Saul can now think of nothing except the threat of David.…Saul resolves to kill David as soon as he comes out of his house in the morning.… Saul’s immediate problem is the powerful intervention of his own children, first his son and then his daughter, who thwart him. Jonathan had been direct with Saul and persuasive in his rhetoric. Michal, by contrast, is devious and indirect but equally effective. Even in his desperate escape through a window, David takes no initiative to save himself. It is Michal who initiates the action; she lets him out the window so that he escapes from the guards posted by Saul. Moreover, it is Michal who constructs the elaborate subterfuge to give David time to escape. She reports that David is sick. Saul is so desperate, so frightened, and so angry that he is prepared to kill a sick man while he has his chance. When the messengers arrive, they discover what the reader already knows: David is not there. A dummy made to look like David is in the bed, a dummy, ironically enough, constructed of household gods. At least they are useful for something in this Yahwistic account! Only then does the father speak to his daughter. Only then do we hear the pathos in Saul’s voice. “Why have you deceived me thus and let my enemy go?” Saul’s pathos, however, is not enough to compel Michal’s honest respect. Michal dissembles once more. She declares that she helped David escape because David threatened her. At least Saul can retain the fiction of his self-respect as the father of this daughter. Only we and the narrator know better. Saul is so pitiful that he dare not know the truth. Only we know that the daughter has fully betrayed her father for the David whom she loves, whom Saul hates. We seem to be reading a dime-store novel or watching a seedy soap opera. There is nothing here of God or God’s will or God’s coming [realm]. We are treated to calculating human actions that do not conform to our expectations. Something is deeply awry when a future king must crawl through a window, when the wife of a coming king must lie to the father who is still king. The evil spirit of Saul has infected the whole scene. Saul has let David escape. Now Saul is alone with the demon, without the object of his intense hate. Through his obsession with David, Saul has lost a son and now a daughter. --W. Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel. Interpretation
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 04:38:14 +0000
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