2 Samuel 3:13 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

One thing I require— David did right in making this stipulation; for, whatever may be said of his other wives, he had certainly a claim to this, as she was his first wife, and a king's daughter: and there was something of true generosity in this, both to her and to Saul, in that he received her after she had been another man's, remembering how once she loved him; knowing, probably, that she was without her consent separated from him, and to shew that he did not carry his resentment of Saul's cruel and unjust persecutions of him to any of his family; whereas many princes, for much less provocations of a wife's father, would have turned off their consorts, in revenge of them; and even put them to death for having been married to another. Chandler. Mr. Bayle considers it as cruelty in David to ravish Michal from a husband who loved her so well; see 2 Samuel 3:16.; that is, Mr. Bayle thinks it a great cruelty in David to disturb Phaltiel in an adultery which was agreeable to him, and to restore Michal to her only husband, the husband of her affection and her choice, for whom she had so much tenderness as to save his life at the hazard of her own. Phaltiel certainly is no proper object of pity; and yet his distress upon this occasion as one of the finest pictures of silent grief that any history has left us. Conscious that he had no right to complain, or molest Michal with his lamentations, he follows her at a distance, with a distress silent and self-confined, going and weeping behind her. However such fine paintings of nature pass unregarded in the sacred writings, I am satisfied that in Homer we should survey this with delight. The Jewish rabbies are unanimously of opinion, that Phaltiel was a strictly religious man, and had no nuptial commerce with Michal. Note; Polygamy had long received sanction from prevailing custom; but it is in itself evil, and no custom or authority can consecrate a bad practice. And could David, indeed, have foreseen how his children would have turned out, it would have abated his joy at their birth; for three of them at least lived to give him many a bitter pang. So often do we find our scourges in that wherein we promised ourselves the greatest comfort.