In Michal’s fabricated account, the question serves as a rhetorical threat, implying David would have no reason to spare Michal if she refused to help him escape, thereby justifying her cooperation to Saul.

The text records no response to this fabricated question because the conversation never occurred; it existed only in Michal’s false testimony to Saul.

This question never passed David’s lips, it is Michal’s invention, crafted to shift blame from herself to David. The rhetorical form (‘Why should I?’) implies inevitability: ‘What reason would I have not to kill you?’ By putting these words in David’s mouth, Michal portrays herself as coerced victim rather than willing conspirator. The invention is brilliant strategy: it explains her cooperation, absolves her of voluntary betrayal, and makes Saul’s enemy appear more dangerous than he was. Yet it also slanders David, attributing to him a violent threat he never made. The question format makes the fabricated threat more vivid and believable than a simple declarative statement would have been. Here we see deception wielded protectively but at moral cost, David’s character impugned to preserve his life.