Michal Melchol

(brook, stream) (1 Sam 14:49) — the younger daughter of Saul, who loved David and was given by her father in marriage to him, but only out of Saul’s malicious design to bring about his ruin (18:19-21). Having become David’s wife, Michal proved to be the instrument of his deliverance. When Saul sent his servants to seize David, she let him down through a window, then took an idol and laid it in his bed, covering it with clothing, and told the servants he was ill. The servants returned to Saul, but he ordered them to go again and bring David, bed and all.

“And when the messengers were come in,” the sacred historian notes, “behold, there was an image in the bed, with a pillow of goats’ hair for his bolster.” Michal’s stratagem succeeded; David fled and escaped. Saul was greatly angered, but Michal told her father that David had threatened to kill her if she did not let him go (1 Sam 19:11-17). Some years passed after this, and Michal, in David’s absence, was given in marriage to Palti, son of Laish of Gallim (25:44). After Saul’s death, David, still not having forgotten Michal, demanded of Ishbosheth, Saul’s son, that she be returned to him at once.

She was taken from her husband, who followed her weeping, and brought to David at Hebron (2 Sam 3:13-16). But her love for David had by now considerably cooled, and on the day of David’s rejoicing, at the return of the Ark of the Covenant, when David danced in ecstasy before the Lord, clothed in a linen ephod, Michal looked out of the window at that moment, and seeing David leaping and dancing before the Lord, despised him in her heart (6:15-16). When David returned to bless his household, she met him with insolent words and reproach for behavior unbecoming a king.

To this David answered her, “I will yet be more vile, and will play before the LORD” (v. 21). After this, however, love between them seems to have ceased entirely, and “Michal had no child unto the day of her death,” notes the sacred historian (v. 20-23). According to Josephus, she supposedly returned to her husband Palti and had five sons by him (2 Sam 21:8); but in the opinion of others, the name Michal is given by mistake in that passage, instead of Merab.