When Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, He is sick.
The account of Michal’s plan to provide David enough time to escape portrays her as a woman who had not committed herself completely to God. Was the household idol hers or David’s? The text does not say, but other references to Michal and David elsewhere lead me to conclude that it was hers. The possessor of the household idols was sometimes the heir of the family in the ancient Near East, so perhaps Michal kept this idol for inheritance purposes as well as for worship. Perhaps teraphim had some connection with childbearing (fertility; cf. Genesis 31:19, where barren Rachel kept teraphim). [Note: On the disputed significance of possessing the family idols, see Stuart A. West, "The Nuzi Tablets," Bible and Spade 10:3-4 (Summer-Autumn 1981):70; Kenneth A. Kitchen, The Bible In Its World, p. 70; and Kenneth L. Barker, "The Antiquity and Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives," in A Tribute to Gleason Archer, p. 135.] It is noteworthy that Rachel and Michal both were the second daughters of their fathers, both deceived their fathers with teraphim, and both proved to be disappointments to their husbands.