Pre-Raphaelite Persuasion in 2 Samuel 6

B. MorseBiblical / Biblical Interpretation Interpretation 21-1 (2013) 21 (201 19-323) 19-32 19

ISSN 0927-2569 (print version) ISSN 1568-5152 (online version) The Defence of Michal: Pre-Raphaelite Persuasion in 2 Samuel 6

Benjamin Morse New York, USA [email protected]

Abstract The following interdisciplinary study seeks to reverse negative interpretations of Michal that have occurred in general criticism and in feminist readings of her. By appropriating William Morris’s rendering of Queen Guenevere as proof that male artists and authors can produce sympathetic portraits of women, I argue that 2 Samuel 6 does not necessarily reduce Michal to the status of a passive victim. I justify her bitterness by establishing it to be prophetically correct and insist that her lack of children is not a punishment from God. As the gavel has consistently been hammered hard on the subject of her childlessness, I appeal to the reader to reconsider her as a more empowered subject.

Keywords Michal; David; 2 Samuel 6; Old Testament; feminism; feminist hermeneutics; interdisciplinary interpretation; the Bible and art; William Morris; Guenevere

Critical Misdemeanors

And as the ark of the Lord entered the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul was looking out of her window. When she saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord, she despised him in her heart. (2 Sam. 6:16)

The critical jury has not delivered a favourable verdict on Michal the daughter of Saul. Many readers identify her as a resentful wife who fails to appreciate the blessing God has bestowed upon David. Though never biblically labelled a queen, her words and actions in 2 Samuel 6 are

likened to a sovereign’s disapproval of her courtly consort’s breach of decorum in dancing with such abandon. Feminist scholars might applaud her bravery in defying her father when she helps David escape out her window (1 Sam. 19:11-17) but too often plot her in a ‘sexual tragedy’1 in which she performs the role of a passive victim. They there- fore formulate Michal’s barren future as the tragic fate of a secondary character and her suffering as the unfortunate consequence of the hero’s drama—an Ophelia to David’s Hamlet. This was not the manner in which William Morris (1834-96) fashioned Guenevere in his 1857-58 oil painting of the romantic icon. By employing this artwork as a sur- rogate portrait of our biblical queen, we shall build a case for a more promising reading of Michal’s character. When interrogating the injustice done to David’s first wife, critics frame her in rhetorical discourses of helplessness. Richard Bowman de- scribes her as ‘one apparently bearing the passivity of one who is past caring’ and minimizes the significance of her tirade in 2 Sam. 6:20 by calling it ‘her only protest against victimization’; he envisions her as ‘ever victimized but never vindicated’.2 Others draw equally defeatist conclu- sions. Alice Bach finds Michal ‘essentiallyerased from David’s life when Abigail is inserted into it’,3 while Cheryl Exum says Michal ‘speaks out … and is silenced ’ by a narrator who ‘robs her of her voice’.4 Baruch Halpern renders her powerless by determining her to be ‘sequestered for life’5 (all italics are my own). The historical likelihood, we imagine, is

1) Jo Ann Hackett, ‘1 and 2 Samuel’, in Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe (eds.), Women’s Bible Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), p. 91. 2) Richard Bowman, ‘The Fortune of King David/The Fate of Queen Michal: A Liter- ary Critical Study of 2 Samuel 1-8’, in David Clines and Tamara Eskenazi (eds.), Telling Queen Michal’s Story (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), pp. 119, 99. 3) Alice Bach, ‘The Pleasure of Her Text’,Union Seminary Quarterly Review 43 (1989), p. 46. The article was also printed in her edited collection The Pleasure of Her Text (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), pp. 25-44, and in Athalya Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Samuel and Kings (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), pp. 106-128. 4) J. Cheryl Exum, ‘Murder They Wrote: Ideology and the Manipulation of Female Presence in Biblical Narrative’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 43 (1989), pp. 32, 34. The article also appears in Bach, pp. 45-68, and in Clines and Eskenazi, pp. 176-98. 5) Baruch Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 398.