Complex and Compelling: The Nasty Woman Named Michal

Read more in 2nd Samuel 6 about an obscure character who shows we have choices in our non-choices

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Transcript

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

August 4, 2024

“Complex and Compelling”

2nd Samuel 6: 20-22, 7: 1-3 – Common English Bible

David went home to bless his household, but Saul’s daughter Michal came out to meet him. “How did Israel’s king honor himself today?” she said. “By exposing himself in plain view of the female servants of his subjects like any indecent person would!”

21 David replied to Michal, “I was celebrating before the Lord, who chose me over your father and his entire family, and who appointed me leader over the Lord’s people, over Israel—and I will celebrate before the Lord again! 22 I may humiliate myself even more, and I may be humbled in my own eyes, but I will be honored by the female servants you are talking about!”

7 When the king was settled in his palace,[a] and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, 2 the king said to the prophet Nathan, “Look! I’m living in a cedar palace, but God’s chest is housed in a tent!”[b]

3 Nathan said to the king, “Go ahead and do whatever you are thinking, because the Lord is with you.”

Let’s do a quick catch up with where we started this summer.

• Hannah gave birth to a son she named Samuel and gave him to a priest named Eli to raise.  
• When he was 16, one night Samuel heard God calling his name but he thought it was Eli.  Samuel woke him up three times before Eli realized it was God calling, so he told Samuel that if he heard that voice again to say, “Here I am.”  
• Samuel said yes and grew to become one of the greatest prophets in history but the people wanted more power and respect and demanded that he name a king for them.  
• Concerned and reluctant, Samuel chose Saul, a handsome young man who stood a foot taller than the rest.  
• At first, Saul was a great leader and led 12 disorganized tribes to win a succession of victories over an impossible enemy, the Philistines.  
• But all the praise and adulation went to his head and he soon began acting as though he was above the law.  This greatly angered God, so God told Samuel to find someone who would replace Saul one day.  
• He chose a sweet little shepherd named David, the youngest of 8 brothers, a talented musician who liked to daydream and chase butterflies.  
• One day he brought lunch to his brothers on the battlefield and discovered that no one dared go up against a giant named Goliath.  David said, “I’ll do it!” He pulled a slingshot out of his pocket and killed him with just one stone.  
• David cut off his head and brought it to King Saul who praised his heroism.  
• At a banquet in his honor, David met Saul’s oldest son, Jonathan, and there was an immediate bond.  They established a covenant that is one of the greatest love stories in the Bible.
• Saul’s moods swung between madness and paranoia and he became wildly jealous.  The people loved David.  His son Jonathon loved David.  And his daughter Michal loved David, which is the only time in the entire biblical record that a woman loved a man.
• Saul thought he could exploit his daughter’s love as a weakness, so publicly, Saul praised David but behind his back, plotted to kill him – accidentally, of course.  Such a tragedy!
• Saul made a grand gesture of promising his daughter Merab to David if he won an impossible battle.  Of course he did, but Saul told David, oops, I already married her to someone else.  
• But here, you can have Michal if you bring back the foreskins of 100 Philistines, who, to say the least, were not going to give them up without a fight.  Well, ever the overachiever, David came back with 200 so Saul had no choice but to keep his promise.  

So much for a “quick” recap!  But here we are.  David handed Saul 200 foreskins – I have questions, like in a basket full of them? – and Michal became David’s first wife.  That is, until somehow, she wasn’t.  She was taken away and married off to another man named Palti.  That is until all of a sudden David some years later wanted her back and had her brought to Jerusalem, where by that time, she joined as perhaps his 7th wife but still considered the 1st?  Except that she was also married to Palti who was heartbroken, so heartbroken that he followed behind the caravan all the way to Jerusalem, crying and wailing the whole way.  Poor guy.  I’ll say again, soap opera writers need to read the Bible for story ideas!

So, back and forth she went, a pawn, which helps explain why, in today’s scripture, Michal looked down from a window and seethed.  She watched her husband leading a procession in front of the Ark of the Covenant, dancing nearly naked, and “she despised him in her heart.”  

Partly hurt by how she had been treated, perhaps she also knew this was a stunt.  One part his love of the Lord and one part, political theatre.  You see, David brought the Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Chest of God, to Jerusalem because he wanted to cement his authority as king by having their most important religious symbol in his possession – in the City of David.  Michal, both hurt and cynical, confronted his indecent exposure, essentially a loin cloth, and for shocking the delicate sensibilities of the ladies, her words dripping with sarcasm and contempt.  David simply responded, “I’ll dance for the Lord if I want to dance for the Lord.”  

But he did more than retort.  He punished her for her comments, and refused to sleep with her, or maybe she refused to sleep with him.  Either way, she died childless, surrounded only by her cats.

The expectation is that we see Michal as a tragic character.  Poor Michal.  I prefer to think of her as complex and compelling.  What a fascinating woman.  And again, is this someone you’ve even heard of before?  Well, it’s remarkable that we even know her name.

A pawn, yes, or at least maybe, but she’s so much more than a pawn.  First of all, she is assigned agency as the only woman in the entire Bible about whom we are told she loved a man – which was recognized as a power.  

Secondly, she’s clever.  For example, during one of her father’s murderous rages, King Saul ordered his henchmen to find David and bring him in.  When they arrived, she helped David escape through a window and then answered the door.  She whispered, “he has a terrible cold” and pointed to the bedroom.  “He’s resting.”  And to prove it, she motioned them to the bedroom and showed them a bed she had filled with straw to make it look like he was asleep and they left.  That was truly brave.  

She took a politically astute and calculated risk to protect David from her father, something which David did not return in kind.  She saved his life.  Her “reward” was his disappearance.  She never saw him again.  That is, until years later when he took her away from a man who actually loved her dearly.  

And that’s when she dared confront her husband, angry about her treatment, skeptical that his motives to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem were totally authentic, accusing him of scandalous behavior.  And can we ask why was she looking down from the window?  Wouldn’t a wife, or a harem of wives, be expected to attend such an event?  Was it her act of quiet resistance to refuse to attend?  

Clever, astute, brave, risk taker, outspoken… Well, you should read the way male commentators describe her, calling her the equivalent of “such a nasty woman.”  “Emotionally cold, a social climber, selfish, self-centered, and proud.  Michal thought only of herself.”  Commentators would call these virtues if describing a man.  Such characterizations of her are completely absent from the text and can only be described as blatant, naked, sexism.  Sadly, even Walter Brueggemann suggests that Michal either can’t understand or refused to acknowledge that David is showing his love for God.  But Michal has seen too much and won’t be kept silent – consequences and all.  She is complex and I find her compelling.  A three-dimensional character.  Like us.

You may ask, why do you keep telling these stories of such obscure people – particularly women?  

One, because it’s important to say their name.  Say their name.

Two, it’s important to call sexist behavior for what it is.  The attempt to diminish and demean, then and now.  

Three, to state the obvious that great heroes like David are real people with mixed motives – just like us.  Capable of great love and terrible deceit, and nevertheless dearly loved by God.  It gets much worse.  Today we are introduced Nathan.  Powerful men like to surround themselves with sycophants, court jesters, “yes men” to whatever keeps them in close proximity to power.  Nathan is no such fool.

Fourth, we can honor David and any hero but remember that only God is worthy of worship.  Expecting too much of any human will surely disappoint.  Only God can save us.

I like Michal and think she demonstrates that we all have power to exercise even in the most limited of circumstances.  You may feel stuck today in some way.  What are the choices you actually do have?  With both the choices we make and choices that are imposed upon us, we retain dignity.  Claim your power to be clever, brave, and outspoken.