“Michal lets David escape from the window,”  Gustave Doré, 1865, image from Wikimedia Commons. 

The beginning of Michal’s relationship with David sounds like a fairytale. The daughter of King Saul, we’re told, “loved David” (1 Samuel 18:20). When Saul hears this, he encourages the two to be married, planning to use Michal to trap and kill his new son-in-law. But Michal warns her husband and helps David escape through a window. To buy her love more time, she lies to her father and tells him David is sick in bed. David escapes, but Michal remains.

Which is how it’s possible for Saul to marry Michal off to another man, Paltiel. Has David forgotten the wife who saved him? It sure seems so, because while David is on the run from Saul, he arranges covert meetings with Michal’s brother, Jonathan. He helps his parents escape to Moab. But he makes no such attempts for Michal.

A long war breaks out between Saul and David. David marries other women and has children with them. Eventually, as part of an agreement with Abner (the commander of Saul’s army), David demands Michal back. Michal is returned to David, but poor Paltiel follows after her, weeping (2 Samuel 3:12-16). 

We don’t get any insight into how Michal feels about the direction her life has taken until 2 Samuel 6, when she sees David dancing, victoriously entering the city of Jerusalem. How does she react to the sight of the man she once rescued? “She despised him in her heart” (2 Samuel 6:16). 

Scripture clearly asserts Michal’s initial love for her husband. But did David ever love Michal?  David married other women, and the couple never had children. Michal’s story, at least as it's presented in Scripture, does not have a happy ending. There’s no storybook marriage. There are no miraculous pregnancies. But there’s also a lot of her story that we don’t know, and the absences in her story give rise to questions. Could she remember her father as he was before he was plagued by the evil spirit (1 Samuel 16:15)? Did she grow to love Paltiel? Did she befriend any of David’s other wives? How did she react when she heard that both her father and brother were killed in battle? Michal was caught in the struggle for kingship. What did she learn about political maneuvering along the way? And what hard-won lessons would she want to pass on?

  • Michal’s mother was Ahinoam. In addition to Michal, Saul and Ahinoam had another daughter, Merab, and three sons, Jonathan, Ishvi, and Malchishua. 

  • 1 Samuel 18:20 memorably says, “Michal loved David.” This moment in Scripture is unique: Michal is the only woman in the Hebrew Bible described as loving a man.

  • Michal’s brother, Jonathan, is also described as loving David (1 Samuel 18:1). Interestingly enough, Jonathan’s love for David is reciprocated. David says of Jonathan, “greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26). 

  • Michal is far from being David’s sole romantic partner. There are 10 named women to whom King David was engaged or married, or with whom he had children.