David and Michal
King Saul promised that the person that would slay Goliath would be given the king’s daughter as a bride (1 Samuel 17:25). So, when David killed Goliath, Saul was supposed to give him his older daughter, Merab, but she was given to Adriel instead (1 Samuel 18:17). Then Saul was told that Michal, his younger daughter, was in love with David so he was pleased because he wanted to use her as a trap for him (1 Samuel 18:20, 21).
Saul asked David to pay a high price of a hundred foreskins of the Philistines to marry Michal hoping that young hero would be killed in the process (1 Samuel 18:25). But David was successful in his mission. Saul had demanded 100 foreskins but David delivered 200 (1 Samuel 18:25, 27). So, Michal was given to David as a wife (1 Samuel 18:20, 21, 27) and she was rightfully his.
King Saul set on killing David. But Michal helped save her husband by making up a story that he was sick while helping him escape through the window (1 Samuel 19:11–17). When her husband fled from the angry king, Saul retaliated by taking Michal and giving her as a bride to another man by the name Paltiel Son of Laish (1 Samuel 25:44).
After the death of Saul, David made a peace covenant with the house of Saul on condition on that his wife Michal would be returned to him. His request was granted for she was his rightful wife (2 Samuel 3:13–16). Besides the justice of David’s demand there was the political consideration of the effect on Saul’s followers of having a daughter of Saul as wife to the King. This would tend to show that the King had no enmity against the house of Saul, and his right to the kingdom would be further enhanced by his being the son-in-law of the previous king.
When Michal was reunited with the king, Paltiel, Son of Laish “went with her, weeping as he walked behind her” (2 Samuel 3:16). Paltiel had no right to mourn his loss for he had sinned in taking another man’s wife to himself and Michal was not his rightful wife in the first place.
In His service,
BibleAsk Team
