1 Samuel 18:17-27

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

¹⁷ Saul said to David, My elder daughter Merab I will give you as wife; only serve me courageously and fight the Lord’s battles. For Saul thought, Let not my hand, but the Philistines’ hand, be upon him.

¹⁸ David said to Saul, Who am I, and what is my life or my father’s family in Israel, that I should be the king’s son-in-law?

¹⁹ But at the time when Merab, Saul’s daughter, should have been given to David, she was given to Adriel the Meholathite as wife.

²⁰ Now Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and it pleased him.

²¹ Saul thought, I will give her to him that she may be a snare to him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. So Saul said to David a second time, You shall now be my son-in-law.

²² And Saul commanded his servants to speak to David privately and say, The king delights in you, and all his servants love you; now then, become [his] son-in-law.

²³ Saul’s servants told those words to David. David said, Does it seem to you a light thing to be a king’s son-in-law, seeing I am a poor man and lightly esteemed?

²⁴ And the servants of Saul told him what David said.

²⁵ Saul said, Say this to David, The king wants no dowry but a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to avenge himself of the king’s enemies. But Saul thought to make David fall by the Philistines’ hands.

²⁶ When his servants told David these words, it pleased [him] well to become the king’s son-in-law. Before the days expired,

²⁷ David went, he and his men, and slew two hundred Philistine men, and brought their foreskins and gave them in full number to the king, that he might become the king’s son-in-law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter as wife.