We really should have looked at King Saul before, as well as his son Jonathan, but we will look a little at them now, in connection with Mephibosheth.
The family of King Saul is so sad that I would fain pass it by. Saul seems to have been a man without faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God. This is not the place to trace the sad history of this unhappy man who had such a bright beginning, and such a tragic end.
We know little of Saul’s family, except his son Jonathan, and Michal his daughter, who married David. Jonathan was killed with his father and two brothers, Abinadab and Melchishua, at the battle of Mount Gilboa. Ishbosheth, another son, took his father’s throne, and reigned for perhaps seven years: years of constant war with David, the king of God’s choice. At the end of that time two of his servants murdered him on his own bed. David calls him a “righteous man”. Two other sons of Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, were hanged before the Lord for their father’s wickedness in breaking faith with the Gibeonites. When David went into rejection, Michal became the wife of Adriel the Meholathite. She had five sons by this marriage, all of whom were hanged with their uncles just mentioned. Michal herself was later restored to David, but because she despised her husband at the time the ark was brought to Jerusalem “therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.” (2 Sam. 6:23). It would be difficult to find a more terrible end of a whole family, and I doubt not their father was responsible. He began by rejecting the word of the Lord, and the Lord rejected him. (1 Sam. 15:26). What an unspeakably solemn lesson for every parent. The Word of the Lord claims authority over us, and we cannot reject it with impunity. He turned, in jealousy, against David the man of God’s choice, and hated him with a mad hatred. The night before his death, he owns: “God is departed from me,” and so he turns for help to a witch, to the Devil himself.