Lives of Scripture

Adriel the Meholathite, son of Barzillai, married Merab, King Saul's older daughter -- the very daughter Saul had implied would go to whoever killed Goliath, a promise pointing at David (1 Samuel 17:25). Instead, "at the time when Merab... should have been given to David," Saul gave her to Adriel instead (18:19), one more sign of Saul's erratic, jealousy-driven dealings with David throughout this period. Adriel's family reappears years later under David's reign. A three-year famine struck Israel, and the LORD revealed it was because Saul had broken Israel's old treaty with the Gibeonites and killed some of them (2 Samuel 21:1-2). To atone for this bloodguilt and end the famine, David handed seven of Saul's male descendants over to the Gibeonites to be executed, including "the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she had borne to Adriel" (21:8) -- though 1 Samuel 18:19 says it was Merab, not Michal, who married Adriel, and 2 Samuel 6:23 states Michal had no children, a discrepancy Scripture itself does not explain. However the family relationships are reconciled, the sons connected to Adriel's household paid with their lives for sins committed a generation earlier by Saul, a sobering picture of how bloodguilt and covenant-breaking can outlast the guilty party.