1 Samuel 18:20-28 has Saul set a bride-price of 100 Philistine foreskins for his daughter Michal's marriage to David; David delivers 200.

Israelite marriage custom required a mohar (bride-price) paid by the groom's family to the bride's father — typically silver, livestock, or labor service (cf. Gen 34:12; Jacob's fourteen years of service for Rachel and Leah, Gen 29:15-30). Saul, unable to plausibly demand a large silver payment from David, a shepherd of modest means, without appearing openly mercenary, and covertly determined to get David killed, deliberately sets what he expects to be an impossible battlefield bride-price: the text is explicit and repeated (1 Sam 18:17, 21, 25) that Saul's actual motive was to have David die at Philistine hands, and the narrator flags this as Saul's malicious scheme, not something the story endorses. Philistine foreskins functioned specifically as a battlefield kill-count/trophy for distinguishing uncircumcised Philistine dead from Israelite dead — a grim but historically attested ANE military practice, paralleled by Egyptian New Kingdom records that similarly tallied severed enemy hands or phalli as proof-of-kill trophies (e.g., in Merneptah's records), so this reflects a documented regional battlefield custom rather than a uniquely biblical innovation. The narrative's sympathy throughout is entirely with David as the intended victim of Saul's murderous plot, which David's unexpected success subverts, not with the practice itself as something commended.

The episode is one more deliberate building block in 1-2 Samuel's larger literary and theological contrast between Saul (rejected, increasingly paranoid and murderous, self-serving in his kingship) and David (flawed but ultimately 'a man after God's own heart') — narrated history illustrating royal character, not a moral endorsement of bride-price customs.