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appealed to his father, and that in language so telling and frank, that the king himself
was for the moment won. So it had been only frenzy - the outburst of the moment,
but not the king's real heart-purpose - and David returned to court!
The hope was vain. The next success against the Philistines rekindled all the evil
passions of the king. Once more, as he yielded to sin, the spirit of evil was sent in
judgment - this time from Jehovah. As Saul heard the rushing of his dark pinions
around him, it was not sudden frenzy which seized him, but he attempted deliberate
murder. What a contrast: David with the harp in his hand, and Saul with his spear;
David sweeping the chords to waken Divine melody in the king's soul, and the king
sending the javelin with all his might, so that, as it missed its aim, it stuck in the wall
close by where David had but lately sat. Meanwhile David escaped to his own house,
apparently unwilling even now to believe in the king's deliberate purpose of murder.
It was Saul's own daughter who had to urge upon her husband the terrible fact of her
father's planned crime and the need of immediate flight, and with womanly love and
wit to render it possible. How great the danger had been; how its meshes had been
laid all around and well nigh snared him - but chiefly what had been David's own
feelings, and what his hope in that hour of supreme danger: all this, and much more
for the teaching of the Church of all ages, we gather from what he himself tells us in
the fifty-ninth Psalm.^182
The peril was past; and while the cowardly menials of Saul -though nominally of
Israel, yet in heart and purpose, as in their final requital, "heathens" (Psalm 59:6, 8) -
prowled about the city and its walls on their terrible watch of murder, "growling"
like dogs that dare not bark to betray their presence, and waiting till the dawn would
bring their victim, lured to safety, within reach of their teeth, Michal compassed the
escape of her husband through a window - probably on the city-wall. In so doing she
betrayed, however, alike the spirit of her home and that of her times. The daughter of
Saul, like Rachel of old (Genesis 31:19), seems to have had Teraphim - the old
Aramaean or Chaldean household gods, which were probably associated with
fertility. For, despite the explicit Divine prohibition and the zeal of Samuel against
all idolatry, this most ancient form of Jewish superstition appears to have continued
in Israelitish households (comp. Judges 17:5; 18:14; 1 Samuel 15:23; Hosea 3:4;
Zechariah 10:2). The Teraphim must have borne the form of a man; and Michal now
placed this image in David's bed, arranging about the head "the plait of camel's
hair,"^183 and covering the whole "with the upper garment" (as coverlet), to represent
David lying sick.
The device succeeded in gaining time for the fugitive, and was only discovered
when Saul sent his messengers a second time, with the peremptory order to bring
David in the bed. Challenged by her father for her deceit, she excused her conduct
(^)