Events following David’s encounter with Goliath caused growing recognition, admiration, and pains for him. His position as high-ranking officer and commander provided him opportunity to demonstrate leadership and grow reputation as potential future king of Israel. He cherished the opportunity and persevered despite growing enmity from Saul. He was loyal to Saul but vigilant to protect himself while faithfully providing Saul palliative care. However, he suffered an apparent misstep by marrying Saul’s daughter Michal despite indications that the marriage was not of God.
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David leads Israel over Philistines Sweet Publishing FreeBibleImages.org
Several events that David encountered following his victory over Goliath caused changes important to his preparation to become king of Israel. Some of the changes were clearly positive whereas others appear negative. We discuss the events and the changes they caused: to understand the positive and apparently negative changes and David’s behavior as they developed. Through the discussion, we seek better understanding of how David waited for God’s time in his preparation for kingship and how the understanding could apply to a person’s day to day life in waiting for God’s intervention.
A marriage arranged to serve extraneous interests likely will be unsuccessful and bring no benefit to the couple. Example: David-Michal marriage was motivated by interests different from any desire by the couple to live in marital love. Michal’s father Saul sought the marriage to lure David into danger. David embraced the marriage to show military valor and triumph over Philistines. Michal, on her part, was infatuated with being the king’s wife. Furthermore, while David believed in life founded on worshiping and serving God, Michal had no such belief or understanding. They were unequally yoked before God; therefore, incompatible for marriage.
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We discuss David-Michal marital interactions to learn from their experience. Their marriage was driven by inappropriate motivations, got off on the wrong foot, and ended without discernible benefit to them individually or as a couple. We study negatives from their marriage to enrich our understanding of positive aspects of modern day marriages.
Growing pains. Incompatible in marriage Sweet Publishing freebibleimages.org
Michal’s father, Saul, the first king of Israel, lobbied hard to persuade David to marry Michal, because he wanted to use the marriage to lure David to death to eliminate him from contending for the throne of Israel. Michal, on her part, appeared to love David. However, later events showed that all she really cared about was getting married to a young man that was highly admired among her contemporaries and expected to become the king of Israel sometime later. She was in love with the prospect of such a marriage but did not know or understand David enough to care about him as a potential husband. David apparently got into the marriage to show himself equal to the challenge for a gruesome conquest and mutilation of several Philistines, the then number one enemy of Israel. He cherished his “prize” for the valiant victory, brought to life through marriage to Michal, but did not love or care about her as a wife.
David-Michal marriage, therefore, was arranged to satisfy interests totally extraneous to the marital interest of David and Michal. The marriage was driven by inappropriate motivation. In this study, we discuss events leading to David-Michal marriage to understand the marriage got off on the wrong foot because of inappropriate motivation. Also, we note that David and Michal separated for a long time and re-united thereafter. We discuss the separation and re-unification to underscore their lack of personal commitment either to their marriage or to each other. Further, we discuss a specific event that brought their mutual dismay to the surface. We use information from the event to understand their marriage was unsuccessful because they were unequally yoked before God and, therefore, incompatible for marriage.
