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1 Chronicles15:29

Michal’s Contempt for David

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1 Chronicles 15:29 — Michal’s Contempt for David. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

29

As the ark of the covenant of the LORD was entering the City of David, Saul’s daughter Michal looked down from a window and saw King David dancing and celebrating, and she despised him in her heart.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

’ă·rō·wn bə·rîṯ Yah·weh way·hî bā ‘aḏ- ‘îr dā·wîḏ šā·’ūl baṯ- ū·mî·ḵal niš·qə·p̄āh bə·‘aḏ ha·ḥal·lō·wn wat·tê·re ’eṯ- ham·me·leḵ dā·wîḏ mə·raq·qêḏ ū·mə·śa·ḥêq wat·ti·ḇez lōw bə·lib·bāh

Word by word23 · parsed
אֲרוֹן֙’ă·rō·wnAs the arkH727
√ ʼârôwn — a boxNouncommon singular construct
ʼârôwn: a box, chest, ark The plainest of nouns (a box) carries the weight of the whole procession. The Chronicler has spent this chapter on Levites, poles and shoulders (15:15) precisely because this box may not be carried carelessly; the reader arrives at v. 29 already knowing what mishandled reverence cost in 13:9-10.
בְּרִ֣יתbə·rîṯof the covenantH1285
√ bᵉrîyth — a compact (because made by passing between pieces of flesh)Nounfeminine singular construct
bᵉrîyth: a compact, covenant The Geneva Study Bible glosses the title here: "It was so called because it reminded the Israelites of the Lord's covenant made with them." K&D record that this fuller phrase, ark of the covenant of the LORD, is the Chronicler's own expansion over the shorter wording in the Samuel parallel. So the object entering the city is named by its content, the tables of the compact, not by its craftsmanship.
יְהוָ֔הYah·wehof the LORDH3068
√ Yᵉhôvâh — Jehovah, Jewish national name of GodNounpropermasculine singular
Yᵉhôvâh: the covenant name of God The construct chain stacks three genitives: ark of covenant of YHWH. Every link is possessive, and the last one owns the other two. Whatever Michal thinks she is watching, the text says whose procession it is before it says anything about David.
וַיְהִ֗יway·hîwasH1961
√ hâyâh — to exist, iConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person masculine singular
Narrative hinge, way·hî, "and it came to pass."
בָּ֖אbāenteringH935
√ bôwʼ — to go or come (in a wide variety of applications)VerbQalParticiplemasculine singular
bôwʼ: to go or come A Qal participle, durative: the ark is in the act of coming. The verse is built so that the window scene happens while the ark is still on the road, not after it is safely housed.
עַד־‘aḏ-. . .H5704
√ ʻad — as far (or long, or much) as, whether of space (even unto) or time (during, while, until) or degree (equally with)Preposition
Preposition ʻaḏ, "as far as," marking the limit of the ark's journey.
עִ֣יר‘îrthe CityH5892
√ ʻîyr — a city (a place guarded by waking or a watch) in the widest sense (even of a mere encampment or post)Nounfeminine singular construct
ʻîyr: a city, a guarded place The lexical sense is a place kept by a watch. Ellicott's rendering makes the geography exact: "The ark had come so far as to the city." The ark is entering the one city named for David, and inside it the daughter of the previous king is watching from a height.
דָּוִ֑ידdā·wîḏof DavidH1732
√ Dâvid — David, the youngest son of JesseNounpropermasculine singular
שָׁא֜וּלšā·’ūlSaul’sH7586
√ Shâʼûwl — Shaul, the name of an Edomite and two IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
Shâʼûwl: Saul The Chronicler could have written "David's wife." He writes "Saul's daughter." The genealogy is the commentary: the contempt at the window is given a house, and that house is the rejected one (1 Chronicles 10:13-14).
בַּת־baṯ-daughterH1323
√ bath — a daughter (used in the same wide sense as other terms of relationship, literally and figuratively)Nounfeminine singular construct
וּמִיכַ֨לū·mî·ḵalMichalH4324
√ Mîykâl — Mikal, Saul's daughterConjunctive wawNounproperfeminine singular
Mîykâl: Michal, Saul's daughter A rare name (17 verses), and every occurrence is a hinge in the David story: she loved him (1 Samuel 18:20), she let him down through a window to save his life (1 Samuel 19:12), and here she looks down through a window and writes him off. The Verifier confirms the window vocabulary is shared between those two scenes.
נִשְׁקְפָ֣ה׀niš·qə·p̄āhlooked downH8259
√ shâqaph — properly, to lean out (of a window), iVerbNifalPerfectthird person feminine singular
shâqaph: to lean out, to look down Niphal perfect, third feminine singular. The Niphal of this root is the standing Hebrew idiom for someone framed in a window looking down on events in the street, and it is almost always a woman: Sisera's mother (Judges 5:28), Jezebel (2 Kings 9:30), the foolish youth's watcher (Proverbs 7:6). Height here is not advantage; in each of those scenes the one at the window misjudges what is happening below.
בְּעַ֣דbə·‘aḏfromH1157
√ bᵉʻad — in up to or over againstPreposition
הַחַלּ֗וֹןha·ḥal·lō·wna windowH2474
√ challôwn — a window (as perforated)ArticleNouncommon singular
challôwn: a window, as perforated A hole in a wall. It lets a person see without being in the street, participate without processing, judge without carrying a pole. The whole moral geometry of the verse is in that one architectural noun: everyone else in chapter 15 is under the ark or in front of it; Michal is above it and behind a wall.
וַתֵּ֨רֶאwat·tê·reand sawH7200
√ râʼâh — to see, literally or figuratively (in numerous applications, direct and implied, transitive, intransitive and causative)Conjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person feminine singular
râʼâh: to see Consecutive imperfect: she looked out, and then she saw. The verse is careful that her contempt follows real sight. She is not misinformed; she watched the whole thing. Ellicott notes the Chronicler leaves the sentence hanging ("and she saw . . .") exactly where Samuel's fuller account would have begun the quarrel.
אֶת־’eṯ-H853
√ ʼêth — properly, self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)Direct object marker
הַמֶּ֤לֶךְham·me·leḵKingH4428
√ melek — a kingArticleNounmasculine singular
melek: a king The title is placed in her line of sight on purpose: she saw the king David leaping. JFB reads the scene as David's deliberate divestment: "Though his royal robes were laid aside, he was attired like the other officials." The Chronicler keeps the crown in the sentence so the reader can see what she thought was being thrown away.
דָּוִיד֙dā·wîḏDavidH1732
√ Dâvid — David, the youngest son of JesseNounpropermasculine singular
מְרַקֵּ֣דmə·raq·qêḏdancingH7540
√ râqad — properly, to stamp, iVerbPielParticiplemasculine singular
râqad: to stamp, to skip, to leap Piel participle, intensive. Rare (9 verses) and physical: calves and mountains skip with it (Psalm 114:4, 6), locust-like armies leap with it (Joel 2:5), chariots bound with it (Nahum 3:2). K&D record that the Chronicler has substituted this verb and its partner for the two obsolete words used in the Samuel parallel, which means a later Hebrew reader was meant to feel exactly how undignified the motion was.
וּמְשַׂחֵ֔קū·mə·śa·ḥêqand celebratingH7832
√ sâchaq — to laugh (in pleasure or detraction)Conjunctive wawVerbPielParticiplemasculine singular
sâchaq: to laugh, in pleasure or in detraction Piel participle, paired with the previous word. Ellicott says the term "denotes dancing combined with singing and playing." The root's own double sense is the verse in miniature: David is doing sâchaq before the ark, and the watcher turns it into a joke at his expense. Cambridge adds the honest warning that "the unrestrained joyousness of this action might easily degenerate (as in idolatrous worship) into licence," so the reader is not asked to pretend the danger is imaginary.
וַתִּ֥בֶזwat·ti·ḇezand she despisedH959
√ bâzâh — to disesteemConjunctive wawVerbQalConsecutive imperfectthird person feminine singular
bâzâh: to disesteem To value at nothing. Consecutive imperfect, the same wave of verbs that carried "looked out" and "saw": seeing and despising are told as one motion. The Pulpit Commentary refuses to look for a cause outside her: "The reason of Michal 'despising David in his heart' can only be found in the unreason and the irreligion of that heart itself."
ל֖וֹlōwhim
Prepositionthird person masculine singular
lōw, "to him": the object of the contempt is a person, not a performance.
בְּלִבָּֽהּ׃פbə·lib·bāhin her heartH3820
√ lêb — the heartPreposition-bNounmasculine singular constructthird person feminine singular
lêb: the heart With the preposition and the third feminine singular suffix: in her heart. The Chronicler stops the narrative at the one place no camera reaches. In Samuel the contempt comes out of her mouth and David answers it; here Gill notes that what she said and what David returned in answer are left in the other book. The verse ends inside her, which is precisely where the final verdict on worship is made.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. One verse doing the work of five — 15:29

The Pulpit Commentary opens with the plain editorial observation: "Thus briefly is given by our compiler what occupies five verses" in 2 Samuel 6. Ellicott says the Hebrew here reads like a modernised form of 2 Samuel 6:16, and K&D record the specific substitutions: מרקּד וּמשׂחק in place of the older pair in Samuel, and ark of the covenant of the LORD in place of Samuel's shorter phrase. Cambridge lists what is missing rather than what is changed: the Chronicler drops the words "before the LORD" from the dancing, and he passes over David's subsequent interview with Michal entirely. Gill points the reader to Samuel for "what she said, and what David returned in answer to it." So four named commentators agree on the shape of the verse: it is a compression, deliberate, with the argument cut out of it. ⚙ What survives the cut is worth naming. The Chronicler kept the ark, the covenant, the window, the leaping, and the heart. He discarded the dialogue. A story that in Samuel ends in a quarrel and a barren womb ends here inside a woman's chest, unspoken.

ii. Two verbs the Chronicler chose on purpose — 15:29

Ellicott's note is lexical and exact: "In the Hebrew two common words have been substituted for the two obsolete ones occurring in Samuel," and of the second he adds that it "denotes dancing combined with singing and playing," citing Jeremiah 30:19 and 1 Samuel 18:6-7. The Pulpit Commentary presses further, insisting neither word matches Samuel's and that both "would be better rendered 'leaping and dancing'"; Cambridge proposes "leaping as in sport." ⚙ The lexicon backs them. רָקַד (H7540) is properly to stamp, and it is rare, nine verses in the whole Hebrew Bible, where it belongs to calves, mountains, war chariots and locusts. שָׂחַק (H7832) is to laugh, in pleasure or detraction. The Chronicler, writing for readers who no longer knew Samuel's archaic vocabulary, chose two words that would land hard, and Cambridge is honest enough to say that this kind of joy "might easily degenerate (as in idolatrous worship) into licence." JFB read the same scene in the opposite direction, arguing that David's "movements would be slow and solemn, suitable to the grave and solemn character of the music." ⚙ The Hebrew verbs do not support the slowness; JFB's instinct to protect David's dignity is the very instinct the verse is written to expose.

iii. The window, the heart, and what is left unsaid — 15:29

The Niphal נִשְׁקְפָה (H8259) means to lean out over a sill and look down, and Ellicott gives it as "Michal had looked forth by the lattice." ⚙ The Verifier's own lexeme comparison shows how fixed this scene is in Hebrew: the trio shâqaph plus challôwn plus bᵉʻad recurs at Judges 5:28, 2 Kings 9:30, Proverbs 7:6 and Genesis 26:8, and in each of those the one framed in the window misreads what is below. Michal's own earlier scene uses the same window vocabulary in reverse (1 Samuel 19:12), where she let David down through it to save his life. The Chronicler names her twice over as "Saul's daughter," never as David's wife. Ellicott supplies the motive he thinks lies behind her contempt, that David "seemed forgetful of his royal and manly honour"; JFB calls her reaction "an ebullition of spleen from a proud and passionate woman"; the Pulpit Commentary will not let the cause sit anywhere outside her, locating it in "the unreason and the irreligion of that heart itself" and then widening it to all "who despise devotion, enthusiasm, and above all practical liberality." ⚙ These are three guesses at an interior the text deliberately seals. What the Hebrew actually reports is the location, not the reason: bᵉlibbāh, in her heart. Matthew Henry, commenting on the whole span 15:25-29, draws the positive counterpart and says that if we do our religious duties in any degree aright, "we must own it was God that helped us." ⚙ Set side by side, the verse gives the two possible responses to a procession one did not organise: carry it, or price it.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text. Scripture here reports two accounts of one event and keeps both. Michal sees accurately: the king really is leaping and laughing in public, really has laid the royal robes aside, and the danger Cambridge names (that unrestrained religious joy can slide into licence) is a real danger, not a slander. Her error is not in her eyes but in her arithmetic. She values what she sees at nothing, bâzâh, while the same sentence tells the reader that the box going past the window is the ark of the covenant of the LORD. Contempt is a pricing decision, and it is made before any words are spoken. That is why the Chronicler, who deleted the whole quarrel, kept the last three words: he wanted the verdict recorded where it was actually reached. Nothing here excuses the watcher and nothing here canonises the dancer; the text simply notes which of the two was moving with the ark. The line printed below is ours, not Scripture, and should be weighed as such.

Contempt is a price set in private; the Chronicler kept the receipt.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The verse the Chronicler was rewriting verbal / quotation: confirmed

Ellicott states the relation directly: the verse "reads in the Hebrew like a modernised form of 2 Samuel 6:16," and K&D name the two substituted words and the expanded title of the ark. Gill and Cambridge both send the reader to Samuel for the material omitted here, the exchange between David and Michal. ⚙ The Verifier finds three lexemes shared between the two verses, including the relatively uncommon shâqaph, which is what one expects of a source and its revision rather than of two independent reports.

2 Samuel 6:16

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H7586 Shâʼûwl (in 335 vv), H959 bâzâh (in 42 vv), H8259 shâqaph (in 22 vv), clustered in a single verse; literary dependence is asserted by Ellicott ("a modernised form of 2Samuel 6:16") and K&D, who itemise the word substitutions. This is dependence within the Hebrew canon, not a quotation formula.

The answer the Chronicler deleted structural / thematic: confirmed

Cambridge notes that "David's subsequent interview with Michal" is passed over in Chronicles, and Gill likewise points to Samuel for what she said and what David answered. ⚙ In that omitted exchange the same root sâchaq reappears on David's own lips, which means the Chronicler cut the reply but kept the verb it turned on. The Verifier records the shared lexemes; the theological point is that Chronicles leaves Michal's contempt unanswered on the page.

2 Samuel 6:21

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H7832 sâchaq (in 36 vv) and H4324 Mîykâl (in 17 vv). A shared scene and vocabulary within one narrative tradition; Chronicles does not quote the Samuel reply, it omits it, so no quotation tier is claimed.

The woman at the window structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ The Hebrew has a fixed way of framing this shot: the Niphal of shâqaph plus bᵉʻad plus ha-challôwn, someone leaning out and looking down. Sisera's mother waits at it for a son already dead (Judges 5:28); Jezebel paints her eyes and looks out of it at Jehu (2 Kings 9:30); Wisdom's teacher watches a young fool from it (Proverbs 7:6); Abimelech looks through one and sees Isaac sporting with Rebekah (Genesis 26:8). In every case the one above misjudges, or judges rightly only by seeing what was meant to be private. Michal's window puts her in that company. ⚙ The Verifier confirms the shared lexemes; the pattern reading is ours.

Judges 5:28 · 2 Kings 9:30 · Proverbs 7:6 · Genesis 26:8

basis: Verifier: each reference shares H8259 shâqaph (in 22 vv), H2474 challôwn (in 27 vv) and H1157 bᵉʻad (in 82 vv) with this verse. A recurring Hebrew scene-formula, not a quotation; the moral pattern drawn from it is machine synthesis.

Michal's other window structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ The first time Michal appears at a window she is saving David's life: she lets him down through it while Saul's men wait at the door (1 Samuel 19:12). The vocabulary of that rescue and this contempt overlaps, and the name itself is rare enough (17 verses) that the recurrence is hard to read as accident. Between the two windows lies everything the Chronicler does not narrate: her second marriage, her return, her father's fall. The text does not tell us she changed; it only shows the same woman at the same kind of opening, lowering a fugitive the first time and writing off a king the second.

1 Samuel 19:12

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H2474 challôwn (in 27 vv), H4324 Mîykâl (in 17 vv), H1157 bᵉʻad (in 82 vv). The rare shared lexeme is a proper name, which establishes a common actor and setting, not a quotation; the reading of the reversal is machine synthesis.

A time to skip: the rare verb râqad structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ רָקַד (H7540) occurs in only nine verses, and its company is instructive: mountains skip like rams and hills like lambs at the presence of the Lord (Psalm 114:4, 6); Sinai-like Lebanon skips (Psalm 29:6); the children of the wicked dance in Job's complaint (Job 21:11); Ecclesiastes gives it a season alongside sâchaq, "a time to dance" (Ecclesiastes 3:4). ⚙ The Chronicler puts a king inside that verb. If creation itself skips before the LORD, David's motion is not an aberration in the created order; it is the one human being in the scene behaving like the hills.

Psalm 114:4 · Psalm 114:6 · Job 21:11 · Ecclesiastes 3:4

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7540 râqad (in 9 vv, rare) with all four references; Ecclesiastes 3:4 additionally shares H7832 sâchaq (in 36 vv). A rare shared lexeme establishing a real verbal link inside a motif of exultant motion, with no quotation claimed in either direction.

Despised in the heart, before any word is spoken flagged: verify source

⚙ Chronicles locates the contempt in her heart and then stops. Scripture elsewhere insists this is exactly the register God reads: the LORD looks on the heart while man looks on the outward appearance, said to Samuel about the choosing of this same David (1 Samuel 16:7), and the proverb prices a despiser by the same root bâzâh. ⚙ We flag this link honestly: the Verifier's candidate list for this verse does not include 1 Samuel 16:7, and the connection we are drawing is thematic and made by us, resting on the Chronicler's own deliberate choice to end the sentence inside her rather than on a computed lexeme overlap.

1 Samuel 16:7

basis: No Verifier-computed lexeme basis: 1 Samuel 16:7 is not in this unit's candidate list and no shared Strong's overlap has been confirmed for it here. The link is a thematic reading of lêb (H3820) by the machine layer and should be checked before it is relied on.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The verb that meets the Servant ancient/widely-held

⚙ The word Chronicles uses for Michal's verdict is בָּזָה (H959, to disesteem), and it is the word Isaiah's fourth Servant Song uses of the one from whom men hide their faces: despised, and we esteemed him not. The Verifier confirms the shared lexeme between this verse and Isaiah 53:3. ⚙ The pattern the machine layer draws out is this: the anointed king is written off at the moment of his deepest public identification with the presence of God, by someone with a clear view and a full account of the facts. The apostolic reading of Isaiah 53 as fulfilled in Christ is ancient and universal in the church; the observation that David's humiliation before the ark is the Old Testament rehearsal of it is the reading offered here for testing.

Isaiah 53:3

The robes laid aside novel

JFB notice the detail and give it a name: "Though his royal robes were laid aside, he was attired like the other officials, showing a becoming humility in the immediate presence of God." Ellicott records the offence it caused, that David "seemed forgetful of his royal and manly honour." ⚙ Set beside Paul's hymn, in which the one who was in the form of God did not count equality a thing to be grasped but emptied himself and took the form of a servant, the shape rhymes: royal status voluntarily set down, and contempt as the immediate human response. This is a cross-Testament reading, Greek beside Hebrew, so no shared lexeme underwrites it and none is claimed. None of this unit's commentators draws the line to Philippians; the connection is ours, and it is a pattern claim rather than a prophecy claim.

Philippians 2:5-8

The ark entering the city ancient/widely-held

⚙ The verse turns on a procession: the ark of the covenant of the LORD coming as far as the city of David, with the king going ahead of it in undignified joy. The typological reading of the ark, the place where God meets his people and where the blood is brought, is ancient and is taken up in the New Testament's treatment of the tabernacle furniture (Hebrews 9:3-5). The gates lifted for the King of glory in Psalm 24 have been read as an entry song from the earliest Christian centuries, and the disciples' noisy acclamation at the descent of the Mount of Olives, which the bystanders also wanted silenced, is the same scene with the same objectors. ⚙ The ark typology is old; the specific application to Michal's window is our own, and the commentators gathered in this unit make no such connection here.

Psalm 24:7-10 · Luke 19:37-40 · Hebrews 9:3-5

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text: BSB (CC0) with the Berean interlinear and Strong's numbers; parse data and lexicon glosses are taken from the brief and not adjusted. Twenty-three Hebrew words, one verse.

Sources: Poole has no note on this verse. Barnes' note attached to this verse in the source collection actually discusses the fine linen (byssus) of David's robe, which belongs to the description in v. 27; it is therefore not quoted here as a witness to v. 29. K&D's remarks reach this brief with the Hebrew words in the reversed order typical of that transcription, so we cite their point (the substituted verbs and the expanded title of the ark) rather than reproducing their Hebrew string. Henry's entry covers the whole block 15:25-29 and says nothing about Michal specifically; it is used only for the general note on dependence upon God in worship, which is what he actually wrote.

Uncertain: the motive assigned to Michal. Ellicott (wounded royal dignity), JFB (temper), Cambridge (a real risk of licence in unrestrained religious joy) and the Pulpit Commentary (irreligion of heart) all supply a reason the Hebrew does not state; the verse reports only the location of her contempt, in her heart. JFB's claim that David's movements "would be slow and solemn" is an inference from the music and stands in tension with the force of râqad; both readings are preserved above rather than harmonised. The 1 Samuel 16:7 thread is flagged because it has no Verifier-computed basis. All Verifier lexeme frequencies are quoted as the brief gives them.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)