1 Samuel 19 · a question people ask
Michal laid the teraphim in the bed (19:13) and told Saul's messengers, "He is sick" (19:14). Was that right?
The chapter tells what she did without comment. She warned David, "If you don’t save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed" (19:11), let him down through the window (19:12), and laid the teraphim in the bed (19:13). To the messengers she said, "He is sick" (19:14). Saul called it deceit: "Why have you deceived me like this and let my enemy go, so that he has escaped?" (19:17). She answered, "He said to me, ‘Let me go! Why should I kill you?’" (19:17). Christians read what she did in two main ways, as they do Rahab's answer to the king of Jericho (Joshua 2:4-6), and Joshua 2's honest question sets those readings out. Both views agree that Saul meant to kill David (19:11, 19:15), and that she saved his life (19:12).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
An untrue answer, and still wrong
Those who hold this view take her words to the messengers as untrue and hold that deceiving was still wrong, since God's law says, "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor" (Exodus 20:16), and "Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD" (Proverbs 12:22). They note that the chapter doesn't praise her words. On this reading, what was good was saving David's life, not what she told the messengers.
Exodus 20:16 · Proverbs 12:22 · 1 Samuel 19:12-14
Deceiving to save life was right here
Those who hold this view read her words as part of hiding a man whom the king meant to kill "without a cause" (19:5): the messengers had come "to kill him in the morning" (19:11), and Saul said, "Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him" (19:15). They read it as they read the Hebrew midwives, who "didn’t do what the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the baby boys alive" (Exodus 1:17), answered Pharaoh (Exodus 1:19), and "God dealt well with the midwives" (Exodus 1:20).
1 Samuel 19:5 · 1 Samuel 19:11 · 1 Samuel 19:15 · Exodus 1:17-20
The verses
“Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him and to kill him in the morning. Michal, David’s wife, told him, saying, “If you don’t save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.” So Michal let David down through the window. He went away, fled, and escaped. Michal took the teraphim and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats’ hair at its head and covered it with clothes. When Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, “He is sick.” Saul sent the messengers to see David, saying, “Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him.””
“Saul said to Michal, “Why have you deceived me like this and let my enemy go, so that he has escaped?” Michal answered Saul, “He said to me, ‘Let me go! Why should I kill you?’””
“The woman took the two men and hid them. Then she said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I didn’t know where they came from. About the time of the shutting of the gate, when it was dark, the men went out. Where the men went, I don’t know. Pursue them quickly. You may catch up with them.” But she had brought them up to the roof, and hidden them under the stalks of flax which she had laid in order on the roof.”