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2Sa_3:1-16
The people could not behold the feeble character of Ishbosheth without contrasting it with the brilliant qualities of David, his firm and beneficent government, the success which crowned all his enterprises, and the attachment of his people to him. All this was damaging to the cause of the house of Saul; nor less so the fact, that in the small conflicts which arose in the course of years between the two parties—for both avoided bringing the matter to the decision of any great engagement—the issue was usually favorable to David. Under these various influences, concurring with the doubt which must have haunted the minds of many, whether, in upholding the condemned house and refusing the son of Jesse, they incurred not the awful responsibility of setting themselves is opposition to the known purposes of God, it came to pass that the cause of Ishbosheth became weaker every day, whip that of David daily gathered strength. Abner himself was too sagacious a man not to perceive this—indeed, the observations of every day must have made him feel it most acutely, and he could not but know that it would not much longer be even in his power to uphold the tottering throne which he alone supported. When things were in this state, it would want but little to bring about a revolution. We are continually mistaking in assigning great effects to small and inadequate causes. There is never any effect without an adequate cause, although the circumstance which brings the already existing causes into operation, and which is so often mistaken for the cause itself, may be of small or trifling importance, and only one of a hundred other circumstances which might equally have brought them into operation. The fuel is laid, and anything that has fire in it will equally serve to kindle it up; whether it be a lighted candle, a match, a rag, a bit of paper, or a straw—it matters little.
From the time that Abner perceived that it was impossible for him to carry on much longer the high game he was playing, he must often have turned over in his mind the possibility of going over to David, and of acquiring power with him by some signal service in his cause. Pride, some sense of honor, and a lingering wish to retain possession of a more independent power than he could hope for under such a king as David, and with such rivals as the sons of Zeruiah, restrained him for the present; but he was prepared, if occasion should offer, to take the lead in the national movement towards David in preference to becoming the victim of it. Occasion enough for him soon did offer.
King Ishbosheth, feeble as he was, had something of manly and royal spirit in him, and when he heard that Abner had appropriated to himself a woman named Rizpah, who had been Saul’s secondary wife or “concubine,” and had borne him children—he was shocked and indignant at what the usages of the East rendered an act of gross disrespect to himself and to the memory of his father, if it did not indicate the same disposition to establish a claim to royal power in his own person, which, in the next generation, Solomon detected in the application of Adonijah for leave to espouse the virgin concubine of his deceased father. Whether the charge were well-founded or not, is not very clear; but the presumption of the king in daring to call him to an account in such a matter, or even to hint disapprobation, threw Abner into a towering passion, and he swore a fierce oath to cast down the throne he had reared up. “So do God to Abner, and more also, except as the Lord hath sworn to David, even so do I to him—to translate the kingdom from the house of Saul, and to set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah, from Dan to Beersheba.” Abner is self-convicted by these words. He knew that the Lord had sworn to give the throne to David, and yet he had resisted—consciously resisted—to the best of his power, the fulfillment of that high decree. He now reaps his reward in this—that his return is what was really his duty, bears the aspect of treachery, meanness, and dishonor. It is well, however, to remember that what he did now was his duty, had always been his duty, and was not the less his duty because he had intermediately rebelled against it. But that rebellion placed him in this invidious position—that it now devolved upon him to undo his own work, whereas at the first it was in his power to have subsided into graceful and honorable acquiescence in a decree which, although distasteful to him, he could not and ought not to resist. Had be done this, his acknowledged abilities could not have failed to secure for him no second place among the worthies of David, and the end might have been very different.
It may occur to many readers that the rage of Abner was as much affected as real, and that he was not sorry that the poor king had given him a pretext for turning away from him. As it was, Ishbosheth answered not a word to this outburst of his haughty kinsman—he was so greatly terrified. Afterwards he probably reflected that Abner’s interests were too visibly bound up with his own to allow him to execute his threats; and that he abstained from any immediately demonstrative action, must have confirmed him in this impression.
But Abner’s were not idle words. He sent faithful messengers to David, to make terms for his assistance in bringing over the other tribes to his cause. The king of Judah was alive to the importance of this intimation, yet he manifested no unbecoming eagerness to seize the opportunity. He knew that the Lord’s purposes for him were in visible process of accomplishment, and he who had waited so long in patient faith, could, if need were, afford to wait a little longer. He therefore made it an essential preliminary to all negotiation that his wife Michal should be restored to him. There is no law in any state, and there was certainly none among the Hebrews, which allows a father to divorce his daughter from her husband, and give her in marriage to another. But this Saul had done, having given Michal in marriage to Phaltiel the son of Laish. David’s claim to her therefore remained intact. She was his first love; and although he had now other wives, his heart yearned towards this one in the keen and fresh remembrance of early affection; he had also purchased her dearly at the risk of his life, and he might not be unwilling thus to bring to the remembrance of the people his old exploits against the Philistines, and to evince at this time the value he set upon his connection with the house of Saul. It might be very important that it should now appear that the members and partisans of that house were not beyond the scope of his clemency and favor.
Abner used this demand as a means by which he might accomplish his ulterior object. It was in itself so reasonable, that he made it known to Ishbosheth, who readily consented that Michal should be taken from Phaltiel, and that Abner himself, as her natural protector, should conduct her to David. There has been much idle talk about the cruelty of taking her away from a man with whom she had lived some years, and who for all that appears was a good husband, seeing that he followed her, weeping and lamenting, until he was compelled to desist by those who bore her from him. But this was the fruit of his own wrong, which a man always reaps in the long run. He had coveted another man’s wife, and had wrongfully possessed himself of her, knowing well that she belonged to another; and Phaltiel was not the first man, nor the last, who has lamented to be deprived of that which did not belong to him. Michal was David’s wife—she was his purchased possession. Scarce a week passes in which our own law does not in the like case take the woman from her second husband, and assign her to the first—declare her living with the second to have been a state of adultery—and even subjects her to punishment for having married a second husband while the first lived. In the present case, there is every reason to suppose that Michal had been reluctantly coerced into this marriage; and although Phaltiel lamented her departure, there is no indication that she felt any sorrow in going. It is more probable that she rejoiced to be called to he side of her true husband, saying: “I will go and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me than now.” Hos_2:7.