Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 19:13

"And Michal took the teraphim, and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats` [hair] at the head thereof, and covered it with the clothes." — 1 Samuel 19:13 (ASV)

An image. —An image in Hebrew is teraphim—a plural form, but used as a singular. We have no instance of the singular. The Latin equivalent, “penates,” remarkably enough, is also only found in the plural form. In this case, it was probably a life-size figure or bust. The word has been discussed above (1 Samuel 15:23). It is remarkable how, despite the stern command to avoid idolatry, the children of Israel seemed to love to possess these lifeless images. The teraphim were probably a remnant of the idolatry originally brought by some of Abraham’s family from their Chaldean home.

These idols, we know, varied in size, from the diminutive image which Rachel (Genesis 31:34) was able to conceal under the camel saddle to the life-size figure which the Princess Michal here used to make her father’s guards believe that her sick husband, David, was in bed. They appear to have been regarded as tutelary deities, the dispensers of domestic and family good fortune. It has been suggested, with some probability, that Michal, like Rachel, kept this teraphim in secret because of her barrenness.

A pillow of goats’ hair. —More accurately, a goat’s skin about its head. So translate the Syriac and Vulgate Versions. The reason for this act apparently was to imitate the effect of a man’s hair around the teraphim’s head. Its body, we read in the next clause, was covered “with a cloth.” Some scholars have suggested that this goat’s skin was a network of goat’s hair to keep off the flies from the supposed sleeper. The Septuagint, instead of k’vir (skin), read in their Hebrew copies keaved (liver). As the vowel points were introduced much later, such a confusion (especially as the difference between d and r in Hebrew is very slight) would be likely enough to occur in the manuscripts.

Josephus, adopting the Septuagint reading, explains Michal’s conduct thus—“Michal put a palpitating goat’s liver into the bed, to represent a breathing sick man.”

With a cloth. —Heb., beged. This was David’s everyday garment, which he was in the habit of wearing. This, loosely thrown over the image, would materially assist the deception. The fifty-ninth Psalm bears the following title—“A michtam (or song of deep import) of David, when Saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him.” The internal evidence, however, is scarcely confirmatory of the accuracy of the title. The sacred song in question is very probably one of David’s own composition, and it is likely enough that the danger he incurred on this occasion was in his mind when he wrote the solemn words; but there are references in this psalm which must apply to other events in his troubled, anxious life.