King Saul took his daughter Michal, who was already married to David, and handed her over to another man, Palti from the town of Gallim in the territory of Benjamin [ביאור שטיינזלץ]. This event presents a profound moral and legal mystery. It raises the difficult question of how a king of Israel could give a married woman to someone else, and how David could eventually take her back.
The primary approach among commentators is that Saul made a legal error, convincing himself that David's marriage to Michal was invalid from the start. Saul reasoned that David had used an uncollectible debt, the wealth promised for defeating Goliath, to secure the marriage, or he deemed the hundred Philistine foreskins David provided as having no actual monetary value [מלבי״ם, מצודת דוד, חומת אנך]. The immediate trigger for Saul's action was hearing that David had married other women, Abigail and Ahinoam. Viewing this as a direct insult to his daughter's royal dignity, Saul's hatred for David flared up once again [מלבי״ם].
Despite being given to Palti, it was widely known that Palti recognized Michal as a married woman and never touched her. Because she was essentially forced into this situation by an erroneous royal decree and remained untouched, David was legally permitted to take her back later [מלבי״ם, רלב״ג]. During these years of separation, Michal dedicated her time to raising the children of her sister Merav [רלב״ג]. Another perspective suggests that Saul actually forced David to issue a divorce document when he fled. However, because this divorce was coerced, it held no legal weight, leaving the original marriage intact [מלבי״ם, אברבנאל]. Yet, other scholars completely reject the idea of a forced divorce, arguing that such a document was never written [חומת אנך, אברבנאל].
Objecting strongly to all these explanations, [אברבנאל] presents a fundamentally different view. He argues it is unthinkable that a God-fearing king like Saul would give a married woman to another man, or that David would take back a woman who had lived as another man's wife. Therefore, Michal was never given to Palti for marriage. Palti was an elderly, married man, and Michal was simply placed in his household for safekeeping. Saul's intention was to protect her from loneliness and sadness after David fled and married others, while also ensuring she would not run away to join him. According to this view, she was handed over merely as a ward, remaining David's wife in every sense. The deep affection Palti later showed for Michal was the pure love of a guardian for an adopted daughter, and any later reference to him as her husband simply meant he was her protector and master [אברבנאל].
Despite the elegance of this theory, other commentators firmly reject it. They maintain that it contradicts early traditions, insisting that Michal was indeed given to Palti as a wife, even if the marriage was never physically consummated [חומת אנך, מלבי״ם].