From the Death of Saul to the Death of David - Flavius Josephus

had suffered, who, upon his bare putting out his hand to the ark, died in the
manner already mentioned, he did not receive it to himself into the city, but
he took it aside unto a certain place belonging to a righteous man, whose
name was Obededom, who was by his family a Levite, and deposited the ark
with him; and it remained there three entire months. This augmented the
house of Obededom, and conferred many blessings upon it. And when the
king heard what had befallen Obededom, how he was become, of a poor man
in a low estate, exceeding happy, and the object of envy to all those that saw
or inquired after his house, he took courage, and, hoping that he should meet
with no misfortune thereby, he transferred the ark to his own house; the
priests carrying it, while seven companies of singers, who were set in that
order by the king, went before it, and while he himself played upon the harp,
and joined in the music, insomuch, that when his wife Michel, the daughter
of Saul, who was our first king, saw him so doing, she laughed at him. But
when they had brought in the ark, they placed it under the tabernacle which
David had pitched for it, and he offered costly sacrifices and peace-offerings,
and treated the whole multitude, and dealt both to the women, and the men,
and the infants a loaf of bread and a cake, and another cake baked in a pan,
with the portion of the sacrifice. So when he had thus feasted the people, he
sent them away, and he himself returned to his own house.
3. But when Michal his wife, the daughter of Saul, came and stood by
him, she wished him all other happiness, and entreated that whatsoever he
should further desire, to the utmost possibility, might be given him by God,
and that he might be favorable to him; yet did she blame him, that so great a
king as he was should dance after an unseemly manner, and in his dancing,
uncover himself among the servants and the handmaidens. But he replied,
that he was not ashamed to do what was acceptable to God, who had
preferred him before her father, and before all others; that he would play
frequently, and dance, without any regard to what the handmaidens and she
herself thought of it. So this Michal, who was David's wife, had no children;
however, when she was afterward married to him to whom Saul her father
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