I’d like to talk about a figure in the Bible for whom I have a lot of sympathy. Her story pains me. Michal, perhaps the only woman in the Bible to really love her husband before the marriage. I’ve never heard a good word said about Michal, and I find her tale in the histories to be tragic, on a human and a spiritual level, and fundamentally unfair.

This begins with King Saul, who is Michal’s father, and David, who is a young friend who will one day be king. Saul was deeply suspicious and envious of David, and wanted to marry him to his daughter to keep him close and keep an eye on him.

From 1 Samuel 18

20 Now Saul’s daughter Michal was in love with David, and when they told Saul about it, he was pleased. “I will give her to him,” he thought, “so that she may be a snare to him and so that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” So Saul said to David, “Now you have a second opportunity to become my son-in-law.”

It is, by the way, very useful for David to be Saul’s son-in-law, as it gives him a legitimate place in the royal family. David is not from a wealthy family so he can’t pay the bride price, so Saul gives him the challenge of killing two hundred Philistines and bringing back their foreskins, which is sick but David does it valiantly.

From the text, “David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.

When Saul realized that the Lord was with David and that his daughter Michal loved David, Saul became still more afraid of him, and he remained his enemy the rest of his days.

Up to this point, the only thing we know about Michal is she loves David, and then gets to marry him, which is a fairy-tale delight in an age of bride-prices and arranged marriage. As Saul grows violent and makes war with David, Michal protects her new husband from her father, and saves his life, allowing him to escape the city. So David is able to run off to temporary exile in Philistia. Michal is married again - Saul’s choice again - to a man called Palti from the town of Gallim. Later, when David returned from exile ready to fight, he demanded that he should have his wife back. After all, he says, I paid for her so I have a legal right. So Michal goes back to Jerusalem. When Palti realises he’s losing his wife, he’s incredibly upset, and he follows her, weeping and weeping for miles and miles and miles.

...which is really sad, and is surely cause for us to question the morality of the whole thing, even if the text offers no explicit judgement. What Michal makes of all this divorce is not recorded. But her reunion with David went badly. He’d been off in Philistia and had married at least two more wives - surely enough to wound Michal, who I remind you genuinely loved David and earlier saved his life, and without so much as saying hello, or asking after her happiness David demolishes whatever she has with the mild-mannered Palti. I don’t know. Maybe she was glad to be rid of her second husband, but from the text the whole affair was a mess and a bad one too.

When they meet, David is dancing joyfully into the city accompanying the Arc of the Covenant, the holiest relic, the seat at which the Spirit of God communicated with his priests. David is right to be joyful. This is not just his own triumph, but a glorious day for Israel’s relationship with God, which is made anew by the return of the Arc. But he’s irked Michal, and he’s coming with his wives, and he’s dancing semi-naked in a skirt or kilt and kicking his legs up leaving nothing to the imagination. Michal sees this, and according to 2 Samuel 6 she despised him in her heart.

She goes to him and says “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”

to which David replies “I was dancing before the Lord — he and not your father Saul made me ruler — and I will celebrate and make merry before before the Lord. And if I’m undigified, well I’m going to be even more undignified in future, and be humiliated, but the slave girls you mentioned will still hold me in honour.’

And he’s sort of right, but it just seems a really churlish retort. He’s absolutely right to rejoice with abandon before God, and Michal is strongly criticised for ignoring the return of the Ark - which is to ignore the very presence of God - and focus on David’s parts. She’s shown as absolutely wrong to see the ark and have a heart filled with despising, but I cannot shake the idea that David bears some responsibility for this. Consistently, he is commended for his faith, but does rash and terrible and sinful things and treats Michal with a lot less love that she deserves.

I have heard it said, and I believe it, that nobody can part you from God. Nobody can come between you and God and separate you from the love and grace of that relationship. But — I think people can really make it harder for you to form that relationship with God in the first place. The most toxic, hate-filled Christians - the ones who might say ‘God loves guns’, and only shout - make Christianity look like an ideology of hatred, and I often wonder how many people have had their chance of ever choosing to enter a church or pick up a Bible destroyed. If you’re a churlish gatekeeper, nobody will be able to enter the gates of the church. However great your faith, if you don’t act with love and basic kindness to other people, you make God seem unapproachable. On the day the Ark returned, David is full of praise for God and is having a wonderful time, but I think the sum of his actions ruin Michal’s life and push her away from the faith.

I worry sometimes that things I have done could make the church, or God, or Jesus seem distant, or seem exclusive or cringe, or that the way I have treated people unkindly and inhospitably has made Christianity seem unkind or unsafe or not welcoming. I think despite his faith and his valour David is guilty of those things.

“And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.” That’s the last thing the chapter has to say about her. My former vicar Nick once preached on this passage and said that she was cursed to be barren, but I don’t think so! I can’t find that claim in my Bible. She was wrong to frown upon God’s return - but she wasn’t frowning at God but at David. I will not claim God cursed her in this way - first because I think infertility is a suck-ass curse, especially if we’re saying it’s a curse on the one woman to marry for love — and second because I think Michal’s childlessness is a tragically human division between Michal and David. This exchange ruined ther marriage, and they never had sex again. David made a judgement on her on that day. He was the punisher. If God made a judgement, we don’t hear about it.

It’s an important general rule to have: if the Bible doesn’t actually say God cursed someone, don’t you ever say God cursed them. Putting words in God’s mouth is the start of wars and division. Putting your curses into God’s fingers is taking God’s name in vain. Love God and love one another, please. It’s that simple.