When Love Turns to Contempt
TV fans know that soapies are not happy stories. The story of Michal in the Bible (1 Samuel 18) appears to be such a story. Movies, commentators and preachers have shown her in an unfavourable light but she was a woman betrayed by the two men in her life, David and her father, King Saul. From the beginning it seems that the concerns of Michal's father, the servants and David revolved around David becoming the king's son in law. Michal however loved David who appears to have had the good looks of a young Brad Pitt. This is the only time in the Old Testament when we are told that a woman loved a man. We are never told that David loved Michal. When things did not go well for David and Michal's father, Saul, tried to kill him, Michal saved David's life and helped him escape. No sooner was David out the way that her father married her off to another man, Palti (1 Samuel 25:44). In the next episode of this good soapie material we discover that David had been v...