A Strange Love Story

As I was trusting God for what to share on the blog today as I am yet to fulfill God’s mandate for the blog today I came across a strange kind love story in the Bible which I think we can learn a thing or two from. This story is found in 1 Samuel 18:20-30. It’s the story of how David married Michal, Saul’s daughter.

From the blues, it was discovered that Michal, King’s Saul’s daughter was in love with David and her father was pleased about this for all the very wrong reasons. She and her so called love became a tool of destruction in the hands of her father to destroy the enemy he had earned out of jealousy and envy.

The very sad thing about this young woman is that the father was meant to protect and love, her only just saw her as a viable tool in his hands to destroy his enemy. But that for me is not the big deal; the big issue was that she didn’t heed the advice found in the book of Song of songs 2:7, 3:5 and 8:4, which reads that “Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” The arousal of love when it was not desired was the greatest undoing in the life of Michal the daughter of king Saul.

When we read through the story in 1 Samuel 18:20-30, one thing we will notice is that there was no love lost between David and any of the king’s daughters; not for the first daughter that was promised to him for killing Goliath and definitely not for Michal who was intended as a bait to destroy him.

What David considered as the remuneration or benefit for marrying Michal was the prestige of being a son-in-law to the king. When he was told the cost of the bride-price, he saw it as cheap and attainable price for the honors of being the son-in-law of the king. But in this story nothing showed that David had any affection for Michal or any intention to reciprocate her love.

A lot of young women have gone into this kind of one-sided-love marriage and have gotten themselves to blame for it. These ones didn’t pray, they didn’t hear from God, all they knew was that they were in love with the guy and they were going to have him. And because of their diligence and determination they did have him and one month down the line, they wished they didn’t have him and to reverse what had been done is almost impossible by God’s standard.

By the time we read the continuation of the story of Michal daughter of Saul in 2 Samuel 3:13-16, we will notice that Michal had married another husband while David was running for his dear life from the hands of Saul. So my question then is: What happened to the love that she had for David that made her a tool in the hands of her father to destroy David? So to say that the moment David was out of the scene, the love vanished into thin air.

This unhealthy love of Michal for David once again made her a tool of bargain between David and the house of Saul for David to take over the throne of Israel as king over Israel in 2 Samuel 3:6-21. And just when she finally thought she had settled down to normal life into the house and arms of a loving husband, her past hunts her and she had to leave the arms and house of the man who loves her and she should have been with from the beginning of her marital life again into the life of a man who considered simply as a tool.

This story is not just for Bible times, similar cases are still surfacing in our present time and world and these are the aftermath of love without God. I have heard the saying “only fools rush in” quite a number of times and in marriage this saying is really so very true.