iii. Michael seems also to have been regarded as the medium through whom the Law was given. This is clearly stated in the late Apocalypse of Moses I: Aujynots . . . ἀποκαλυφθεῖσα. . . Μωῦσῇ . . . ὅτε Tas πλάκας τοῦ νόμου τῆς διαθήκης ἐκ χειρὸς Κυρίου ἐδέξατο, διδαχθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀρχαγγέλου Μιχαήλ. Most probably, therefore, the angel of the presence, who in Jubilees 1” 2! instructs Moses on Mount Sinai, and delivers to him the tables of the Law, is to be taken as Michael, and the same identification should no doubt be made in the case of the angel in Ac 7%,*
iv. A very notable extension of the attributes and offices of Michael is attested in the Simili- tudes and the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs. Thus he is described as ‘ the merciful and the long- suflering,’ Eth. Enoch 40° (ef. 685 8), and as ‘the angel who intercedeth for the race of Israel and of all the just’ (τὸν ἄγγελον τὸν παραιτούμενον x.7..), Levi 5, and ‘the mediator of God and man for the peace of Israel’ (μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων k.7.d.), Dan 6. The same view of Michael appears in the Ascension of Isaiah 9% (Latin) ‘Magnus angelus Michael deprecans semper pro humanitate.’
In the NT Michael is mentioned twice by name, Jude® Rev 127. In both these passages the con- ception of Michael belongs to division i. above. Thus what is more fitting than that the angelic patron of Israel should protect the body of Israel’s great lawgiver against Satan? Jude*, as we are aware, is derived from the Assumption of Moses (see Charles’ Asswmption of Moses, pp. 105-110). We find elsewhere the burial of Moses attributed to the agency of angels, particularly of Michael, in the Targum of Jonathan on Dt 34°.
In the second NT passage (Rev 127-*) Michael and his hosts go forth to war against the dragon, ‘the old serpent’ that is called the Devil and Satan. Here the figure of Michael thrusts aside that of the Messiah ; for it is Michael and not the Child that overthrows Satan when storming the heavens—a fact which speaks strongly for the Jewish origin of most of Rev 12.
Under division iii. above we have already noticed a possible reference to Michael in Ac 733,
With the Talmudic conceptions of Michael we have ποῦ here to deal. For these the following books may be consulted: Lneken’s monograph, Michael, 1898; Weber, Jiidische Theologie*, 167- 172, 205, 253; Schoettgen, Hor. Hebd. i. 1079, 1119, ii. 8, 15 (ed. Dresden, 1742); Hamburger, Real- Encyclopedic fiir Bibel und Talmud, 1892, pp. 753,
* In Eth. En. 6913-17 (a fragment of the Book of Noah) Michael
is said to be the guardian of the mysterious magical formula wherewith the heavens and earth were founded.
MICHAL
MICHMASH
363
754. On later Christian conceptions see Bousset,
The Antichrist Legend, 227-231.
R. H. CHARLEs.
MICHAL (53> contracted from 5x>"p ‘ who is like unto God ?’).—The younger of Saul’s two daughters (1S 14%, Μελχόλ). Saul, who was wavering between desire to destroy David and reluctance to promote him to be the king’s son-in-law, sudden Υ gave Merab his eldest daughter to Adriel (15 18"). It now transpired that Michal had fallen in love with David. For a woman to take the initiative in such matters is without a parallel in the Bible, but it suited Saul’s designs, and David, on his part, lost no time in providing double (not LXX) the dowry demanded. It should be noted that the LXX (B), followed by Josephus (Ant. vI. x. 2), simplifies the story by omitting the incident about Merab (1S 1817-126); and Josephus here, and again in Ant. vil. i. 4, misses the point of Saul’s savage mockery of ‘ the uncircumcised Philistines’ by representing the conditions imposed on David as six hundred heads of Philistines. David was soon to owe his life to the wife whom Saul had designed to ‘be a snare to him.’ When the emissaries of Saul ‘ watched the house to kill him’ (1S 1947, Ps 59 title), Michal baffled them by letting David down by the window, and delayed pursuit by a clever ruse. Placing the household god in the bed, she covered the supposed sick man’s head with a mosquito net (RVm), and finally disarmed Saul’s jealous anger by a Plansible lie. In this passage the rare word in vy. ‘ pillow’ ~33 (on which see Driver’s note) was read 129 (cunstr. of 133) ‘liver’ by the LXX. Josepau3 Ant. VI. xi. 4) seems not to have understood the Xx translation of ‘ teraphim,’ τὰ κενοτάφια, for he says that Michal placed in the bed a goat’s liver, which, as it palpitated and shook the bedclothes, might suggest that David was Benne for breath.
The last scene in which Michal figures (2 S 616:33) resents a startling contrast to the time when, for ove of David, she had flung aside conventionalities
and braved her father’s fury. That love was now
all changed into coldness and dislike. When from
a window in the palace on Mt. Zion Michal looked
down on David leaping and dancing before the ark,
it was not merely her woman’s impatience of the absurd that made her ‘despise him in her heart,’ or that prompted the sarcasm in which that contempt foun utterance lateron. To appreciate her daring mockery, and the cold anger of David’s rejoinder, we must read them in the light of the years that had passed. [Ὁ 15 probable that Michal had been happy with Palti, or Paltiel, to whom she had been married on David’s banishment (1S 254). From that home she had been torn (28 3!) merely that David might be enabled to claim a sort of heredi- tary right to the throne, and have by him a living memorial of his early prowess. Now she was but one of many wives, equalled with mere ‘hand- maids,’ probably neglected. What wonder if the bitter reflexion that she had indirectly facilitated the humiliation of her own family was coupled with a suspicion that David had from the first regarded her merely as a means of self-aggrandise- ment? Itisdiflicult not to feel some sympathy with