Sarcasm and humor are vital tools when it comes to opposition to power or in any kind of domestic conflict. But sometimes even the most subtle insults get out of hand. Michal, Saul and Ahinoam’s daughter, David’s wife, the Princess of Israel who becomes, at least in name, one of the Queens of Jerusalem doesn’t get a lot of say about her life. So when she speaks up in today's surprising chapter - for the last time - her bitter words stand out.
The lead-up to the confrontation between David and Michal is the king’s decision to bring the Ark of YHWH to his new capital city after its many years of temporary housing in nearby Kiryat Ya’arim. The Ark, still powerful enough to cause casualties to those who touch it directly, finally makes its way to Jerusalem, with sacrifices and live music, throngs dancing in the streets to welcome the sacred object. David, dressed in priestly garb but not much else apparently, is depicted as dancing with religious ecstasy, ‘whirling with all his might’.
But not everybody is impressed with the warrior’s king’s piety.
Michal is looking on through the window, scornful of her husband’s behavior which she deems common and lewd.
It’s interesting to note that the last time we are told of them together is when she helps him escape her father's wrath - by smuggling him out from their bedroom window. Here she is again at the window, so many years later, a political prisoner in a harem, a has-been wife.
But she is more than all that - she is also the voice of the resistance to David, holding on the loyalty of the Northern alliance of tribes. When she confronts David she is not named as his wife - but as her father’s daughter:
וַתֵּצֵ֞א מִיכַ֤ל בַּת־שָׁאוּל֙ לִקְרַ֣את דָּוִ֔ד וַתֹּ֗אמֶר מַה־נִּכְבַּ֨ד הַיּ֜וֹם מֶ֣לֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל אֲשֶׁ֨ר נִגְלָ֤ה הַיּוֹם֙ לְעֵינֵי֙ אַמְה֣וֹת עֲבָדָ֔יו כְּהִגָּל֥וֹת נִגְל֖וֹת אַחַ֥ד הָרֵקִֽים׃
“And Michal, daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “Didn’t the king of Israel do himself honor today—exposing himself today in the sight of the slavegirls of his subjects, as one of the riffraff might expose himself!”
David replies with equal venom. They will never be seen speaking to each other after this exchange, and she will never bear children. It’s unclear whose choice that is.
What’s happening here that is so important to capture? Michal’s story is that of a discarded woman, but also that of a political ally turned opposition. Maybe there's a warning here about how to speak the painful truth to power? About the price paid when one does?
Rev. Wilda Gafney's Womanist Midrash reads this moment for Michal’s personal pain:
“I believe that the reason Michal despises David is that, after all she has done for him, he has abandoned her. David has moved on to other women and other children. He will not return to her bed; he will not father children with her. She is a living widow watching him woo, seduce, and impregnate women all around her. Michal, who has used her agency in the narrative to defy and deceive her father, has lost that agency. She has been passed from man to man and now finds herself retrieved like property, but not rescued to the loving embrace of the man she once loved.”
Robert Alter takes this story one step further. It’s not just how Michal speaks but what she said that really matters. Her use of the word ‘Honor’ or ‘Kavod’ in Hebrew is linked to the big news story of the day - the return of the Ark to the sacred center and the validity of David as the religious leader of the people - more than Saul ever was.
“Astoundingly, until this climactic moment, there has been no dialogue between Michal and David--only her urgent instructions for him to flee in 1 Samuel 19 and his silent flight. We can only guess what she may have felt all those years he was away from her, acquiring power and wives, or during the civil war with her father’s family.
Now the royal couple are finally represented meeting, and when Michal speaks out, it is an explosion of angry sarcasm. Her first significant word “honored” (balanced in David’s rejoinder by two antonyms, “dishonored” and “debased”) is a complex satellite to the story of the grand entry of the Ark with which it is linked.
When the Ark was lost to the Philistines (1 Samuel 4), the great cry was that “glory [or, honor, kavod--the same verbal root that Michal uses here] was exiled from Israel.” Now glory/honor splendidly returns to Israel, but the actual invocation of the term is a sarcastic one, bitterly directed at David, who will then hurl back two antonyms and try to redefine both honor and dishonor to his wife. The logic of the larger story’s moral and historical realism requires that no triumph should be simple and unambiguous, that strife and accusation pursue even the fulfillment of national destiny. “
Whatever is her story, Michal will now be relegated to the corner of the palace, one of the older women, not a mother, holding on to the memory of the last regime - a threat no longer quite as loud. But she still stands out and remembered as the “quintessential opposition party figure, peering out from a spectator’s distance at the ruling party’s celebration of its ideology and feeling mournful contempt.”
Despite her powerless position Michal has the courage to confront the King with hopeless protest still echoing today. With all the protesting in Jerusalem these days against the tyranny and corruption - may her loud voice, with pain and purpose, be witnessed, honored, and heard.
The king, meanwhile, keeps dancing on. The ark is housed in a temporary tent. But not for long.
Image: David Dancing by Richard McBee
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