Michal (The Wives of King David #1) by Jill Eileen Smith - Now here is a Biblical character whose story hasn't been told in a historical novel form before. At least not that I'm aware of. After all, it doesn't seem like there's a happy ending possible when we read about her in the Old Testament. However, Smith does a good job of giving Michal a personality, background, and motivations to help us come up with plausible explanations for her actions and attitudes.
We know that Michal is the younger daughter of King Saul, and the Bible tells us a few things about her. She loved David, and he was pleased about it. She was given as a bride to David, and at least once helped him escape when her father was trying to kill him. Later, while David was on the run from Saul, she was given to someone else as a bride. After Saul's death, David demanded that Michal be returned to him. And the last thing we're told is that Michal despised and criticized David for his dancing in celebration of the return of the Ark to Jerusalem, and this story is followed by the statement that she was childless until her death.
I have often wondered how Michal went from loving David and lying to her father, the king, to save him; to despising him in her heart. Smith offers up a storyline that connects those dots. While this book imagines all the background details, it doesn't contradict the Scripture, and I found it to be very helpful as far as following the timeline of events and giving context to the historical setting. In my own reading of the accounts in the Bible, I didn't fully appreciate the amount of time between Michal's marriage to David and her returning to him after he became king. I also didn't realize how long she had been living as wife to Paltiel after David's escape from Saul. However much she loved David at the beginning of her story, and whatever she felt about her marriage to Paltiel, Scripture is clear that Paltiel was devastated at losing her because he followed the entourage weeping. She was apparently married to Paltiel for something like seventeen years, during which time David took several other wives and Michal's own father and brothers were killed, so it's quite reasonable to think that her attitude towards David was radically changed!
Overall, I enjoyed the book and the insights into what life may have been like for Michal and David and the other characters involved in their stories. The ending is definitely bittersweet, because it doesn't soften the blow of barrenness and loneliness, but it leaves room for Michal to repent and reconcile. There are at least two other novels in Smith's "The Wives of King David" series, and I am hoping to read those as well.
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