1 Samuel Lesson 28
Dowry for Michal/Circumcision – 18:17-30
1 Samuel 18 is one of those chapters in God’s Word that the Holy Spirit
has let it all hang out and shows people what people really are like, and
you’re going to see everything from a father-in-law who is an absolute
ignoramus to his daughter who is a spiritual clod because she followed her
father. It’s a good illustration for
those of you who are thinking of getting married to watch how the in-laws
affect you, and how the parents affect you.
So pay attention, particular those of you who are contemplating ending
single bliss.
At this point we are in the section where Saul is trying to assassinate
David. Saul is going to try five times
to kill David. That’s very typical of a
carnal Christian; if they don’t do it with weapons they’ll do it with
words. But carnal Christians always try
to malign, criticize, run down, and otherwise harm believers for doing their
job quietly and graciously as unto the Lord.
So Saul is in this situation and last week we terminated at verse 16,
where “all
Now in verse 17 Saul follows up with a reward. To understand what Saul is going to do...
first let’s read verse 17 and then we have to get some background to understand
the offer. “And Saul said to David,
Behold my elder daughter, Merab; her will I give thee in marriage; only be thou
valiant for me, and fight the LORD’s battles.
For Saul said, Let not mine hand be upon him, but let the hand of the
hand of the Philistines be upon him.”
This is his third attempt to kill David.
We’ve seen two attempts, when he was playing his harp in Saul’s presence
to relieve demon oppression in Saul’s mind, Saul tried to throw a javelin at
him twice. And in verse 17 this is his
third plan.
To understand this it goes back to 1 Samuel 17:25; you recall that
during the Goliath incident an offer was made by Saul to the armies of Israel,
and the offer is spelled out, that he who kills Goliath, verse 25, “the king
will enrich him with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his
father’s house free in Israel.” “Free”
means free of income tax, free of taxation.
So that was the offer that went out; but you recall, if you look at
verse 55, after David went out and it looked as though this young man who was
the shepherd was going to kill Goliath that Saul had second thoughts just about
how much he was going to make his offer of his daughter. “And when Saul saw David go forth against the
Philistine, he said unto Abner, the captain of the host,” he’s the commander in
chief, “whose son is this youth?”
Instead of asking what is it that makes this young boy tick, why is it
that we can have an army sitting here watching loudmouth come up in the morning
and give us revile and loudmouth give us taps in the evening, and this going on
for forty days and we haven’t had one soldier that dares challenge him, instead
of noticing the obvious thing, there’s something different about this young
man, he doesn’t get all shook up, he’s relaxed, and he’s going out there with a
slingshot which is the hardest weapon to use in the ancient world if your
timing is off, which is the first thing that goes if you’re nervous.
So therefore, here’s this boy going out with a slingshot, of all
weapons, out into the middle of a situation with complete stability, complete
relaxation, complete trust. And instead
of asking, what is it about that boy spiritually, Saul is concerned, oh-oh, I
made an offer that I’m going to give my daughter away, now Abner, I want you to
run a security check and find out what this boy’s parents are like. I want her to marry good blood. And so the point in verse 55 is that he asks
Abner to start a little investigation to find out David’s family backgrounds so
when he hands his daughter off she will be married to (quote) “the proper
people,” (end quote)
Now you have to keep that in mind because that is a motif that carries
through everything we’re going to do tonight.
Saul is a believer who is in the advanced stages of compound
carnality. Viewed in stages it starts
with negative volition, then you have a darkening of the Holy Spirit so that
you have the soul blacked out; the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the believer,
illumination, begins to die after the believer has been in carnality for a
while. This is not loss of salvation;
this is loss of illumination. As a
result the person is very dull spiritually.
The next thing that begins to happen is that he acquires human viewpoint
and the product of that is doubt. He
begins to doubt more and more and more and become less and less able to claim
God’s promises, particularly in times of catastrophe and in times of pressure,
promise that he has known all his life now become useless and the person begins
to forget all the doctrine they’ve learned, so he has his soul being filled up
with human viewpoint. After this process
then it mushrooms into a hatred, but a hatred that is primarily directed toward
God Himself and secondarily toward those people who most remind him of
God. So since Saul has begun to hate God
and since David is the anointed of God, Saul now hates David.
This is the concept of unrighteous hate. And then after this... by the way, another
manifestation of that in a person’s life that has reached that stage is that
instead of worshiping God, since they hate Him, they’ll always substitute
something else, and if you look at them long enough you can find some pseudo
authority that they follow, it will be some man, or it will be some philosophy,
it will be some religion, their emotions, mobs of people because they have
approbation lust or something, but you watch these people and they will always
be suckers for some other authority than the Lord. Then after hatred we get to the advanced
stage of complete and total frustration.
And that is Saul; Saul is moving up into this final phase and this is
where we begin to have Saul more and more under demon oppression and it is
during this time when jealousy emerges in a very, very strong way. That’s also, incidentally, of a sign of
advanced carnality, compound carnality, is when a believer is extremely
jealous.
Now Saul has made the offer of his daughter. He is concerned because of verse 55, about
David’s background, what kind of a boy is he, because remember Saul, all his
life, has operated on the principle of human good. Human good is man seeking to fulfill God’s
standards of goodness without the Holy Spirit.
So you have human good; these are human standards and Saul has his
standards from his upbringing; Saul is an educated man; Saul is a very cultured
man; Saul said the right words at the right time. Saul was a tremendous believer in that sense,
in the externals. At least the people of
In verse 17 he’s still doing it so it shouldn’t shock us that when it
comes to giving away his daughter he has a problem. He does not want to give his daughter away to
David, because apparently Abner has run his investigation and it’s come back
that David does not come from a family that is as good as Saul’s family. So David’s family background is lower down on
the social totem pole than Saul’s family background. David doesn’t rate, and he’s not going to let
any daughter of his marry some so and so way down at the bottom of the totem
pole. And of course, this is human
viewpoint all the way, the issue in marriage is whether they’re a mature
believer and whether it’s the Lord’s will.
“And Saul said to David, Behold my elder daughter, Merab; her will I
give you” for a wife. Now this is most
interesting because beginning at this point we have placed against each other
two factors. First we have Saul’s human
good offer; that’s the offer that he made that I just showed you in 17:25;
that’s one factor that’s operating, the human good offer of a girl who will be
a wife to David, and therefore presumably the mother of David’s children. Now look, Saul then, is proposing that his
seed will he link to David’s seed. And
David, who he knows is going to take the kingdom, if his daughter marries
David, then David’s children will share some of Saul’s seed; not his legal
seed, but his genetic seed. This is a
possibility and is not eliminated by God’s discipline upon Saul yet, so it’s a
possibility.
However, God, you remember, sentenced Saul in 15:8-9 and 22 and 23, he said
Saul, you are rejected from being king, and I have rejected you. Now turn back to
So he’s saying your “stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.” The point is, at this point Saul is not
involved in the sin of the teraphiym. The point Samuel is making is his rebellion
and pushiness, those are Saul’s sins, but he hasn’t yet got into the sin of
witchcraft and teraphiym, but give him enough time. But at verse 23 he had not yet got that
far. Now Samuel concluded by saying,
“Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from
being king.” That is when legally Saul
was declared non-king and David legally was king, even though experientially
Saul remained on the throne. Now that
was one curse placed upon Saul.
But another curse was in
However, Saul has two daughters and the legal sitting on the throne,
obviously the girls cannot be queen, legally queen, by herself. But technically speaking there is a loophole
is that one of his daughters could marry David and still get by without
conflicting with verse 14. However, it
would be a lot better if there were clean-cut breaks with the Saulite
dynasty. We’re going to see how that
works out in chapter 18.
Now in
Now beginning with the preposition “for,” or the connective “for” at the
end of verse 17, you have the Holy Spirit’s commentary on Saul’s mental attitude,
this is what is going on inside Saul’s heart.
“For Saul said, Let not mine hand be upon him, but let the hand of the
Philistines be upon him.” In other
words, what he wants to do is marry off David to his daughter, and then when he
has done this, he wants David to be a career officer so he will have maximum
exposure to death on the battlefield, because Saul knows David has been given
the kingdom, and he doesn’t want that man sitting on the throne, he wants one
of his own sons to sit on the throne. So
he is trying to defy the decree of God and so he is saying here I want to
expose David to the maximum danger in life; furthermore, I want the Philistines
to do my dirty work.
Now if you heard Proverbs 11:8, the law of temporal effect this morning,
remember “the righteous are delivered out of trouble, but the wicked comes in
his place,” here you have a working out of the law of temporal effect, because
what’s going to happen is that the Philistines are going to kill the king, but
it’s not going to be David they’re going to kill. Saul finally winds up in the trap he planned
for David. “The righteous are delivered,
and the wicked” blindly, stupidly, walk right into the trouble. And here is a beautiful illustration again
from history, Saul engineers a military trap for David and who walks into
it? Saul, because at the end of this
book Saul is slaughtered by the Philistine army, his body is hung up in the
Verse 18, “And David said unto Saul, Who am I? And what is my life, or my father’s family in
And at this point, verse 19, skips some time period, there’s a time
lapse between verse 18 and 19, but apparently Saul, this was too much for him
and he would not give up his daughter because David didn’t have the dowry. And here you have a carnal believer again,
watch how he operates, he says something and then he goes back on his
word. This, incidentally, is the kind of
incident that leads us to those phrases in the Psalms that David is always
singing about, oh their lips, they have swords in their lips, their words are
vanity; this is the historical experience out of which David wrote his Psalms;
he was double crossed by his future father-in-law.
Verse 19, But it came to pass at the time when Merab, Saul’s daughter,
should have been given to David, that she was given unto Adriel, the
Meho-lathite in marriage.” And this
double-cross reminds you of Laban and Jacob, but the double-cross was very
interesting because the man to whom this girl was given, Adriel, had five sons
by her, but she died at a very early age and later on, 2 Samuel 21:8 reports
that this man’s sons had to be brought up by Michal, this younger
daughter. So it’s very interesting, this
marriage wound up as a disaster. Merab
died very early and left her five sons motherless.
Verse 20, while this was going on and David was getting burned by the
old man, “And Michal, Saul’s daughter,” now Michal is the female version of
Michael; those two names are basically the same, but that is Saul’s younger
daughter, he had two daughters, and while David would be visiting the older
daughter the younger sister was in there making eyes at her sister’s
boyfriend. And this has been known to
happen, and so the younger daughter started to fall in love with David. And of course he was a big national hero at
this time and it was very easy, all the women were falling for this red-headed
Jewish boy, that she would fall in love with him. He was the model man of the age and so she
began to fall in love, but don’t be fooled by the verb “love.” We’re going to see just how much this girl
loved David and we’re going to study the second divine institution and show you
why this love is a phony love. She began
to love David, that’s all, and no young person can love another person until
years go by. Love matures and it takes
time to grow, and there’s going to be a very interesting contest that begins as
Michal develops her relationship with David.
“And Michal, Saul’s daughter,” watch how Michal’s name appears in the
text, it will usually be clarified by David’s wife or sometimes Saul’s
daughter, and the point is that this girl is going to have two characters. She can play the role of Saul’s daughter, if
she plays the role of Saul’s daughter she is going to carry on the –R learned
behavior patterns of her father. She can
be David’s wife and if she is David’s wife she can carry on the +R learned
behavior patterns of David, her husband.
And she is going to have to switch between the two roles. Here the Holy Spirit in the text clarifies
it, though she loved David, in her soul she is not David’s wife, she is Saul’s
daughter. She carries in her soul all
the lousy behavior patterns that she has been exposed to while growing up under
Saul. And we are going to see those as
they come out in her life.
But let’s continue with the text and stick with Saul for the
moment. Verse 20, “... and they told
Saul, and the thing pleased him.” Now
why does it please him? Verse 21 tells
us why, “And Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be a snare to him,
and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” Now he has a very low sinister plot on his
mind, and it’s very, very interesting how this works. Saul got to thinking, he says you know, I
wasn’t quite clever enough. Remember all
this time, 18:5 said David is performing skillfully, and Saul was the one that
got outwitted on the first one because he was going to give David the daughter,
and David put out the issue of the dowry, he tested his volition, Saul
rejected, and the daughter went off. So
it appears lost out, but David didn’t really lose out; David just got rid of a
female that would have been a problem to him the rest of his life. So he was preserved from the horror of having
to marry Merab.
But, in all this, while this was going on, Saul is thinking, you know
what, I’ve made that guy a career officer in my army, he’s going to be exposed
to Philistines, but I know he’s a victorious warrior and it’s not enough for
him to be exposed, because after all, a man who is as successful as David, he
is going to have to advance in rank and therefore not be exposed to the combat
front lines so I think I’ll work out another little deal for David boy, so that
he will be sure and be killed. So he has
the idea, David brought up the issue of dowry, did he; okay, I’ll bring up the
issue of dowry and we’ll set a dowry that will take care of this young upstart
who wants to get my throne.
So this is actually what is on Saul’s mind and again notice the jealousy
and hatred and so on, please remember Saul hates David, not for personal
reasons; Saul hates David because of who and what David stands for. David stands for Jehovah’s authority and Saul
does not want to bow his knee to God’s authority. So then Saul insults David. The next sentence, which is very poorly
translated in the King James is an insult to David. “Wherefore Saul said to David, “Thou shall
this day be my son-in-law in one of the two.”
That isn’t it at all, the Hebrew word here, as it’s used occurs in Job
33:14, “for a price,” or the second time.
And what he is doing, it’s the Hebrew imperfect, and the Hebrew
imperfect can have a nuance of possibility or “you can be my son-in-law,” I’ll
give you a second chance. That’s what he’s saying. See, real grace... why David, you should just
be impressed with me and my daughters, you blew it on the first one but I’ll be
very gracious to you David, I’ll let you have a second shot if you’re really
interested in my daughters. So this was
actually an insult to David.
Verse 22, “And Saul commanded his servants,” now verse 21 is a summary
verse; verses 22-25 tell you how verse 21 worked out; verse 21 summarizes it
real quick. “And Saul commanded his
servants, saying, Commune [Speak] with David secretly, and say,” now they
didn’t have to communicate with David secretly, it’s just a put-on to David to
make David look important, and this is just part of the behavior pattern of
Saul. Now “commune with David secretly,
and say, Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you,”
that’s another thing carnal believers do, love one another, let’s all get
together and hold hands, and go to some little spiritual growth group where we
can pat each other on the head and talk about everything that goes on in our
bedroom and so forth, this kind of stuff.
And this is the product of carnal believers who are seeking some sort of
an experience. And here he’s saying that
everybody loves you David, you don’t have to fear about animosity in our
household, we all love you, you stinker.
And he puts on the front to impress David; of course David is not going
to be impressed as we’ll see very shortly.
“...now, therefore, be the king’s son-in-law.” I’m giving you a second chance David.
Verse 23, “And Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David.
And David said,” and he repeats, notice he’s bringing the issue up again, “it
seems to you a light thing to be a king’s son-in-law, seeing that I am a poor
man, and lightly esteemed?” This tells
us that David knew what was going on because he changes the vocabulary a little
different this time. Here he’s saying
“lightly esteemed” and the word “esteem” means dishonored, and David has picked
up the signals, he knows he’s dishonored, he knows Saul can’t stand him. And so he’s saying I am dishonored, how am I
supposed to be the king’s son-in-law.
Now this is subtlety, you have to catch the subtlety of this rivalry
that’s going on between Saul and David.
David is not naive; David is a very skillful man and he knows the name
of the game. And then he also adds, “I
am poor” and this is to remind Saul again that he hasn’t got the money for the
dowry. So Saul figures okay, that’s what
he said before, he doesn’t notice the “lightly esteemed,” he just notices the
word “poor.”
Verse 24, “And the servants of Saul told him, saying, On this manner
spoke David.” Verse 25, “And Saul said,
Thus shall ye say to David, the king desires not any dowry, but an hundred
foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies [But Saul
thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines.]” And here he comes out with this plan, and
this plan is very interesting. First of
all he said I’m not interested in dowries, all I want to do is get David out in
a place where he can be exposed to danger and the Philistines will kill
him. That’s all I want, then I won’t
have to give my daughter away.
Furthermore, I can get rid of the competitor to the throne. But when he says I’m not interested in any
dowry “but a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged,” now “to be
avenged” shows you Saul’s vindictiveness.
Remember a believer in that fourth stage of carnality has hatred. And part of hatred manifests itself in
jealousy, mental attitude jealousy and vindictiveness. A believer like this is very vindictive,
always wants to get back at somebody else.
And this is a mental attitude typical of this kind of carnality.
I want you to notice something; how did Saul get in trouble before? Do you remember when they went down into
battle that Saul gave that silly order, they were chasing the Philistines away,
they had broken them and they were in retreat, and Saul gave that ridiculous
order, no logistics. I don’t want
anybody having snack lunches, no food will be eaten by my army until they fully
pursue the Philistines and destroy them.
Of course he destroyed his own army because an army can’t run without
logistics and that was a very foolish order he gave. But why?
Because Saul took the battle personally.
It was Saul’s battle instead of the Lord’s battle.
By contrast, do you remember what David said to Goliath? He said listen, the battle is not mine
Goliath, the battle is Yahweh’s, the battle is the Lord’s, I don’t take this
battle personally, I’m going to kill you and smear you all over the field, but
don’t take it personally because this battle is a battle of the Lord. And I’m killing you because you’re the Lord’s
enemy, you’re not my personal enemy but you’ve become my personal enemy because
I stand for Jehovah and you stand for Dagon, and that makes you my enemy at
this point in history. And so therefore
it was not a personal vindictiveness.
David killed Goliath and slaughtered him and cut his head off and
carried his head around like you would a box lunch, with the filling of the
Holy Spirit. Now why did he do
that? He recognized the principle, that
he was going to kill the Lord’s enemy, period.
Now we have the same thing coming out when it says “to be avenged.” Saul is taking this as a vengeful tactic, I
am going to be avenged. So it becomes
again Saul’s personal battle. But by
God’s sovereignty or just simple sense of humor, it so worked out that the very
thing that Saul has David do converts his personal vendetta into a holy war of
Jehovah. Because what is he going to
do? He is going to cut off the foreskins
of the Philistines.
Now with that we have to say a little bit about circumcision, and here
are four things you want to know about circumcision in the Bible. The first thing, in all societies, or in most
societies of the world that have practiced circumcision before the effect of
Israel was felt, it was always done in adolescence, not in infancy. The Egyptians, for example, did this; many
tribal cultures do this, that you have circumcision applied to the males but it
is when they become a warrior or of marriageable age. In Israel alone it was done in infancy.
The second thing is that circumcision is a sign of sanctification; it is
an outward sign of the Abrahamic Covenant and has spiritual significance.
Third, uncircumcision is known empirically, through medicine, to
increase the probability of cancer in both the males and in their sexual
partners. And this, therefore, is an
excellent...an excellent sign, you see God knows what He’s doing when He makes
these signs. These signs, as I’ve said
over and over again, do not hang in thin air.
God picks circumcision out.
Why? Adam wasn’t circumcised, why
was circumcision necessary? Because at
the fall the male’s body deteriorated so that it made a problem, and
circumcision is a correction of a problem of the effect of the fall on the male
body. Therefore, if that is the case,
God took a beautiful sign, because what does circumcision stand for? The effect of grace on the human spirit. Look, here’s how it works; God picks out an
area of the human body that has been affected by the fall. He designs a rite that corrects the physical
deficiency inherited from the fall and what does that become a sign of? What happens to the human spirit; that human
spirit is also fallen, total depravity, the human spirit of man is also fallen
and when the human spirit is fallen it too has to be healed, so to speak, just
like the body, there has to be some correction applied and that correction is
regeneration. So circumcision in the New
Testament is analogous to regeneration.
And that’s the fourth point, circumcision pictures, in the unseen
spiritual, regeneration. But the third
point is what circumcision does in the seen visible realm of the body; point
four is what circumcision pictures in the unseen spiritual realm.
Now when you come to verse 25, and Saul apparently, as we can only use
our imagination here, but I think what probably led Saul to say this was that
he heard David’s remark. Remember in 17,
David said this Philistine was uncircumcised, and when he called you
“uncircumcised Philistine,” when he said that, Saul said oh, listen to what
he’s saying, he’s calling him an uncircumcised Philistine; well since David is
so concerned about the lack of circumcision on the Philistine soldiers, I’ll
send him on a little trip. And so the
sarcasm, Saul means this to be sarcastic, this is an affront to David’s
spirituality. You’ve got to see
this. David said “you uncircumcised
Philistine” because he was saying you are not member of the covenant
people, you have no business on this
property, so let me tell you, this is not your possession, this was not granted
to you by the Abrahamic Covenant. So
while David uses his language with doctrinal understanding, because again
looking at David’s soul you have positive volition, you have enlightenment and
you have a divine viewpoint framework developed. And when David speaks, he speaks out of a
divine viewpoint framework and this divine viewpoint framework says
circumcision regarding the human spirit, regarding the Abrahamic Covenant,
that’s what’s on David’s mind.
But Saul, looking at his soul, he’s on negative volition, he doesn’t
experience the illuminating ministry, he experiences darkness in his soul, he
has human viewpoint so he hears the same words... he hears the same words but
it’s a different thought pattern. David
uses the word “circumcision” for its theological significance; I’m going to
kill those uncircumcised Philistines, they do not belong in this land by virtue
of the Abrahamic Covenant. Saul thinks
of it just physically, what’s the matter with being uncircumcised, it probably
runs through his mind, well if David is bothered with it, let him go do
it. And so I’m going to send David on a
little assignment.
He says I want you too bring back one hundred foreskins. Now this is
very humiliating because in the ancient world, in the Homeric epics, for
example, what they usually bring back is the head. They do two things when you kill the soldier
in battle; you take his armor because armor was scarce in the ancient world,
and you could melt it down and make your own set of armor or wear it if it was
the right size. And the second they’d
usually do is cut off the head of your victim and carry it home for a
trophy. Instead of doing this, he would
kill his victim and cut off the foreskin.
And you have to see the humor in this but some of you are up so tight
you can’t see it.
Verse 26, “And when the servants told David these words, it pleased
David well to be the king’s son-in-law, [And the appointed days were not yet
expired].” see, David said now that’s the kind of dowry I like, he says I don’t
have any money for this girl but if you want me to go out and do a little operation
of circumcision, I’ll gladly go out there and to it, I’ll kill everyone of
them, and if you want the foreskins back, I’ll bring them back, with labels on
them if you want. And so he does. In
fact we know this by the way the language goes in verse 27, “Wherefore David
arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines, two hundred,” that sakal that I showed you, David is
performing skillfully, he “slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David
brought their foreskins; and they gave them in full count [number] to the
king,” now this would make a beautiful movie, guaranteed to go over in
fundamental Christianity, like a lead balloon.
David comes back to Saul and the point, notice at the end of verse 26,
“the days are not expired,” this tells us that Saul made a deal, and he said
now David, I want two things from you before you walk off with my daughter, I
want you to bring me one hundred foreskins and I want you to do it in X
days. And so David goes out and in less
than X days brings back two hundred.
This just jars the creeps out of Saul, not only for the fact that he
does it and accomplishes it, and comes out of it alive, but you can just
imagine him reporting back, Saul, here they are, one, two, three, four, and
counting them off, because that’s what the verse says, “full number” it means
David sat there and said Saul, you want this, okay buddy, one, two, three,
four, five, six, and he counted them out to him. And you can imagine Saul, the last time David
came to him he had the head of Goliath, the next time he shows up he has two
hundred foreskins. So there was no way
to deal with this believer, he was outsmarted every time. And we can take comfort and laugh at Saul,
but don’t laugh too hard because there are a lot of Saul’s, in fact, there’s a
lot of Saul in every believer. All of us
have our areas of human good, self-righteousness and pride, and areas where we
cannot relax in the face of God’s grace, and in the face of God’s sense of humor. But here David is and he’s counting them
out.
And so, “Saul gave him Michal, his daughter, in marriage.” And this is beautiful because now this woman
is going to have a battle on her hands.
[tape turns] ... whether she’s
going to continue under daddy’s influence spiritually, Saul’s daughter, or,
whether she is going to, as Genesis 2 says, leave her father and her mother,
the principle of Genesis 2 applies even though it was addressed to the man, and
be David’s wife. And she is constantly
going to have to make that choice. In
this case she’s making the choice because Saul is on –R learned behavior
patterns, David is on +R learned behavior patterns. And she is going to have to respond in her
soul to the man she loves; that is her job as a wife, she has got to
respond. David has a lot to give her;
David was the most fantastic believer in the Old Testament. David was great in every area of life. This girl was married to the greatest
believer in the Old Testament. She
potentially had a marriage that would have been fantastic. We’re going to study what she did with her
marriage. But that girl had the most
fantastic potential for spiritual growth in the marriage that any girl could
ever ask for. She was married to a
tremendous believer.
But, God knows that she has a problem.
God knows that Saul’s effect upon his daughter is going to take
over. Now what do you suppose that
Saul’s effect is on his daughter.
Obviously it’s self-righteousness, it’s legalism, it’s human good, its
all the crud that Saul has in his soul that he has passed on to his
daughter. Now isn’t this amusing; watch
how God works everything out. When girls
in the ancient world were married, people would ask them, oh, what was your
dowry, what was your dowry. And so
here’s this girl, she was the wild princess, and every time someone said, hey,
what was your dowry, what was your dowry when you and your husband
married? Why, he’s king David, I bet he
really gave you tremendous dowry. Yeah, he
did, he gave my father two hundred foreskins.
So everywhere she went she had to report on the dowry. Now why do you suppose God put that girl in
that kind of a position? Because it was
to test her, whether she would humiliate herself before God’s grace or be the
proud, self-righteous brat that was raised in Saul’s [can’t understand
word]. And that’s a test. Everywhere she had to go, oh yeah, you’re the
girl that David paid for with two hundred foreskins, hmmm. So you can imagine the social repercussions
involved. And this girl carried this
with her throughout her marriage. And
we’re going to find out that it apparently irked her very much.
And this passage concludes, verse 28, “And Saul saw and knew that the
LORD was with David, and that Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him.” Notice again “Saul’s daughter,” she still has
the soul of her father, she still has not began to grow spiritually. Verse 29, “And Saul was yet the more afraid
of David; and Saul became David’s enemy continually.” At this point the hostility between the two
men becomes very, very intense.
[Verse 30, “Then the princes of the Philistines went forth; and it came
to pass, after they went forth, that David behaved himself more wisely than all
the servants of Saul, so that his name was much esteemed.”]
Now we want to conclude by doing a short study on this girl, Michal, and
how she “loved him” because as I told you, don’t be fooled by the word “love,”
this girl did not love David as she should have. Turn to 1 Samuel 19:11, we’ll go into the
context next week but I just want to take out the section that deals with
Michal. “Saul also sent messengers unto
David’s house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning; and Michal,
David’s wife,” notice the change, here this girl is beginning to respond to
David now, she here is going to exercise her volition against her father’s
negative volition. In other words,
here’s Saul, he’s on negative volition, he wants to murder the future king of
the throne, and he’s on –R learned behavior patterns, and at this point Michal
makes a break with her father. She goes
on positive volition and says I am going to stand up for my husband against my
father. And with this, she was, as a
result, rewarded in the text by being called “David’s wife.” But to read the last part of the verse and
the flowing verses after it we find, unfortunately she hasn’t grown too much.
Verse 12, “So Michal let David down through a window; and he went, and
fled, and escaped. [13] And Michal took
a teraphiym,” the word “image” is a teraphiym, “and laid
it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats’ hair for its head, and covered it
with a cloth.” That’s a wig, and covered
it with the sheets. [14] And when Saul
sent messengers to take David, she said, He is sick. {15] And Saul sent the
messengers again to see David, saying, Bring him up to me in the bed, that I
may slay him. [16] And when the messengers were come in, behold, there was a teraphiym.” So this tells us, this one little part of
this girl’s soul that tells us right here that in her marriage she kept on with
the family idols. She acquired these
somewhere toward the latter end of her time with Saul, and the teraphiym,
which was the thing that Samuel pointed out to Saul that was as bad as his
rebellion, his own daughter is doing it, and she [can’t understand word] one of
these out at this point. Still the Holy
Spirit doesn’t make much of an issue out of it because she at least had
exercised her volition and it’s called David’s wife.
Now turn to 1 Samuel 25:44, David goes on an extended flight; during
that flight David wrote most of the great Psalms that you like so much, Psalm
22 and those other great ones, were all apparently written during this time of
his fleeing. And it was a great time of spiritual prosperity for David, but
Michal had been left behind. And Saul
gave Michal to this man, “to Palti, the son of Laish,” and so he marries her
off again to another man. But as far as
God is concerned that marriage is illegitimate; she has been torn away from
David and she is David’s wife, and God is going to respect her for it because
she never bears this man any children.
To the end of her time, she’s with him four or five years, at least,
they never have any children, their marriage is never blessed, therefore, in
the Hebrew mentality; there’s no children in the marriage, it is an unfruitful
marriage.
So this just sets you up for the next incident that happens in 2 Samuel
3:12. This is after Saul has died, and
the sons of Saul are fighting with David for the rule of the land. Abner, the commander in chief, is going to
defect and he’s going to switch his allegiance and throw the army over to David
instead of the house of Saul. “And Abner
sent messengers to David on his behalf, saying, Whose is the land? Saying also, Make thy league” or a treaty
“with me, and, behold, my hand shall be with thee, to bring about all Israel
unto thee.” And David said, “Well, I
will make a league with thee; but one thing I require, that is, you shalt not
see my face, unless you first bring Michal, Saul’s daughter, when you come to
see my face.” Now apparently the name
“Saul’s daughter” is there in the text to tell us that during her time of
marriage to this other man she did not spiritually grow at all. David has grown fantastically during this
time because he has been writing the Psalms and having a very wonderful time,
fleeing Saul from cave to cave. But
nevertheless, in spite of the circumstances, David has been blessed
spiritually; he’s learned to rejoice, he’s learned how to trust the Lord in His
promises and so on. And so he says it’s
time that I got my wife back again. And
so she comes, and in verse 15, “Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband,
even from Paltiel, the son of Laish. [16] And her husband went with her,
weeping behind her, weeping behind her to Bahurim. Then Abner said” just get out of here guy,
this woman is David’s, and that busted up that marriage. And it was rightful, and since that marriage
was illegal to start with it was all right to be broken up by the force of the
state.
So at this point Michal comes back to David, she has not grown
spiritually, she’s been in an illegal marriage for several years and she has
had no children. Now we come to the
final scene of Michal, 2 Samuel 6:14.
Remember the contest, is this girl going to be Saul’s daughter and carry
within her the mental attitudes of her father, or is she going to change her
heart and submit to her husband as unto the Lord, this is not just a carte
blanc submission, but is submission to David as unto the Lord, in this case
David warrants her submission, because of the concept, he is in fellowship and
so on. So in verse 14, the ark is
brought back, “And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David
was girded with a linen ephod.” Now the
word “dance” here clues us to something that’s going on. I’m going to show you
some other references where this verb is used, see if you notice
something.
Judges 11:34, and you’ll see after these references who is doing the
dancing, and this will give you a clue to understand the passage. “And Jephthah came to Mizpah unto his house,
and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with
dances....”
Judges 21:21, same verb used again, “And see, and, behold, if the
daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances....” notice who is doing the
dances there is the girls. Now we could
go on and develop this, in 1 Samuel 18:6 it’s the women again that is doing the
dancing, it’s a victory celebration and the women are doing it. Now why?
We have to go back and look at the man and the woman in the ancient
world. The woman in the ancient world
was underneath the man, not only in the sense of marriage but she was treated
in many ways inferior to the male. The
Bible does not condone this but nevertheless it was a fact. And usually the dancing was done by the girls
because it was considered to be sort of a low-class type operation. I showed you some Assyrians dancing, that’s
the way they looked when they danced, they used dresses of all lengths, as you
can see, one of them playing the psalter and the other the timbrel. That was the kind of thing that was going on
and it was always associated with the low class. The girls that generally did the dancing were
not the noble women, they were generally the peasant girls, the farm girls and
so on of the country that were considered by the people in the city to be low
class.
Now when you come to 2 Samuel 6:14 you can appreciate the content of
“David danced before the Lord,” David is doing what no proper person in his
generation would dream of doing.
Dancing, why, that’s for the low class, the peasants do that, but the
King of Israel doing what the peasants do.
That’s the background for the first verb, to “dance” in verse 14. The next thing so that you can be prepared
for what comes is the ephod. David was
clothed in an ephod that looked like this; it was a sleeveless vest, and it was
not a garment, it came down to his thighs and that’s where it stopped, it was
the equivalent of a very short skirt, a miniskirt as far as length was
concerned, and that was what David was wearing.
Now I know some of you are getting the point but let’s keep on
going.
So verse 15, “David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of
the LORD with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. [16] And as the ark
of the LORD came into the city of David,” the point is that Michal is hearing
all this racket going on in the street and she looks down, she expects to see
the peasant girls in their victory celebration as the great ark moves
through. And she looks, and the Hebrew
is fantastic here, it’s says she leaned way out, can that really be my
husband? And she sees of all people,
mixed in with the peasant girls dancing is David. What has my crazy husband done now, she says
to herself. She says more than that
because “Saul’s daughter looked,” notice she is called Saul’s daughter, because
she still has the soul of her father and it’s really going to come out now. She saw him “leaping and dancing before the
LORD; and she despised him in her heart.”
This is a strong word in the original language and it means to utterly
despise, and so we know now that here is her father’s soul, here’s the
daughter’s soul. The father was on
negative volition, daughter is on negative volition; father received the
darkening or the ending of the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit,
daughter received the end of illumination; father received human viewpoint,
daughter received human viewpoint, father began to hate the Lord and everybody
that represented him and daughter hated the Lord and everybody that represented
him. She is Saul’s daughter but she is
not David’s wife; she has the soul of her father in her, from head to toe, and
this is the phrase that comes out, “she hates him” and she hates him because of
what he was doing.
Now we are going to study in more detail what he is doing. Verse 17, “And they brought in the ark of the
LORD, and set it in its place, inside of the tabernacle that David had pitched
for it; and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD.
[18] And as soon as David had finished offering burnt offerings and peace
offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD of armies.” Verse 19, “And he dealt [distributed],” now
watch this, this continues verse 14, you’ve got to catch this or you won’t
understand why Michal reacts the way she does.
David “dealt among all the people, even among the whole multitude of
Israel, as well to the women as men, to everyone a cake of bread, and a good
piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine [a portion of meat, and a cake of
raisins]. So all the people departed,
everyone to his house.” You see what
David is saying, he is saying look, this is a tremendous breakthrough in the
monarchy. This is a great portrait of a
true king versus a portrait of Shalmaneser and the other ancient kings.
What David is saying is: look, here’s the ark of the Lord, that is the
presence, the Shekinah glory, that is the presence of our Lord, and in that
presence there isn’t any social hierarchy.
All people are equal, men and women, nobility and peasantry. It’s a tremendous breakthrough for a divine
viewpoint of people, and this is actually what’s happening here. David is making, as always, a tremendous
breakthrough. He is doing something that
no other ancient monarch before or after him ever did. This is a tremendous statement. If you don’t understand the mentality of a
highly structured society in your mind it can just go by your eyes and you
never catch it. But if you can think of
living in a very stratified group, for the king to come around and deal bread
out to every man, usually it was just done to the head of the family. What did David do? Every woman got her piece too; he recognized
the position of women. It is one of the
great passages on the divine viewpoint of the role of women in society, right
here, and David is the savior of the women.
He is the one who recognizes them for what they are, that before God
they are equal and they have their right before God. They are equal in salvation, they are equal
in God’s sight, there is no such thing as a hierarchy, and he blesses them
all. This is a picture, by the way, of
what Christ is going to do. Isn’t He
going to give His body, which is the bread and the wine, to everybody. So this is an adumbration of the work of
Jesus Christ.
And so it is this work that Michal despises with her heart. Now also to catch the point, so you can
understand how daughter picks up habits from father, when daddy was watching
David go out to Goliath, remember what was crossing his mind; it wasn’t the
fantastic miracle that was going on right in front of him, it wasn’t the fact
that here this young boy pulled something off that nobody else in the army
does; it was who’s his father and mother, some goofy, trivial, stupid, idiotic
thing, and that is a carnal believer, never can get the point of anything,
always has to hop on some little trivial thing.
Saul is a man of trivia, he specializes in it. And every carnal believer at this state
specializes in the trivia. You watch
that, it happens over and over and over again; it’s disgusting in Christian
circles. We can have somebody that’s
excited about the Lord and just because they haven’t gone on with the Lord and
reached your great level of maturity, and they’re sitting there blowing smoke
in your face and sharing something about the Word, just fan the smoke away and
enjoy what they’re sharing with you about the Word. If they do something else that offends you, just
be gracious to them and get the point.
They are enjoying the Lord as they have discovered Him, and the Lord
will train them, just relax. But don’t
get so uppity and trite and tense about it and people who do are trivial
believers. Does the Word of God say it
has to be done that way; if it hasn’t, then it’s not an absolute, it can be
changed.
So here we have operation trivia in the daughter. Her father was a specialist in discussing
trivial things at the times when he’d be face to face with a great
miracle. Here we have seen the greatest
adumbration of Jesus Christ the nation had ever seen, for a monarch... for the
monarch to get down there with an ephod and dance with the peasant girls before
the ark of God, for the monarch to pass out food, even to the women, was a
tremendous declaration.
Now comes verse 20, “Then David returned to bless his household.” He was going to go home and bless everyone in
his household, and so guess who meets him at the door. She’s just come downstairs now, she was
looking out the top window. And so as
females are very skillful in doing, she greets him with one of these
pseudo-front type operations. “And
Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David, and said, How glorious
was the king of Israel today,” can’t you just hear her saying it, just drooling,
“How glorious was the king of Israel today, who uncovered himself today in the
eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain [worthless] fellows
shamelessly uncovers himself.” This is a
crack at the ephod that he was wearing.
And the point was that he probably didn’t wear too much under it, that’s
true. And he was dancing around the
street and it’d probably fly up and so forth, and that was her central concern,
how long his underwear was.
Here he was making the most fantastic declaration to the nation that the
nation had ever seen, something that went against every single governmental
structure of the whole ancient society, and she’s worried about the length of
his underwear. This is how stupid believers
when they get wrapped up in the trivia.
And that’s why you never see the Lord work, you’re worried about the
length of somebody’s underwear and the Lord is working right in front of
you. They had the same thing, everybody
going measuring how short the girls skirts are, same thing, here it is, except
she’s measuring how short his skirt his.
And so she says that you’ve “uncovered yourself,” you’re a naughty boy,
see. Big issue... big issue, and so
David finally recognizes it and he tells her off good. And this is the end of that marriage.
Verse 21, “And David said unto Michal, It was before the LORD,” I did
that as unto the Lord, and when I danced down there with those girls it was
done with a pure motive before the Lord, it wasn’t done with the barmaids down
there, what do I care what they think, I care what the Lord thinks, and I did
it as unto him. And then he has a good
crack back at her, “who chose me before thy father,” this just put it right
back where it belongs, the same God that chose me. And you know, this is better than just
sarcasm here because David is getting to the point, he knows why Michal hates
him, it isn’t because he hasn’t satisfied her or something, that’s not the
point. They’ve had a good marriage the
short time that it lasted. That wasn’t
the point, the point was that she hated the Lord for which David fought, and he
stood for the Lord and she hated him.
And so he’s just rubbing it in, I know your number woman, you just hate
the Lord, and it’s the same God, and I know why you hate the Lord, because he
chose me over your daddy; now isn’t that right.
So he just rubs it right in.
“...who chose me before your father, and before all his house, “ now
we’re going to see what the Holy Spirit does here, the Holy Spirit is going to
seize those words, “all his house,” and remember, here’s Saul, the male seed of
Saul has already been cut off, Saul has a chance up to this point of having one
of his daughters marry David so that his seed can become mixed with David’s
seed and at this point David says huh-un, the Lord chose me over all your
house, male and female. “... to appoint
me ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel; therefore will I play” it
means dance “before the LORD.”
Verse 22, “And I will yet be more vile than this,” if you don’t like
what I just did, lady you haven’t seen anything yet, because the next thing I’m
going to do, I’m going to do something that you just grind your teeth on,
something that you just can’t even face, he says “I am going to be base in my
own sight,” now what that means, David is saying is that I am going to have the
mental attitude that you can’t possibly every have; you are so proud about your
family background, you’re so proud about the kind of situation you’ve come
from, royal princess, well I’ll tell you something, I can debase myself with my
own attitude and have perfect conscience before God. I can get down there and be a slave for
Jehovah. In other words, David is
confessing humility and he says that the worst thing you can stand, isn’t it;
and so if you want to really get frosted, you just stay around and you’re going
to get a good healthy dose of humility that is going to rub your pride right up
the wall. This is his attitude; he says
you haven’t seen anything yet. You are
angry at me staring out the window, when I wad won there; well just live with
me a little longer and you’re going to see something you can’t believe.
And then finally he concludes, “and of the maidservants whom you have
spoken of, of them shall I be had in honor,” in other words, I’m going to
humiliate myself before the Lord and those girls down there that I danced with
that you were worried about, they appreciate what I have done for them, I have
just gone on declaration of declaring where the women stand in this country before
God, I have given them their freedom and I will be held in honor before them,
the same girls that you couldn’t stand, they will honor me.
Verse 23, the Holy Spirit adds the commentary, “Therefore, Michal, the
daughter of Saul, had no child unto the day of her death.” More than that, 2 Samuel 21:8 adds later on
that she had to care for the five sons of her sister, and David finally had all
those five sons publicly slaughtered; Michal died a woman utterly frustrated,
she died with a mental attitude of her father, the product of compound
carnality over many years of disobedience to the Lord. Shall we bow our heads....