The Story of Michal - One of My Favourite Characters

One of my favourite people in the Bible, is a secondary, fade into the background character, named Michal. You can find her story in the books of First and Second Samuel. She is the daughter of a man named Saul, the first king of the Israelites, and the first time you meet her, you are told only one thing about her; that she is madly in love with a young man named David (1 Samuel 18:17-30).

In the Bible, there are a number of stories about love. There is Samson and Delilah and Ahab and Jezebel. There are even some examples of lovers where things turn out well, but with all of the examples in the entire book, there is one commonality. When the person writing about them begins to talk about who originally had eyes for whom, it is always the man who first loves the woman. On all occasions this is true, save one. When we find out Michal loved David.

That is the strength with which this secondary character is first introduced to us. She loves David so strongly that she defies every expectation of proper conduct in scripture. She loved David so much as to be remembered strongly for just that. This is the first thing we learn about Michal’s character, but sadly as we shall see, sometimes love, even of the fiercest kind, can be misplaced.

As we continue on in the book of 1 Samuel, we see the story of Michal and David progress. King Saul finds out that his daughter has it bad for David, who was a hero of the people at this point in the story. And so, Saul figures, as all good kings would, that if he brings David into the family, that would be a good thing on two fronts. First, it would surely boost Saul’s popularity among the people as well, being seen close to heroes tends to do that, after all. But the second reason was really the more important of the two. Because, in monarchies, there tends to be a thin line between heroes of the people and would be usurpers, and so marrying these kinds of people into the ruling clan was a way to keep that kind of ambition in check. And so in a marriage of love in one hand, and political expedience on the other, Michal marries her love David, just as David marries the king’s daughter.

And the story goes on. There is an undisclosed amount of time between the wedding and the next time we see the couple together. Likely it wasn’t terribly long, as the next part of their story takes place only a chapter later in 1 Samuel 19. It was long enough, though, that King Saul, far from feeling that marrying David to his daughter was enough to keep the young man from leading a rebellion, instead becomes convinced that a coup is just around the corner. So convinced Saul was, that he actually attacks David with a spear, and that, as they say is that. Saul caused the very rebellion he was afraid of. Because we read David ran, and while he was almost caught by Saul’s forces, it was only by Michal’s help, and a plan that reads more like something out of Looney Tunes than the Bible (1 Samuel 19:15-17 if you are interested), that he managed to escape. Sum it to say, to help David escape, Michal chose to lie to her father, buying David precious time, even though it meant choosing her husband over her father and king in a very serious way.

And from this escape we go on to read about how David goes on the lamb. He raises a band of loyal soldiers, and over time the coup begins to come into fruition. So close did David come to killing his father-in-law that the story of his rise to the throne could have been a short one, but in the end the two men come to an awkward truce. In then end it was an unrelated battle in an unrelated war where Saul meets his end. But for our focus on Michal, two things from this period are important to notice. The first has to do with Saul. Being betrayed by his daughter, that stuck with the king to his dying day, or so we can take from the fact that he used his power to dissolve the marriage between Michal and her beloved, only to hitch her off to some other random noble we know very little about (more on him in a bit). And the second, and perhaps the hardest to take, is that despite ample opportunities, not once does David go back for the woman who loves him, though he had plenty of opportunity to do so.

We don’t hear of Michal for a long while after this. The book of 1 Samuel comes to a close without seeing her again, and it is not until the second begins that she comes up again. After Saul dies, David was anointed King and, as those who have ever watched a movie about political intrigue can guess, immediately those who served Saul’s regime declared war on the upstart. And sadly for both us reading this as well as Michal, this is when David remembers his forlorn wife. He remembers her not because of his love, but instead, for the same reason he was happy to marry her in the first place. It made political sense. For if David were to remind those remaining followers of Saul who were fighting him now that he was married to one of them, well that would really kneecap their cause, wouldn’t it?

So we read in 2 Samuel 3 beginning in verse 13, that David, for the first time in his life as far as we know, sought out his wife. And what unfolds is one of the most painful few verses in the entirety of a book filled with painful moments. Messengers from David show up at the home of Michal and her new husband. It had been years at this point since David and Michal had parted ways, and not once had he ever made a claim for her. While undoubtedly at first Michal would have been furious with her father for what he did, dissolving her marriage to the man she loved and pairing her off to this nobody, as the days went by I think it is safe to imagine her opinion on the matter would have changed. I say this because while we know little about Michal’s new husband, we do know one thing; that with everything this man was, he loved Michal. He loved her, like she once loved David. And so while Michal was being taken away, he, with everything he was pleaded, and wept that she stay. Michal’s first husband could not even be bothered to come in person to claim his wife, while her second husband wept for her.

This scene is painful, because as I have said, we don’t know much about Michal from scripture all things considered. We know she loved David, even though this relationship clearly was not a healthy one. We know she had a complicated a painful relationship with her father, to put it mildly. But we also know that for at least a time in her life, there was someone who loved her with everything he was, just as she once loved another herself. To be loved like that, I can’t help but think would be something that would mean the world to someone like Michal. Someone whose sources of love in her life that we know thought of her more as a pawn than a person. Saul married Michal off to David to secure the loyalty of someone he rightly thought would lead a rebellion, a dangerous position to put a child in. David married Michal to get ahead in life, and then reclaimed her, separating her from a husband who did actually truly love her (not unlike what Saul did), again for political expedience. Only one person in the entire story of Michal we read truly loved her, and he was taken away from her, and it breaks my heart every time I think of this playing out.

But, moving on in the story, Michal comes up only one more time, in 2 Samuel 6, the story that most people recall when they think of her. This tale takes place a while after Michal’s forced repatriation. David has solidified his hold on the kingdom, and he is looking to bring the Ark of the Covenant, a chest that the Ten Commandments were said to be in and the holiest artifact to all the Israelites, into his new capitol city of Jerusalem. And the scene that takes place is absolutely bizarre.

David, at the head of a procession, dances in front of the Ark like a mad man. As he dances his clothes tear away. There are animals being sacrificed left and right. Blood is flowing from them. There is music playing loudly, and everything is like a fever dream. It is a sight unlike anything we in the modern age can truly imaging, which we know because it is a sight that even the people there were scandalized by.

And this is when we again see Michal. How Michal feels about the things that happen to her in the story of first and second Samuel, we hear very little about. We know she feels great love for David when we first meet her, but for the most part that is the only emotion from her we know about. That is, until we see her witness her once beloved husband at the head of this parade. For when she sees David she realizes that she “loathes him in her heart.”

We can imagine it takes a while longer before the processional finally arrives, but when David finally greats her fresh from the train, Michal essentially tells him how she feels about him now. To do so, Michal speaks for only the second time in all of scripture. The first was when she ended her marriage to David the first time by lying to her father and now for the second, she tears a strip off of this man she once loved with all of her being, and the result this will have on her marriage to David will be about the same. I would do her injustice to put it in my own words. Truly it is a sarcastic masterpiece. So instead, I will simply quote, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”

Many people, even Queens, have died for much less than words like this.

But where you would expect an angry response from David, there is none. Instead, Michal is met in the most painful way a woman who once loved a man with all that she was could possibly be. With indifference, as if she never meant anything to him at all. As cold as ice, David spells out plainly what Michal was to him. That Michal was embarrassed by him meant nothing. David didn’t need Michal’s approval, because he had the approval now of the people. What was more is that he was the anointed of God, wasn’t he? A statement that while true, is also unfortunately as good an example as I can think of, of what we would today call spiritual abuse. After all, even if Michal was wrong to shame David for how he was worshiping God, her reasons were sound, her hurt was real and justified, and his response was in every way designed only to hurt.

And so we draw to the end of the story of Michal; a bittersweet note. Really it ends in the only logical way it could have. We are told Michal had no children until her dying day, a phrase that in most cases in that society would be read as a curse, but in this situation, with a husband such as David, I take instead to be one of the very few blessings Michal ever received.

This is the story of Michal, a character who defies an easy moral lesson. A character who takes someone like David, and shows us that “great man”, and “good man” are not the same thing. A character who makes us empathize and who draws us into the story. A character who reminds us that if we live a life of untethered ambition, it will be other people who in no way deserve it, who will be hurt.

I can’t truly explain why Michal is one of my favourite characters in all scripture other than to say that when you read her story, you hurt with her. And while that may seem like an odd reason to be drawn to a character, for me at least, it has made sense for why her’s is a story I come back to. I have come accross a lot of instances where people look over vulnerable women just to idolize the men they are with. Maybe if nothing else Michal's story helps prevent us from blindly doing just that.

But, what are your thoughts on the story of Michal? I would love if you would share in the comments below.