As I grow older, I am grateful that I am able to feel more deeply about things that have happened in history.

I find I am moved to grieve at the account of Michal, Saul’s daughter: she loved David, the mighty man of God, and he risked his life twofold to have her, and she saved his life from her own father.

But, with David in exile, and her helpless in Saul’s hands, she David’s wife was adulterously given to another man, to Phalti. This soft, loathsome creature had her to himself and lavished her with his corrupt affections for years upon years, and wept after her when she was returned to her true husband, to slink back like the serpent that he was at the rebuke of David’s servants.

But to the breaking of the heart, it appears that Phalti’s protracted control over her, his insidious tender seductions, had poisoned the girl’s heart; whether to compare David’s honest love with his saccharine attentions and flatteries; or to be bitter with David that he was not able to release her sooner; or by his sickening example always before her Phalti taught her to despise passionate men regardless of their good or evil, as it was David’s exultant passion which she wickedly despised. That her beautiful love should come to sour disdain, and a barren womb, is one of the most desolate sorrows ever recorded.

One can only hope that, like Hagar, in her grief and loss, she turned again to Yahweh, and to meek and devoted love for her lord David.

2023/03/18 #SabbathPosts