Michal
Michal ( Hebrew מִיכַל) is a woman mentioned in the Tanakh , the Hebrew Bible . She was the youngest daughter of the Israelite King Saul . She fell in love with the shepherd soon after David killed Goliath .
Saul reluctantly agreed, knowing that the people were sticking to David and he had already decided to kill David. So he ordered David to bring the foreskins of 100 dead Philistines as the bride price , in the hope that David would be killed in the action. David, however, fulfilled the task assigned to him, even replaced the 100 required foreskins with 200, and married Michal.
But Saul's hatred of David grew. After almost killing his son-in-law with a spear and he fled to Michal, Saul ordered his soldiers to go to David's house and get him. But Michal found out about the murder squad and helped her husband by rappelling him out of the window at night with a rope and hiding an idol in bed. The soldiers discovered the idol, which, in order to reinforce the illusion, was additionally draped with goatskin as hair. However, when Michal stood in front of Saul and Saul asked for an explanation, she lied to her father, claiming that David would have threatened her with death if she did not let him go.
Michal's marriage to David was soon annulled by Saul. She herself was given to a man named Paltiël from the small town of Gallim as wife. A few years later - David had an army behind him - he had Michal fetched and brought back to him. However, Michal had started to despise David, if not to hate him. This became evident just a few years later.
Michal had moved to Jerusalem with David , who soon after also brought the Ark of the Covenant to the new capital. Michal watched the procession from the window and was horrified when she saw David, who, according to the Old Testament account , was dancing around in front of the Ark of the Covenant, wearing only an efod . When David went to Michal that evening, she despised him.
"How glorious the King of Israel was today when he exposed himself to the maidservants of his men, how the loose people exposed themselves!"
However, David replied:
“I want to dance before the Lord , who has chosen me before your father and before all his house, to make me prince over the people of the Lord, over Israel, and I want to be even less than now and want to be low in mine Eyes; but I want to be honored with the maids you mentioned. "
The final piece of information that the scriptures reveal about Michal is that she never had a child with David. Scripture does not tell us why. Grete Weil , among others, fills this gap in her novel Der Brautpreis (1994), although it is critical of the Bible, but without changing the tradition or falsifying the Samuel texts in question. Grete Weil does not take over the (erroneous) "very last" information from the Scriptures, according to which Michal had born five sons to Adriel ( 2 Sam 21.8 EU ). The confusion between Michal and her older sister Merab in the most widely read Hebrew Bible is corrected in footnotes in Kittel and in the Stuttgart Masora, but is still adopted by Luther and by other translators to this day (e.g. Zurich 2007).
Web links
- Uta Schmidt: Michal. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical dictionary on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on September 4, 2008.