Michal

, 1865, Michal helps young David escape.
_{"So Michal let David down through a window: and he went, and fled, and escaped". Samuel 1, chapter 19, 12}]]
Michal was a daughter of King Saul in the Old Testament , who loved and married David . Their story is recorded in the Book Of Samuel . In I Samuel chapter 19, she chooses the welfare of her husband over the wishes of her father. When Saul's messengers are searching for David in order to kill him, Michal secretly sends David away while pretending he is ill and laid up in bed. Whilst David is hiding for his life, Saul gives Michal as a wife to Paltiel son of Laish, who gives her five sons, and David takes several other wives including Abigail .

David does however ask for Michal after he is crowned in Judah following Saul's death. Paltiel follows her weeping but is powerless to prevent her from leaving him.

And David sent messengers to Ishbosheth, Saul's son, saying, 'Deliver me my wife Michal, which I espoused to me for an hundred foreskins of the Philistines.'

And Ishbosheth sent, and took her from her husband, even from Phaltiel the son of Laish.

And her husband went with her along weeping behind her to Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, 'Go, return.' and he returned.

::::(II Samuel 3:14-16, King James Version)

In 2 Samuel 6, Michal comes to despise David because he dances, partially unclothed in public, before the Lord in a religious procession. While the entire house of Israel was involved in the event of bringing the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem, Michal watched from the window. The story implies that Michal thinks this activity is beneath a king, and would cause him to lose the respect of his subjects. The account is linked in the narrative with her inability to have any more children for the rest of her life.

The five sons of Michal and Phaltiel lost their lives due to a political agreement between David, as King of Israel, and the Gibeonites. II Samuel 21 reports that a three year famine was attributed to the breaking of an oath to protect the Gibeonites by David's predecessor and Michal's father Saul. When the Gibeonites were asked what actions would make atonement for the many lives they had lost due to Saul's war against them, they requested that seven men of his lineage be handed over to them for execution. Of Saul's remaining descendants, David chose two living sons of Saul by his wife Rizpah and the five sons of Michal. The seven men were publicly hung upon a hill.

David would be succeeded by Solomon , a son of Bathsheba.

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Michal