The Engaging Nuances of Genre: Reading Saul and Michal Afresh
Sr. Barbara Green, OP
In a recent Atlantic Monthly cover story titled ‘Fame: The Power and Cost of a Fantasy’, Sue Erikson Bloland struggles to sort the dynamics involved in being the daughter of her famous father, Erik Erikson (November 1999: 51-62). Though she aims to track dynamics in which she participated, her process is nonetheless instructive for reading and its allied projects, including self-knowledge and transformation. Bloland’s point is that the relationship between her father and his various others was a dance of dreadful ambivalence: He contributed to a certain falsity of his fame and adequacy, as did his daughter and her mother as well, by accommodating to and gratifying his illusion. Bloland acknowledges that she wished to be part of the paternal construction which carried a payoff for her. But she maintains that she hated it as well, since it always shrank her while simultaneously seeming to enhance her. That is, the formation of both selves and others was simultaneously and mutually constructive (i.e., advantageous) and destructive.
The Atlantic also had (at the time) a monthly almanac feature—less prominent than its cover story—where some rather incidental remark of one hundred years ago could be brought forward with fresh relevance. Let us suppose that the discourse of biblical Michal (her words of 1 Sam. 19.11-17 and of 2 Sam. 6.20) appears in the almanac section of the Bloland-featuring Atlantic Monthly. Consequently, Michal’s words cross those of Bloland. What might emerge? Contemporary feminist criticism asserts strongly that both the patriarchal culture in which Michal lived under the control of her royal father and husband and also the powerful narrator of the story conspire to murder Michal by their language and (other) deeds. In these contemporary readings, which have valuably uncovered a damaging ideology, Michal is seen to abet both the construction and destruction of her famous father, and also to receive from him a false importance which at the same time undercuts and denigrates her personhood (his too). While respecting that claim, I will offer an alternative.
My aim is twofold: first, to read a short section (1 Sam.18:20-29) which narrates an intense and complex set of relationships. As we consider this piece on the betrothal of Michal which her father (King Saul) negotiates, the transactional nature of selves becomes apparent. The peculiarly dialogic language in the passage allows us to watch Saul shaping others while they in fact are busy constructing him. As he works to consolidate his royal position, he is in fact planting a virus that will wipe him out. The reverberation of both narratorial and characteral language provokes the reader (myself here) to reflect on the subtlety of authoring and ‘othering’. The central character, King Saul, can be shown and seen to construct his house: a son-in-law for himself, a husband for his daughter Michal, and presumably another generation from their fruitful union. The several highly negotiation-laden language forms which Saul employs to accomplish this goal ostensibly positive for himself are able to be used and rejoined by other characters to advance other purposes, notably the undermining of the king’s position. Hence his language serves both to build up and tear down his ‘self’; and other characters contribute to his projects while furthering their own ends, also with his unwitting assistance. A second section of the paper looks more briefly past the betrothal scene, where I will resist the inevitability of the familiar Michal-as-victim reading by supplementing it with an alternative, traversing the mutually constituting language of narrator and characters. With five strategies Michal can be read to resist collaboration with her powerful others. Bloland’s expressed aim is not to change the past but to diminish its power in the present (1999: 51). My purpose is not dissimilar: As a reader steps in to participate and beckons others to join her, the possibilities for mutual engagement increase. The dialogic and interpenetrated nature of language in these powerful stories and the need for situated and self-aware reading become clear. The demand for answerable, responsible interpretation grow insistent, granted criteria for judging the adequacy of a reading remain open.
The contribution I anticipate from such reading is both theoretical and practical. The skein of interpretations traversed among biblical characters, particularly as orchestrated to some extent by a sophisticated narrator, challenges any reading practices that are literalistic and reductionistic, in fact multiplying possibilities for meaning. At the same time, such reading is minutely, consciously attentive to textual cues and also draws attention to the presence or absence of self-knowledge on the part of any reader who engages, authors, others. The process by which I, reading, own my perennial issues and specific agendas while reading characters engaged in a similar dynamic makes the intermesh of selves clearer than the edges which purport to distinguish us. The power dynamics rendered visible work in several spheres: personal and political, micro- and macrocosmic, spiritual and social, positive and negative.
These goals and aims are enriched and assisted by the work of two scholars, each patient over the long haul to work with a few core and deep insights, nurturing and coaxing them over the decades of scholarly life to wonderful generativity. Every scholar working in the field of Hebrew Bible is indebted to the work of Martin Buss on form criticism. His attention to detail and early patience in cataloguing its elements has, in the more recent years of his life, been deepened by attention to the situated and social position of both writer and readers, with the result that his work exhibits a rare crossing of both historical and literary interests. Alert to thought and mood both personal and more broadly social, the work of the scholar being honored in this festschrift has ventured to the border of what is regular and reliable in biblical prose as well as what is more idiosyncratic and whimsical. My second scholar to name is Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), who offers a philosophy, an anthropology, and a literary theory whose brilliant spaciousness allows us to explore these many entanglements afresh. Martin Buss developed an interest in Bakhtin’s work as well, working to evoke dialogue between the Russian’s thought and the work of Hermann Gunkel. I will draw upon certain of Bakhtin’s categories and occasionally his technical vocabulary, though without making a formal presentation of his ideas or their relevance for biblical studies.
Let me point out some consistent narrator moves in 1 Samuel 18 which are made meaningful in Bakhtin’s reading theory. First, the narrator avoids to some extent to summarize for a main character what we can learn directly, if eventually, from him or her, thus reducing the impact of conventional ‘omniscience’. Second, there is a ‘replay’ quality of much of this narrative. Starting with an unsubstantiated rumor, the narrator also tosses in loaded language which keeps indirectly probed some ongoing tensions, such as the word ‘good/ t[o=b’ as a reminder that ringing in Saul’s ear is the prophetic pronouncement that God has replaced Saul with a ‘gooder’ man than himself. Every time that word appears, we may choose—I do—to see Saul flinch. Third, there are summaries when directly reported speech would have been more clarifying, weighted but almost anonymous choices of what to say or omit. Most distinctive, perhaps (fourth), is the fact that throughout the scene, no dyad of conversation is ever finished. That is, one character addresses another, who turns to a third to speak, who does not rejoin but moves back to an earlier interlocutor in some way. Fifth, the character talk skillfully exploits a number of genres—genrettes, I am tempted to say, since they are so small. Besides the rumor, the action of this small section makes its moves in self-talk, in a rehearsed-but not-delivered offer, in a memo sent off under the name of the king but referring to him in the third person, so enclosed in an envelope of others’ speech. The offer is met by a question whose target as well as intonation and intent are ambiguous; nonetheless, a response is acted upon decisively, but the main planner has clearly lost control of his construction and something quite unintended looms as never envisioned by him. And finally there is the often-disempowering though sometimes-effective genre of silence. Each of these small forms is precise without any reduction of the supple use a writer and reader are able to employ—whether within or without the text. It is particularly in the area of form/genre where the work of Buss and Bakhtin cross fruitfully. Each of them sees genre as fluid and malleable, though in no sense without form.
Exposition: 1 Sam. 18.18-29
To summarize the short unit for the sake of clarity: The narrator floats a rumor to which Saul the king responds, talking two lines under his breath while crafting a memo of the opposite flavor for servants to proffer in his name. The answer of David, the prospective bridegroom, carried back to the doublespeaking father of the bride, is itself ambiguously intonated and framed in question form, inviting who-knows-what-reaction from all those receiving it. Saul does put a certain construction on the information filtered back to him—in fact quoting himself inauspiciously. But as the two males cement their relationship, it is impossible to decide who is orchestrating the bond so fateful in the long story that unfolds from it. The silence of Michal, in fact the total disregard of her, is patent throughout.
a rumor: 18.20:
Though by the end of the episode a character takes responsibility for this assertion, at the beginning of this betrothal process that Michal loves David is reported to Saul by unnamed and unelaborated ‘thems’. We must wonder if it is true, envision that it may not be true. Our second move must be to watch how it works, which is to set off a chain of reactions. It is rumor that pleases Saul when he hears it, and the reason for his gratification is not wholly clear to us. Why would information pleasing to him be brought to a powerful man by those around him? Though much is not specified in the narrative, we do know by this point in the story, even so early, that Saul’s relationship with David is complex, ambiguous, and conflicted as a result of the episode involving Goliath. So without yet thinking about famous fathers and their daughters, we can begin to construct insecure potentates and their opponents and get a sense of the tangle.
self-talk: 18.21a:
Next the narrator says: ‘Saul said, “Let me give her to him that she may[/will] be a snare for him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.”’ We can see that Saul is speaking of someone and not in any visible way to someone, so this is self-talk, somewhat at variance with what he says aloud in the second half of the verse. Self-talk can be more forthright and unvarnished than our words to others, but what we say to ourselves is far from being the whole truth and nothing but, since as we probably all know by now, our own self—in all its multifacetedness—is the one we most want to impress, gratify and convince. So though Saul ruminates privately and frankly, we must still listen critically. Saul draws his daughter Michal as an object to be given, as a snare to bring someone down, and as an alibi for his own hand, as well as to be a wife for David. The father sets up his daughter to diminish her husband, though that intended result actually slips its leash. Simultaneously Saul is sketching himself as clever, as innocent, and as powerful, a drawing that may not be convincing to us, now or later. Already there are several figures on the drawing pad as well as the narrator and all of our reading selves. The narrator’s choice is to have Saul talk to himself in a full sentence here rather than in the sort of shorthand we all recognize, if we reflect upon it, is more typical for our inner conversations.
more self-talk: an offer: 18.21b:
The next utterance of the king, paired with what we just overheard, is at clear variance with its more silent fellow, though of course linked. The relatedness of both parts of v. 21 (and of v. 22 to follow shortly) helps us recognize that we are still dealing with inner speech here, the same plan customized for its ostensible or eventual audience. This sentence, ‘“You shall now be my son-in-law”’ is clearly addressed to David, which we can tell by the pronouns. The odd little word ‘a second time’, which I take to be reporting rather than reported speech, is important. The narrator has managed to lob into play a reminder that Saul has, just prior to this present narrative moment, tried and failed (depending on the point of view from which we appraise) to betroth his elder daughter Merab to David. Saul’s own speech excludes this awkwardness, which is again an important clue to the game that is being played by these two warriors. Saul can deny the Merab episode by eliminating the reference to it, perhaps a blindness on his part or possibly a courtesy to David, who is still a bachelor despite the words we and he heard at 17.25-27 and at 18.17-19. The conversation that goes on between what Saul says to himself and what he offers to an absent David shows him perhaps as purposely divided (a clean lie) or alternatively as split and indecisive—but in any case, running two plans. We might say Saul is thinking, ‘be my dead son-in-law-apparent.’ Saul’s rehearsed speech draws himself powerful—assigning inferiors to positions; it shows his power simultaneously abridged, needing his daughter and his opponent to manage something crucial for him. We can select harsh words for this kind of mismatched language—one thing to ourself and another for public consumption. But even without ascribing motivation, we, visiting the site, can recognize it as dangerous. Saul does not join both parts of his talk.
a dictated, double-voiced memo: 18.22:
Saul crafts now another (his third) version of the proposal, which goes out under his name but without being quite identifiable as a self-quote: ‘Saul commanded his servants, “Speak to David in private and say, ‘See, the king is delighted with you, and all his servants love you; so now, become the king’s son-in-law.’”’ Saul does not this time plan to do the proposing himself; rather he hands the transaction to his servants, shaping his utterance for their delivery. The words are at the surface Saul’s own ‘. . .become the king’s son-in-law. . . .’ But they come not from his own first proposal of Merab but from David’s response to that offer (18.18), and they are infused now with speech of the servants (which is actually Saul’s speech as well). The servants will speak of the king in the third person, in his absence, on his errand. It remains Saul’s speech in that he designs his own words with himself at the center. Saul adds buttressing words, to the effect that David is popular at court with king and servants. There is surely a part of Saul which is pleased with David; and beyond a doubt, the servants love him (reported by the narrator in 18.5 and 16 and reinforced by characters in several ways). But we can hear other dissonant factors in this speech as well. Saul is not unconflictedly pleased with David. So it is a complex utterance, at war with itself. Part of Saul’s shrewdness and blindness is to show David the mirror which suggests he is beloved, a tactic effective in the short run but ultimately lethal for Saul, who hates what he sees, looking over David’s shoulder into David’s mirror, reflecting back into his own mirror, as it were. We may miss any reference to Michal’s love, the datum which was said to have prompted her father on his present trajectory. Saul once again draws his royal self as powerful (dispatching servants) though perhaps as vulnerable too, since though there is not time to make the case for Saul’s expressed jealousy of David’s popularity, it would be easy to do. Additionally, we may see how Saul seems to overlook that entrusting this task to others makes the king tremendously dependent on them for information. And, Saul says, do this discreetly.
a summary report: 18.23a:
The narrator is so private that we do not hear what the perhaps-discreet servants say to David. There is no reason to doubt that they report as instructed, but we must recognize that we are excluded from witnessing it. At court, and in reading, the system of what we know and do not know is a powerful and complex highway along which we travel, perhaps scarcely noting what we must bridge in order to arrive somewhere. The servants now take charge of this union, with neither Saul nor ourselves having access to what transpires on the other side of the green-baize door.
the rejoined question: 18.23b:
Our best information on the conversation we have missed comes quoted as a question of David to a masculine plural audience (perhaps ostensibly to only the servants but more certainly also to Saul): ‘But David said, “Does it seem to you a little thing (haneqalla=h) to be son-in-law to the king, seeing I am a poor man and of no repute ()I=s] ras] weniqleh)?”’. As social scientific scholarship assists us to see, cultural conventions may dictate a self-deprecatory response by David, if that is what these words imply. Without now worrying about David’s sense of himself, we can notice a set of options for how he is authoring Saul: First, David’s words are both formally courteous and simultaneously a slap in the royal face, given what happened with Merab. Bringing forth now words similar to those he just spoke on a similar occasion, David also subcutaneously accuses Saul of dishonoring him and thus acting dishonorably himself—and delivers this apparently civil salvo by the king’s servants back to the man whose elder daughter has not been given to him. Second, David may also be ‘quoting’ the reward mentioned (by Saul’s men, and implicitly or inferrably having issued from the king himself) at 17.25-27, which specified the reward of freedom and royal marriage for any who would or could slay Goliath. Third, David’s words, picking up his own lineage recitation of 17.58, remind Saul of the uncertainty about whether David is Jesse’s son or Saul’s, a key issue between the two of them both before and after this passage. David may be construed here to mock or tease Saul (two slightly different things), in any case recalling for us (and for the king) a similar claim the tall Saul made when approached by Samuel to be king (9.21). Fourth, perhaps David’s words flatter Saul by implying a mismatch between the powerlessness David claims and the might of Saul’s house, but perhaps we hear irony too. Fifth, the words David speaks may be loophole language, his own way of sliding out of being pegged as worthy to be son-in-law to the king. In this reading, David intends his self-deprecation as an escape hatch to let him avoid what Saul is planning—whatever David may sense that to be: from son-in-law. . .to dead. In such a reading his niqleh/of little account may be close to truthful. The duality is that, underneath the self-deprecation, David means it, wants Saul to hear his ‘no’ as a no. Here David quotes himself at 18.18, where he said a briefer thing, self-deprecating with less elaboration of form and content. That David’s self-description is perhaps taken at face value (as the text allows us to suppose) renders a second round of the same baiting painful. So (and this is where tone would help, if we had it) I construe this as bitter, viz.: ‘Why are we going into this again, given what just happened?’ Since the king and by extension his servants are powerful, David’s speech registers (plausibly) the sense of being trifled with here, treated slightingly. If his self-deprecation is in fact a form that Saul ought to have acknowledged but has overridden by following through with the termination of the Merab-offer, then David has been insulted when his language about himself stops the plan (if that is what stopped it). In any case, we will hear this language fired back at David when he is accosted by Michal after dancing before the ark (2 Sam. 6.20).
a summary report: 18.24:
Again we have nothing but the report of a report. Verbatim is one among several possibilities.
the offer/memo construed and specified: 18.25:
Only when we see Saul’s response to the words of the servants, can we begin to discern what that report must have been, logically has to have been. To put the matter plainly: Does Saul take David’s enigmatic question as a red light, a yellow or a green signal? Related: How does Saul wish to be signaled? It seems to me that the servants report this speech of David back to Saul as a ‘yes’. Or, more precisely, they report back ‘these things/words’ and Saul’s next move suggests he has taken their report or David’s words as a green light rather than as a red—or perhaps a yellow (proceed but present an obstacle [expense]), insofar as Saul is constructing not so much a son-in-law but a dead son-in-law apparent. Fokkelman thinks that David’s mention of insignificant resources prompts Saul’s mention of a particular service to be a brideprice. Whatever their valence, Saul weaves David’s words into his own game, apparently again taking David’s claim of being a poor man at face value and setting a brideprice that is outside the usual economy. Saul is trifling with David who, already or shortly, trifles back, rendering the language parodic. Saul is losing even the control he may think he has, which perhaps we can see he never had.
So Saul’s speech here is again slipped in an envelope and sent to David, carefully tagged: a request (or command), a condition, a reason (or purpose). ‘“Thus shall you say to David, ‘The king desires no marriage present except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, that he may be avenged on the king’s enemies.”’” David has said—the servants have reported David to have said—or Saul has construed David to have said—something that moves Saul past the offer itself to the means of achieving it. As was the case the first time we heard of marriage to the king’s daughter, Saul’s objective is to be achieved by killing Philistines (ambiguity intended), a supposed revenge on the enemies of the king. Who is the enemy Saul seeks to avenge himself upon? And that the report—these words, the narrator specifies—is carried to David again distances the negotiating pair and makes the royal household privy to and powerful in the bartering. Saul, as is his wont, throws out multiple relationalities to others, most of which seem not to serve him very well. Asking, ineffectual inquiry sorties, as we know from his name, is part of the Saulide DNA. Again sending his words in care of others, the king’s language goes into direct discourse: Saul quotes himself in the third person and names the price. His rhetoric would seem to make light of the matter: ‘. . .nothing except. . . .’ The subtext is prominent, given that David has already earned, has already been offered the hand of a royal princess, to no tangible effect. So these words of Saul are potentially slighting in another sense. Besides making the price of Michal’s hand seem minor, simultaneously with that assertion, the king is asking David to earn once again his right to the daughter. Do we see Saul shrewd here, pushing David skillfully perhaps to overplay his hand? Or do we rather find him naive and clueless, adding insult to insult, imagining himself as powerfully positioned while at the same time simply setting himself up for a famous fall? At the very least, Saul seems to have allowed others—David? servants? ourselves?—to see the secret he hugged to himself at v. 21. Does the king know that his slip is showing?
a narrator summary: 18.25-30:
The first of these summarized points (18.25) ensures that we will not overlook the link we have already been shown: Saul has two plans hoping to pass as one. What we next learn (18.26-27) is that David is pleased to be the king’s son-in-law, deems it advantageous (ys]r) for a multiplicity of possible reasons not sorted in our hearing. And the green light is now David’s, who expeditiously accomplishes his assignment, perhaps double his charge. Saul’s reaction is now covered by the narrator as well (18.28), and though we have it only in summary, it is obvious that the matter has not turned out as the king envisioned or wished. Saul has a new son-in-law, has his opponent for his son-in-law, but on terms slightly different than he has planned. The narrator announces Saul’s insight by the end of the piece, his sense that he has been ganged up on or outmaneuvered, by God’s spirit-with-David and by his daughter’s love for that young man, if not as well by David’s skill. Saul’s sense of himself as manager of the snare for David arguably takes a hit, and Saul is the more afraid by the end of the negotiation. The end of the unit is rhetorically uncertain, but were we to follow it to the end of the chapter, we would learn three more crucial pieces of information: first, that the Philistines, far from countering David as Saul had supposed and planned, are bested by him continuously; and second, that David’s fame increases (in what is most usually understood as a zero-sum game: i.e., Saul’s and David’s fame will probably vary inversely, not likely to be pleasing to Saul). And most important, and not with total clarity, the narrator says Saul was David’s enemy from that day on (v. 29). So a major corner has been turned as a result of this ‘construction project’: gain for some, loss for some, both transactions managed by both players.
Transition
Since the ‘betrothal text’ and interpretation have proceeded with virtually no respectful reference to Michal, let me summarize quickly the general view of commentators, largely though implicitly endorsed in this discussion of the Saul-David negotiations. Michal is referenced both in character direct discourse and also by narrator tags as an exchangeable possession between powerful men; she is also a token for servants to barter as they run between those men. Michal is implied as ally of the dread enemy of her people and assigned explicitly to be a snare to her husband—also opponent of her father, in the event. She is arguably set to be a competitor with her sister and even possibly with her mother (depending on our interpretation of the datum that David eventually marries an Ahinoam). My strategy here has been first to manage the betrothal passage without her subjectivity but now to mark the difference when it is made more participant. I will offer five points, less closely argued than heretofore, but drawing on the same strategies.
Interpretation: 1 Sam.19.11-17; 25.44; 2 Sam. 3.14; 6.20-22
absence:
Since throughout the betrothal scene, Michal is not present except in the speech of others, she abets the moves of neither Saul nor David. Since, with Bakhtin we balance and demote the ‘omniscient narrator’ with our own readerly scrutiny of the centrifugal interplay of all the language, it is not her self-confessed love for David that initiates all this action but the anonymous note left for her father and his acting upon that gossip. That ‘the Bible’ tells us so is not nuanced enough (Exum, 1993: 43, commenting upon Alter’s comment [see my note five]). There is no basis for any absolute knowledge that Michal loves David. All subsequent readings which rise from that taproot, ramified however creatively, must be reconsidered.
agency:
In 1 Samuel 19, Michal takes the initiative to let David out the window to escape from Saul. To assist one is to resist the other, commentators allege. But her action need not be simply one of those or the other; she may have other motives we can imagine. She loses or looses David out of her life. Flee tonight or die tomorrow, she says to him, and he silent, obeys. Michal is the agent here, and David, though silent and assisted, is surely active on his own behalf as well, making haste on foot as she verbally buys them both time. In addition to her speech to her husband, she speaks to her father the king, first through messengers and then directly (19.14, 17). The two are well-matched here, speaking angrily and with neither familial nor royal padding. Michal repositions and reintonates her own words to David (19.11), bringing the same general point (go or die) but changing the agency in the version she hurls at her father to actually heighten her active participation. Opinions as to Michal’s veracity are split among those who think she lies and those who interpret otherwise. The matter is undecidable from the text and so must be owned by the interpreter. But readings which concentrate exclusively on Michal’s lot as simply caught between two powerful men underread. That she must live her life between them is clear enough, both from the story and from scholarly reconstructions of whatever culture we are presuming as backdrop. The error, it seems to me, is to restrict her to this pair of alternatives. Jobling writes well and feelingly of the cost to women of living under the violence of the monarchy, supposing that it ‘. . .condemned [them] to desire their own subordination. . .’ and created ‘. . .a desire on the part of women for a political system based on domination and subordination’. He concludes that monarchy brings no good to women (1998: 160, emphasis original). That such may often, even usually, be the case for many is well-observed and must be clearly stated; but reading must also allow for the possibility that women and men are not inevitably or unfailingly co-opted by the brutality of their circumstances but may on occasion resist. Since we cannot verify her words from within the narrative, the field is more open. In fact, I am inclined to venture a hifil of the quote Michal ascribes to David: ‘“He said to me, ‘Send me off; why should I cause your death?’”’ Why indeed? Michal here speaks up against being murdered by the powerful male characters, by the narrator, and any single inevitable reading of the text. Does she resist all of them, only to have us take that courageous act from her by insisting that she fulfill only a particular though crucial role clarified by feminist ideology? Perhaps the most valuable of the comments is Polzin’s, that Saul says to Michal the same words that the medium at Endor will say to him in 28.12: ‘“Why have you deceived me?”’ (1989: 182). Polzin does not develop his insight, but we may note that we are directed to a crucial conversation between a king and his advisors on the eve of his death. Part of the discussion of death here splashes onto Saul and to the kings his story presents.
silence:
At 1 Sam. 25:44 Michal is given, again, to a man, whose name Palti catches the reverberation of escape language (plt[ /mlt[) and allows the possibility of Michal’s own escape from the snare she was designed to be. Michal is here without language, whether we see her as silenced or silent—two different states. Again in 2 Samuel 3 she (re)taken and (re)given man to man. There is, again, no sign that she verbally abets the move that David makes, granted we are not told that she goes limp before the embassage. Though the tears of Palti(el) mark emphatically the contrast with Michal, but we must ask in what particular aspect. Unfeeling is one possibility—popular— but not obligatory. That a character weeps does not elucidate what prompts the tears; so also with silence. A comment like Jobling’s, that Paltiel’s passion for Michal matches hers for David seems doubly overread. The work of Ben Barak to sort the likely historical issues here is germane, since the narrative appears to ride roughshod over biblical law. But though necessary, the retrieval is not ultimately sufficient. Ben Barak adduces laws which ‘ought’ to apply in these texts, shows how they do not, and then presents legal or customary precedent from other ancient Near Eastern texts that she claims bespeaks a general Levantine cultural praxis which overrides the specifics we have from biblical law. Though the material is interesting to consider, I do not see that the effort to recover a plausible mimetic explanation advances the issues under consideration, which involve our reading of a particular representation of Michal (Ben Barak 1979: 15-29). Bowman’s contention (1991: 97-120) that Michal is (at least) thrice victimized is a possible reading but obviously not the tack I am taking. To see Michal as only a victim is itself a victimization and not a very healthy or helpful one if asserted too axiomatically.
speech:
Michal speaks again at 2 Sam. 6.20, provoking the only direct discourse exchange we witness between herself and David—and reminding us how very partial has been the representation of their relationship, cautioning us against construing solely from what we have as though it were complete. The case for sexual jealousy and class bias has been well-presented by Exum; commentary on ‘the hungry eyes of the slave girls’ (Alter 1981: 124) or Exum’s suggestion (1989: 55) that the slaves have relished David’s sexual display seem to me to miss the point of Michal’s critique. Exum notes an action of David’s and offers no subjectivity to his audience. My point here is that Michal exhibits no complicity with David’s display of power, no co-dependency with the blended political-religious claim David is making as he moves the ark to his city. Polzin’s methodology (following Bakhtin without laying out the trail too explicitly) is to read this language site with its uses of kbd and qll (heavy/honored and made light of/dishonored) in dialogue with other uses of those words and to see the journey of the ark less as a trek of triumph than as a tragic trudging into exile, a journey which sows death and must turn to ex tempore leadership to resolve the question of homecoming. Michal’s language, depending on the strategies brought into play with it, speaks prophetically of the demise of the monarchy.
narrator assessment:
Finally, that Michal is said by the narrator to have no child assumes a slightly different coloration in view of her claim that ‘the king is dead’. Moving far from commentator claims of Michal’s ‘. . .natural wish for motherhood. . . ’ (Fokkelman 1986: 273), the negative valence of the conversation is not so automatically presumable. David Clines ventures to ask (with reference to certain other childless women characters) whether not producing sons in this narrative—not to mention into a family so fratricidal and worse—must inevitably be a catastrophe. Granted the truism that lack of sons is non-desirable for many reasons in ‘this’ culture, still that reading need not be mandatory. Michal’s capacity to resist adding dynastic sons can be healthful.
Conclusion
The energy of Bloland’s quest goes ultimately in the direction of the etiology of her father’s character with relatively little space to her own. I have here, perhaps, done something analogous, with a greater scrutiny of the father than the daughter. But, again after Bakhtin, selves are not so discrete from each other. Bloland observes, ‘We imagine that our heroes have transcended the adversities of the human condition and have healed their childhood traumas by achievement of the extraordinary. We want to believe that achieving recognition—success—can set us all free from gnawing feelings of self doubt’ (1999: 60). But, substantiating her point from the memorable old man from The Wizard of Oz rather than from the famous father of 1 Samuel, she moves to reflect on the ultimate instability of approbation and the vulnerability of those who resist exploring the voracious appetite for it that lurks, I suspect, inside most of us. The larger story of Saul and its brief narrative intersection with Michal invites and encourages, even perhaps draws from us a capacity to read boldly weakness that neither imagines nor repays idealism about the human condition. In fact, the more resonance we can catch with the construction of these characters the better we will read. My aim has been to make clear with the assistance of Bakhtin the inherently dialogical ways in which selves interact to shape others, including our readerly selves who have many choices, depending on our assumptions about the functioning of language. The rapid reverberation of many voices—our own included—offers a range of images, none of which coincides exactly or for long with a stable self. How we construct and destroy or deconstruct selves and others works out centrifugally rather than centripetally. Ways in which King Saul shapes and is shaped are freshly clarified within the loose language of his court; and Michal’s options are also expanded beyond the work of other feminist readers. My press has been for answerable reading which takes account of many possibilities without seeking only to blame or always to avoid self-knowledge but to celebrate the creativity of our capacities.
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