DID MICHAL HAVE ANY CHILDREN? (II SAMUEL 6:23; II SAMUEL 21:8)

Jim Goad in his “30 Pairs of Bible Verses that Contradict One Another” pits these two verses against one another. II Samuel 6:23 clearly states that after King David abandoned his wife Michal, she remained childless until the day of her death. Hamilton comments: “The reference in 2 Sam 6:23 that Michal had no yeled to the day of her death, following her run-in with husband David suggests two interpretations. Either she and David were never sexually intimate from this point on, as all forms of communication in their marriage expired, or Yahweh made her barren because of her criticism of her husband's behavior (which was unlikely). In either case, Michal's barrenness removed the possibility of any Saulide blood from the Davidic line.”

McKenzie even feels that “Michal's childlessness would then have been a strategy on David's part to ensure that she produced no heirs to Saul.” Salvesen agrees that “this was to David's advantage.”

But then Goad quotes II Samuel 21:8 as saying that Michal had five boys, all of whom were executed as a part of a bargain that David made. I am very curious what English translation Goad was using to make that statement, since every version I have consulted states instead that it was the five boys of Michal's sister Merab [also transliterated as Mereb or Merob] who were killed instead. Below is a summary of some of those translations:

    Merab is given without any explanatory notes in The Message, TEV, and NEB.

    Merab is given with footnotes given as to why that name is used rather than Michal: NIV, RSV, NRSV, JB and AB.

    Michal is given with an appended explanation in the text stating that she had adopted (or was raising) her sister's boys as her own: King James and The Living Bible.

So where does the confusion come in? In the first place, there is absolutely no doubt in the biblical account that Michal had no children right up to the time of her death (as II Samuel 6:23 states). The problem arises with the name of the woman who appears in II Samuel 21:8. And here we are faced with a situation in which the various available ancient manuscripts disagree with one another. As the footnotes to this verse indicate, most of the Hebrew (MT) and Greek (LXX) manuscripts list “Michal” while two early Hebrew texts and several Greek and Syriac versions give Merab's name instead. So which one do translators chose when the manuscript evidence is a bit uncertain?

There are two powerful reasons for feeling that Merab's name should appear in II Samuel 21:8. The first is the obvious fact that II Samuel 6:23 tells us Michal had no children and therefore couldn't have had five boys to be executed. Secondly, the father of these boys is said to be a man named Adriel. However, we know from I Samuel 18:19 that Adriel was not the husband of Michal, but of her sister Merab instead.

The translator Hulst says, “In place of the MT 'Michal' two mss and the LXX read correctly 'Mereb.' Also the Pesh [Syriac Peshita] seems to suggest the reading 'Mereb.' It is true that Michal was one of David's wives, yet the connection of the wife named here [i.e. II Sam. 21:8] with Adriel the Meholathite shows definitely that Mereb, sister of Michal, is meant.”

This brings up the rather obvious question as to why Michal's name would appear at all in 21:8. There have been two explanations given. One is that it was a simple scribal error made very early in the process of the text being copied. The copyist saw a name beginning with M and assumed that it referred to the more well-known sister Michal in place of the rather obscure Merab. This is the reasoning given by Payne: The name 'Michal', read by most of the Hebrew MSS, is clearly wrong (cf. 6:23); probably an early scribe inserted the better-known name by error.” Tsumura and others commentators offer the same explanation.

The second possibility is that expressed in the KJV and The Living Bible, namely, that the childless Michal had adopted or raised her sister's boys as her own. Thus, we have Beeching stating: “Five sons are mentioned..., but tradition holds that they were Merab's (so LXX and two Heb. mss), and that Michal 'reared them'...but the idea that she had one son Ithream, her name being corrupted to Eglah (2 Sa. iii.5), is without foundation.”

We could summarize the textual situation simply in these terms. When one has two copies of the same document and one contains a rather obvious purposeful or accidental error (call them 'typos' if you wish), then it is absurd to keep the flawed copy and throw away the more accurate one.

The only modern attempt to defend the name Michal in II Samuel 21:8 that I have seen is by the Jewish scholar Semcha Shalom Brooks, who feels that the five boys were from Michal's “marriage to Paltiel (not Adriel as mentioned in 2 Samuel 21:8. Adriel is the Aramaic version of the Hebrew Paltiel.)” That explanation appears to cause more problems than it solves.

In conclusion, here are some perceptive comments from Evans, who also assumes that Merab was the mother of the five children: “Merab and Michal might be seen as much more significant than the anonymous servant girls [of I Samuel 9:11-13]. They were, after all, the daughters of the king, women of consequence and status. However, within the text both are presented primarily as pawns in the power games played by their father and his rivals. Merab does not have a speaking part; however, we learn that she was offered as a marriage partner to David as a spur to encourage him to fight against the Philistines and hence be killed but that actually she was given to someone else (I Sam 18:17-19)...Many years later Merab again suffered when five of her sons were executed as part of another bargain made between men (2 Sam 21:8)...”