1. thirty thousand. Some modern commentators understand ʾalafim, “thousands,” as “military contingents,” and thus reduce the number of troops to a few hundred elite soldiers. But ʾalafim in a non-numerical sense refers to clans, not military units; and as we have abundantly seen, exaggerated numbers are common in these stories. Polzin, moreover, has aptly observed that thirty thousand is precisely the number of Israelites slain when the Ark was captured by the Philistines (1 Samuel 4).

2. to Baalah in Judah. This place-name is a synonym for the Kiriath-Jearim of 1 Samuel 7:1—see, for example, Joshua 15:9. The Qumran Samuel scroll in fact reads here: “Baalah, which is Kiriath-Jearim in Judah.” The Masoretic Text reads baʿaley yehudah. Because this erroneous phrase was construed to mean “the notables of Judah,” a mem prefix (“from”) was added to it to yield “from the notables of Judah.” But David is clearly going to the place Baalah.

3. a new cart. The new cart is a vehicle unpolluted by any previous secular use.

4. The Masoretic Text begins this verse with a whole clause that is a scribal duplication (dittography) of the first half of verse 3: “And they carried it off from the house of Abinadab which is on the Hill.” This clause is not present in the Qumran Samuel, in the Septuagint, or in the parallel verse in 1 Chronicles 13:7. The Masoretic Text also repeats the adjective “new” (ḥadashah) at the end of verse 3, a repetition not reflected in the other ancient versions.

5. with all their might in song. The translation reads here bekhol ʿoz uveshirim with 1 Chronicles 13:8. The Masoretic Text has bekhol ʿatsey beroshim, “with all cypress woods,” which only by a long interpretive stretch has been made to refer to percussion instruments.

6. the threshing floor of Nacon. The proper name here is in question. The Qumran Samuel reads “Nadon.”

7. the LORD’s wrath flared up . . . and God struck him down. This is an archaic story that defies later ethical categories: the Ark, as God’s terrestrial throne, is invested with awesome divine power (compare 1 Samuel 6). To touch it, even in an effort to keep it from slipping off the cart, is to risk being consumed by its indwelling mana, as when one comes in contact with a high-voltage electric core. God’s wrath against Uzza triggers an answering wrath (the same verb in the Hebrew) on the part of David, frustrated in his purposes and now wondering whether he will ever manage to bring this symbol and earthly focus of God’s power to his newly conquered capital.

for reaching out his hand to the Ark. The translation follows the parallel version in 1 Chronicles 13:10. The Masoretic Text here has a single incomprehensible word, shal, which might be simply two consonants from the initial words of the lost clause recorded in Chronicles.

8. Perez-Uzza. The Hebrew is construed to mean “bursting out against Uzza.” The naming story forms an antithetical symmetry with the story in 2 Samuel 5 of Baal-Perazim, there associated with God’s “bursting through” the Philistine ranks.

11. Obed-Edom the Gittite. He is a foreigner, perhaps (though this is not certain) from Philistine Gath—conceivably someone who had attached himself to David during his sojourn there.

13. when the bearers of the Ark of the LORD had taken six steps. Some construe this as an imperfect verb: with every six steps David would sacrifice a bull. Apart from the difficulty that these constant sacrifices would make the procession interminable and require scores of thousands of bulls, the imperfect would require the verb “to be” at the beginning of the sentence to appear in the suffix conjugation wehayah, instead of the way it is, in the prefix conjugation, wayehi, which implies a singulative, not an iterative, tense for the verb.

14. girt in a linen ephod. The wearing of the ephod surely underscores the fact that in the procession of the Ark into Jerusalem, David is playing the roles of both priest and king—a double service not unknown in the ancient Near East (compare Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18). The ephod was probably a short garment tied around the hips or waist, and so David whirling and leaping might easily have exposed himself, as Michal will bitterly observe.

16. Michal daughter of Saul looked out through the window and saw King David. The preceding verse reports the shouts of jubilation and the shrill blasts of the ram’s horn: first she hears the procession approaching from the distance, then she looks out and sees David dancing. Strategically, her repeated epithet in this episode of final estrangement is “daughter of Saul,” not “wife of David,” and the figure she sees is not “David her husband” but “King David.” Shimon Bar-Efrat neatly observes that at the beginning of their story a loving Michal helped David escape “through the window” from her father’s henchmen while now she looks at him from a distance “through the window,” in seething contempt.

17–20. Instead of proceeding directly to the confrontation between Michal and David, as we might expect, the narrative lingers for a long moment over David’s cultic ministrations and royal benefactions to the people. One can imagine that Michal continues to watch David from the window, performing his role as the people’s darling, and that she continues to simmer.

19. date cake. The Hebrew ʾeshpar appears nowhere else and so it is only a guess as to what sort of delicacy it might be. Some traditional commentators construe it as a portion of meat.

20. How honored today is the king of Israel. Astoundingly, until this climactic moment, there has been no dialogue between Michal and David—only her urgent instructions for him to flee in 1 Samuel 19 and his silent flight. We can only guess what she may have felt all those years he was away from her, acquiring power and wives, or during the civil war with her father’s family. We are equally ignorant of her feelings toward her devoted second husband, Paltiel son of Laish. Now the royal couple are finally represented meeting, and when Michal speaks out, it is in an explosion of angry sarcasm. Her first significant word “honored” (balanced in David’s rejoinder by two antonyms, “dishonored” and “debased”) is a complex satellite to the story of the grand entry of the Ark with which it is linked. When the Ark was lost to the Philistines (1 Samuel 4), the great cry was that “glory [or honor, kavod—the same verbal root Michal uses here] is exiled from Israel.” Now glory/honor splendidly returns to Israel, but the actual invocation of the term is a sarcastic one, bitterly directed at David, who will then hurl back two antonyms and try to redefine both honor and dishonor to his wife. The logic of the larger story’s moral and historical realism requires that no triumph should be simple and unambiguous, that strife and accusation pursue even the fulfillment of national destiny. One should also note here that Michal speaks to her husband in the third person, not deferentially but angrily, and refers to him by public title, not in any personal relation to her.

who has exposed himself today to the eyes of his servants’ slavegirls. The verb “to expose” is clearly used in the sexual sense. The proud Michal’s reference to the lowly slavegirls’ enjoying the sight of David’s nakedness probably suggests an edge of sexual jealousy as well as political resentment in her rage against him. He has, after all, assembled a harem during their years apart, and there is no indication that he has resumed sexual relations with her after having her brought back to him forcibly for obviously political motives.

as some scurrilous fellow would expose himself. The social thrust of the comparison is evident: she is a king’s daughter, whereas he has now demonstrated that he is no more than riffraff.

21. Before the LORD. Isaac Abravanel, the Hebrew commentator who was also Ferdinand and Isabella’s financial advisor until the expulsion of 1492, aptly explains this: “Had he danced before some person to honor him, it would have been a contemptible act, for his status was higher than any other person’s. But in his leaping before the LORD there is no cause for contempt.” Thus David can go on to say that he will perform ostensibly debasing acts, even debasing in his own eyes (emending this to “His eyes” only clouds matters), acts that in paradoxical fact are the opposite of debasement.

22. with the slavegirls . . . with them let me be honored. David flings back Michal’s sarcastic “how honored,” suggesting that, unlike Michal, the simple slavegirls will understand that his gyrations before the Ark are an act of reverence and will honor him for it. And there may also be a sexual edge in his rejoinder: I will display myself to whomever I please, and it is I who will decide whether it is honorable or not.

23. And Michal daughter of Saul had no child till her dying day. The whole story of David and Michal concludes on a poised ambiguity through the suppression of causal explanation: Is this a punishment from God, or simply a refusal by David to share her bed, or is the latter to be understood as the agency for the former?