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match was delayed, to endear it the more; and when David's hopes were at the height, (and, it may be, his affection fixed) they

were dasht at once.

IT it finely obferved of the courts of tyrants, that in them favours are wont to come flow, and injuries fudden; Lenta beneficia, injuria præcipites !

THIS treatment was well able to exasperate a spirit less fenfible of injuries than David's, to the highest degree; and, in all appearance, was intended to do fo; that fome act of outrage, or intemperance of expreffion, too natural on fuch an occafion, might supply some pretence of vengeance upon him: but this snare also the Spirit of GOD delivered him from.

CHAP

CHAP. VII.

Michal promised to David. The Nature of the required Dower explained at large.

SAU L's vengeance being thus difap

pointed, he foon found another occafion of wreaking it upon him, as he hoped, to more advantage.

MICHAL, Saul's fecond daughter, beheld David with other eyes than those of her father's enmity in all probability, David's merit, added to her brother Jonathan's friendship and affection for him, wrought upon her. But whatever influence Jonathan's friendship, or David's character and accomplishments, had upon her, she seems to have had prudence and virtue enough, not to indulge her defires, as long as there was any profpect of his matching with her elder fifter; for we hear nothing of her likeing to David, until after Merab's marriage; then it was that Saul was firft informed of it. He received the account with joy: The thing pleafed him, (fays the text) and Saul

faid, I will give him her, that she may be a fnare to him, and that the hand of the Philiftines may be against him. He refolved to give her to him, as Antiochus the Great gave Cleopatra, his daughter, to Ptolomy Epiphanes king of Egypt, thinking to use her as an inftrument to deftroy him and was disappointed, as Antiochus was; for Michal clave to her husband, as Cleopatra did, and as Daniel had foretold +.

BUT it seems there was fome difficulty in the point, from the Afiatick custom of purchafing wives, and that in proportion to their dignity: a difficulty, which David's condition, in point of fortune, ill enabled him to overcome; and fuch as Saul's express and publick ftipulation in the affair of Goliah should have made him ashamed to infift on. However, Saul took care to make it at once very infidious, and not infuperable; and then commanded his fervants to communicate the matter to David, and place it in the fairest and most tempting light before him.

* I Sam. xviii. 17.

+ She shall not ftand on his fide, Dan. xi. 17. Dr. Trapp obferves, that man and wife are the two branches in the prophet Ezekiel's hand, inclosed in one bark, and so closeing together, that they make but one piece.

They

They told him, according to their inftructions, that the king delighted in him, and all his fervants loved him, and that he must be the king's fon-in-law. And when David, in his humility, excused himself from the impoffibility of his paying the dower* of so great a prince's daughter, they propofed an expedient which they judged his magnanimity would readily embrace; The king (fay they) defireth not a dowry, but an hundred fore-skins of the Philiftines, to be avenged of the king's enemies. His defign in this, the text affures us, was, to make him fall by the hand of the Philiftines this was the defign that swayed him from the firft. It is true, Merab was due to David by publick ftipulation: but when Saul promised her to him, he added this exprefs condition, before-mentioned, that he thould fight the Lord's battles, upon the hopes of his falling in them, 1 Sam. xviii. 17.

WHEN David had efcaped this fnare, Saul then laid another for him, which he thought much furer; and that was, the dower

*And David faid, Seemeth it to you a light thing to be a king's fon-in-law, feeing that I am a poor man, and lightly efteemed? ch. xviii. 23. Some think, that this excufe hath a mixture of courtly refentment in it; and poffibly it may.

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of the fore-skins now mentioned; and to bring the matter to a speedy iffue, he ftinted him to a limited time for fulfilling the condition.

DAVID had, in his humility, declined the honour of the king's alliance, by this daughter, as well as the other: but when the condition of the fore-skins was once propofed, he could now no longer decline it without the imputation of cowardice. And certainly a more probable expedient for his ruin could not have been thought on. This we fhall foon be convinced of, when we confider, that all these hundred enemies, whofe fore-skins were to be presented to Saul, must fall by David's own hands; nor could Saul's end be otherwise answered: his aim was, to bring David fo often into immediate and perfonal danger, and fuch as it was hardly poffible he should so often efcape; whereas, had he been allowed to complete his number with those flain by his thousand men, over whom he was captain, this might have been effected with little and unrepeated danger. So that his thousand men who attended him, tho' it is not to be imagined they were idle fpectators on all thefe occafions; yet, as far as related

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