish myself from the crowd. If you don't like seeing me rejoicing in the Lord who took me from the sheepfold and placed me on the throne, and if you are bitter because the Lord rejected your father as king, that's your problem."

He continues, "I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor." (2 Samuel 6:22) He is saying something like the apostles Peter and James said in the New Testament. They both instructed the Lord's people to humble themselves, promising that the Lord would exalt them in due time. (1 Peter 5:6, James 4:10) We are told several times in the Bible that the Lord resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. David wants to stay humble. Wearing the same clothes as the other men instead of his kingly garments was a way of being humble. Dancing in joy before the Lord, with no care or concern with whether people might think him "too emotional", was another way of being humble. So I will paraphrase his words to Michal like this, "I am happy to humble myself before the Lord. I owe Him everything! I would be nobody without Him. I would have nothing without Him. Why should I not humble myself and exalt my Lord at the same time? And as for these women you think are having impure thoughts about me, whether that is true or not at least they respect me, which is more than I can say for you. If you can't respect me as a husband or as a person or as a king, can you not at least respect me for my faith?"

From this point on, David and Michal will be married in name only. He will continue to provide for her as his wife but he will no longer have a physical relationship with her. This may mean he never sees her again at all, unless her presence as his queen is required for certain types of public appearances, because the wives and concubines of kings had their own separate living quarters. "And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death." (2 Samuel 6:23) Some scholars interpret this as the Lord striking her with barrenness as a reproach to her for her attitude toward David's faith. But the majority of them interpret this as the severing of David and Michal's personal relationship. To me that makes the most sense. They have no common ground on which to build a cordial relationship. David is not the type of man to insist that she maintain a physical relationship with him and I imagine the only reason she would want to sleep with him is so she can have children. But trying to co-parent with someone who can't stand him is an unappealing prospect. It's so unappealing that even though it would further strengthen his claim to the throne to be the father of King Saul's grandson, he just can't bring himself to spend time in Michal's presence. 

We don't know whether Michal ever wanted to be a mother; we only know that she wasn't given the opportunity after she made her scorn for David quite clear. In her day childless women were pitied and looked down on. They were often suspected of being under the Lord's judgment for some type of sinful living, for it was considered a reproach to be barren. She once looked down on the slave girls who admired and respected David but in time those slave girls probably looked down on her for losing his companionship and for losing the opportunity to be the mother of his children. A son born to Michal and David might have been considered the heir-apparent to the throne, because even though he has older sons, Michal is his first wife and she is of the royal house of King Saul. A son born to the two of them would have a very strong claim to the throne even though he wouldn't be the eldest son of David. 

David doesn't divorce Michal. He has no legal grounds for divorce even if he wanted to; she hasn't been unfaithful to him. He continues providing for her and I'm sure it was a comfortable life, materially speaking. Emotionally speaking, perhaps not so much. She has no love relationship with her husband and she can't have a relationship with any other man either. She may be pitied by the women of the royal household or they may feel she deserved to live a childless life. Spiritually speaking, she's lost the opportunity to be led by David in the faith. She can only observe his life from afar and isn't in a position to study about the Lord with him or talk about the Lord with him or pray together with him. One of the most precious things my husband and I do together is go to the house of the Lord and worship together; David and Michal never have that kind of relationship and that's a sad thing. One of the most spiritually powerful things a husband and wife can do is worship the Lord together. It makes the relationship stronger. It makes the marriage more indestructible. It makes the children feel more secure. It encourages other couples to stay together and work on their relationship with the Lord's help. Strong marriages are good for society and nothing makes a marriage stronger than a shared love for the Lord. Michal and David do not share this and as a result they never build a real home together.


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