Some Reflections

"David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that He commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite" (1 Kings 15.5).

Such is the testimony of the Spirit of. God regarding the life of that great and worthy servant of God. But bow black is the stain of that tragedy in the matter of Uriah on David's life, and how much of sorrow he reaped in after days from his sin I We think of David sitting waiting for the news of the battle against Absalom which the Cushite brought to him of his first question after he heard that his forces had been victorious: which was," Is it well with the young man Absalom?" And when he was told of Absalom's death he was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept. "As he went, thus he said, 0 my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, 0 Absalom, my son, my son! "(2 Samuel 18.33). It is one of the most touching lamentations in Scripture of a father over his son. It is all the more sad when we think that this was part of God's judgement on a father's wrongdoing.

Sometimes we may think that wrong can be committed without God taking account of it. The wicked in the psalmist's day said,

"How doth God know?

And is there knowledge in the Most High ?"

(Psalm 73.11).

"they say, the LORD shall not see,

Neither shall the God of Jacob consider" (Psalm 94. 7).

God is aware of what is done on earth even to the idle word which men may speak, for which they will give account in the day of judgement (Matthew 12.36).

I have wondered, if David's early married life had been happier, whether the cloud which darkened his sky in his sin with Bathsheba would have happened. His marriage to Michal, Saul's daughter, seemed an ill-sorted affair. It is said that "Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (1 Samuel 18.1), and "all Israel and Judah loved David; for he went out and came in before them" (18.16), And Michal Saul's daughter loved David" (18.20), but, alas, when love in each case was put to the test as to whether they would be with David, the rejected king, their love failed in the test. Michal, like her brother Jonathan, stuck to her father (and perchance her mother also) and to her father's home. Where should Michal have been as a dutiful wife? The answer is, undoubtedly with her husband, at his side supporting and encouraging him in his trials. The first wife that God made was to be a help meet for her husband. Such was the purpose for which the first wife was made, but, alas, it did not work out that way, for Eve was the undoing of her husband, and many a wife has followed in Eve's footsteps.

There are others who like Sarah take their place at their husband's side and tramp on through life sharing life's privations and plenty, its joys and sorrows. "Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose children ye now are, if ye do well, and are not put in fear by any terror" (1 Peter 3.6). "Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you" (Isaiah 51.2), 50 said Isaiah the prophet, a descendant of that worthy couple.

But Michal did not tramp the desert with her husband as Sarah did with hers. If Michal's husband had been less ambitious (perhaps she thought !) and remained at home to look after the children and wash-up in the kitchen, and had been her help meet, instead of she being his help meet, things might have been different, but what then of God's purposes in David her husband? How would they have been realized? That was the chief purpose God had in Israel at that time, the testing of David, the raising of him to the throne, and the bringing of the Ark to Zion and the commencement of the service of praise there. All this Michal missed

At the end of the story of Nabal the Carmelite and his wife Abigail, in 1 Samuel 25., we are told, "Now Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Palti the son of Laish, which was in Gallim"(verse 44). When Abner, some time after Saul's death, sought to make a league with David, one of the conditions David made was, that he must bring Michal, Saul's daughter. "And Ish-bosheth [Saul's son] sent, and took her from her husband, even from Paltiel the son of Laish. And her husband went with her, weeping as he went, and followed her to Bahurim" (2 Samuel 3.15, 16). Michal was reaping the bitter fruit of both her own and her father's folly. Had she been with her true husband David such things would not have happened. Saul evidently thought, if he knew the law at all, that as king he was superior in his decisions to the marriage law as affecting his house and the house of Israel when he gave David's wife to another man.

As to Michal's own spiritual condition, we get an insight into this in the incident of the bringing up of the Ark to Zion. It was a day of great joy for David, and the realization of his hope for years past. In his joy he danced before the LORD; but what of Michal? Here again we have the Spirit's comment on such events.

"And it was so, as the Ark of the LORD came into the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looked out at the window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart" (2 Samuel 6.16).

Shortly after she voiced her opinion about him in the words

"How glorious was the king of Israel to-day ... as one of the vain fellows ... (verse 20).

Michal might be thirty-five years of age or a little more about this time, and we have not only David's disapproval of her behaviour, but also God's, for "Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death" (verse 23). Thus came to an end the life of a woman who had quite evidently no sympathy with the divinely ordered life and work of her husband, one of God's most noble servants, a man beautiful in both face and character, and one of the most highly gifted of men. Happy married life depends on many things, but the word concerning a husband at the beginning of the human race is of prime importance,

"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave

(be glued) unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Genesis 2.24).

And the word to a wife is similar-

" Hearken, 0 daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear;

Forget also thine own people, and thy father's house;

So shall the King desire thy beauty:

For He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him" (Psalm 45.10, 11).

It may be said that this last scripture applies to the Bride of Christ. Truly this is so, but are not Christ and the Church taken up by Paul as the patterns for husband and wife in Ephesians 5.22-33 ? Love on the part of the husband, and subjection on the part of the wife. A loveless husband and a rebellious wife soon drive married happiness out of the door and leave the home with a cheerless fireside.

unknown | Mar 1955
For Young Believers