A Snare in the Marriage
17 Saul said to David, “Behold, my elder daughter Merab. I will give her to you as wife. Only be valiant for me, and fight Yahweh’s battles.” For Saul said, “Don’t let my hand be on him, but let the hand of the Philistines be on him.” 18 David said to Saul, “Who am I, and what is my life, or my father’s family in Israel, that I should be son-in-law to the king?” 19 But at the time when Merab, Saul’s daughter, should have been given to David, she was given to Adriel the Meholathite as wife. 20 Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. 21 Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Therefore Saul said to David a second time, “You shall today be my son-in-law.” 22 Saul commanded his servants, “Talk with David secretly, and say, ‘Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now therefore be the king’s son-in-law.’” 23 Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David. David said, “Does it seem to you a light thing to be the king’s son-in-law, since I am a poor man and little known?” 24 The servants of Saul told him, saying, “David spoke like this.” 25 Saul said, “Tell David, ‘The king desires no dowry except one hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies.’” Now Saul thought he would make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. 26 When his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king’s son-in-law. Before the deadline, 27 David arose and went, he and his men, and killed two hundred men of the Philistines. Then David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full number to the king, that he might be the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him Michal his daughter as wife. 28 Saul saw and knew that Yahweh was with David; and Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him. 29 Saul was even more afraid of David; and Saul was David’s enemy continually. 30 Then the princes of the Philistines went out; and as often as they went out, David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was highly esteemed.
Saul turns his daughters into weapons and the bride price into a death sentence — and every trap he sets makes David greater.
Saul said to David, “Behold, my elder daughter Merab. I will give her to you as wife. Only be valiant for me, and fight Yahweh’s battles.” For Saul said, “Don’t let my hand be on him, but let the hand of the Philistines be on him.”
The narrator gives us the king's private sentence next to his public one, and the gap between them is the chapter's subject. Saul has moved from spear-throwing to arrangement — the same murder, outsourced, with piety in the wording. Fight Yahweh's battles is a genuinely religious phrase in the mouth of a man using it to arrange a funeral, and it is more dangerous than the spear, because nothing about it can be dodged in public.
Merab, promised, is quietly married off to another man 1 Samuel 18:19 — the king's word broken without explanation, and the reward advertised for killing Goliath 1 Samuel 17:25 withheld. David says nothing about it.
20 Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. 21 Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Therefore Saul said to David a second time, “You shall today be my son-in-law.”
His daughter's love pleases him as an opportunity. Michal is the only woman in Scripture said to love a man this way, and her father hears it as the click of a trap closing — a snare, a way to bind David into the household and expose him to Philistine spears. Everyone in this chapter is a means: the daughters, the servants sent to flatter 1 Samuel 18:22, the army, the enemy.
Saul said, “Tell David, ‘The king desires no dowry except one hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies.’” Now Saul thought he would make David fall by the hand of the Philistines.
The bride price is set in body counts, and its arithmetic is homicidal: a poor young man with no property is offered a marriage he can only buy at the price of a hundred separate chances to die. David's response — it pleased David well to be the king's son-in-law 1 Samuel 18:26 — and the doubled tally he brings back, two hundred for a hundred, show a man who does not yet grasp that the king wants him dead. His ambition here is honest and slightly reckless, and it saves him. The trap keeps missing.
28 Saul saw and knew that Yahweh was with David; and Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him. 29 Saul was even more afraid of David; and Saul was David’s enemy continually.
The conclusion is the tragedy in one line: Saul knew. He is not deceived about who is with David; the evidence has been conclusive for some time. And knowing it, he becomes the enemy — an enemy of a man because he is an enemy of a verdict, which is the only way to fight God directly. The chapter's last word gives the score: David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was highly esteemed 1 Samuel 18:30. Every scheme raises the man it was meant to bury.
settled What this mark means