1 Samuel 18:20

ANOTHER SCHEME BY SAUL TO GET DAVID KILLED

"Now Saul's daughter Michal loved David; and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. Saul thought, Let me give her to him, that she may be a snare for him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him." Therefore Saul said to David a second time, "You shall now be my son-in-law." And Saul commanded his servants, "Speak to David in private and say, "Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you; now then become the king's son-in-law." And Saul's servants spoke those words in the ears of David. And David said, "Does it seem to you a little thing to become the king's son-in-law, seeing that I am a poor man and of no repute"? And the servants of Saul told him. "Thus and so did David speak." Then Saul said, "Thus shall you say to David, `The king desires no marriage present except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, that he may be avenged of the king's enemies.'" Now Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines."

"That she may be a snare for him" (1 Samuel 18:21). "The Hebrew word here suggests the idea of a trigger of a trap with bait laid upon it. It is also used metaphorically, as here, of that which allures a person to destruction."[6]

"Therefore Saul said to David a second time" (1 Samuel 18:21). This is either a summary of what Saul was about to do through his servants as intermediaries, which is possible, or a direct proposition to David. If it was the latter, David did not bother to reply; he had already been frustrated by Saul's false promises. At any rate, Saul employed his servants in an effort to persuade David to marry his daughter. David's explanation that he was not able to give the king a marriage present may also explain what prevented his marriage to Merab. If so, Saul's scheme to get David killed could have been tied to that very thing; and Saul promptly took advantage of it.

"The king desires no marriage present except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines" (1 Samuel 18:25). The Philistines were an uncircumcised people; and "the foreskin" was the part of the body cut off in the ceremony of circumcision. The delivery of a hundred such things would have been possible only by first killing a hundred Philistines. Saul, of course, knew this; and this was precisely the part of the arrangement which Saul relied upon to accomplish the murder of David by the hand of the Philistines.