Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 18:1
In those days [there was] no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day [all their] inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.
Jdg 18:1. In those days in Israel ] An excuse for the irregularity of Micah’s proceedings as described in the foregoing verses. See Jdg 17:6 n. and in those days to dwell in
for unto that day of Israel ] On the theory of an allotment of territory among the tribes (Joshua 13-24), a wholly different reason for the migration is suggested by these words; note the technical fallen, i.e. by lot, cf. Num 34:2, Jos 17:5, Eze 47:14: obviously the comment of a later hand. The awkwardness of the original is disguised by the RV.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Jdg 18:1-31
The Danites sought them an inheritance . . . They set them up Micahs graven image.
The image-worship expanding into tribal idolatry
I. The straits to which unbelief reduces the strong (Jdg 18:1).
II. Discontent with a divinely-marked lot leads to evil (Jdg 18:2).
III. Trifling circumstances often lead to the discovery of sinful schemes (Jdg 18:3).
IV. Silent neglect at first, leads afterwards to open rejection of Gods ordinances (Jdg 18:5).
V. The most inoffensive people are not safe from the attacks of evil men (Jdg 18:7; Jdg 18:9-10).
VI. Religion is sometimes invoked to aid the plots of the ungodly (Jdg 18:5).
VII. Indirectness is a character of the worlds counsel (Jdg 18:6).
VIII. False worshippers take refuge in imitating the appearances of the true (Jdg 18:14; Jdg 18:17).
IX. Divine providence often offers no interruption to the execution of the designs of the wicked.
X. The sudden destruction of the man-made religion (Jdg 18:15-20).
XI. Prayer will not secure the Divine blessing on a wrong action (Jdg 18:5-6, also Jdg 18:18-19).
XII. Worldly minds care little for accuracy in spiritual things (Jdg 18:17-19).
XIII. Neither moral principle nor sound reason can be expected of those who deny to God His natural rights.
XIV. Success in evil is no proof of the Divine approval.
XV. True service is not to be expected from a false priest (Jdg 18:20).
XVI. The excessive importance which an idolater Attaches to his gods (Jdg 18:24). (J. P. Millar.)
Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God.
Counsel of God
Seeking counsel of God is the first duty of Christian men.
I. Why we should ask.
1. On account of our ignorance and short-sightedness. The way before us dark, uncertain. So reason would suggest to ask, etc. it is the course Gods people have ever adopted. See Jacob at Bethel (Gen 27:20); Moses (Exo 33:12); David (2Sa 7:29).
2. On account of Gods ability to give. He knows all the way before us.
3. On account of the fact that our best interests are involved in the counsel God can give. It is like the pillar and cloud, the compass of the mariner, light of day, etc.
II. What we may ask.
1. As to our temporal concerns. Duties in the world, engagements, plans, and changes.
2. As to our relative concerns. Families, children, friends, etc. So Abraham and David; so all the truly pious.
3. As to our spiritual concerns. The way of experimental piety, usefulness, etc. Influence for good. The text speaks of the way being prosperous.
III. How we must ask.
1. With a deep conviction of our exigency. Not self-sufficient.
2. With believing confidence. The promises are abundant for every scene. To lead, direct, keep, deliver, strengthen, protect, sanctify, save; hence we must calmly look and plead.
3. With a resolution to follow the counsel.
4. Through the person and advocacy of Christ. (J. Burns, D. D.)
We have seen the land, and behold, it is very good.–
Report from the promised land
This was a model report, because it urged the brethren to take advantage of an opportunity that meant benefit to themselves. The believer in Jesus Christ is an explorer, and he brings back a report to his brethren who are unbelievers. Religion, like science, to be exact, must be grounded in truth and fact. We listen to Livingstone and believe him, as we would but few who might tell us of the wastes of Africa, for we know that he has seen. Let your life be a life fragrant with peace, a life unselfish, devoted, Christ-like, a life of beauty, and it will bring a winning report of the land, and your hearers will say, We will go with you. It will be a good land, for God is with you. Suppose a man from the cold and cheerless Arctic comes here. He comes from a land of chill and blasts, where the suns warmth never falls, where no birds sing, and where flowers never bloom. Suppose a man from this zone of the Arctic were to come to our city and open an office upon Broadway. How many would listen and go back with him to the terrors of that frozen north? But suppose a man from the sunny south should come. He would tell of the birds that sing the whole year round, of the flowers that bloomed season after season, and the bubbling streams that flowed on for ever. Which of the two would repel and which attract? Gods people are weak. Do not attribute their failures to the land from which they come. Do not set your reproof against the land. It is a glorious land. Go and make that land your land, your hope and your eternity. (W. T. Sabine.)
And are ye still?—
Indifference to religion
It may be that we wonder at the slowness of the Danites–wonder that they should hesitate to press forward and possess themselves of such an earthly inheritance; of such an inheritance because it was a part of the land promised by God to their fathers. May we not, however, be the more astonished at ourselves, as we remember our own indifference towards a heavenly inheritance? The habitation we now hold, straitened as it is, and but for time, must be resigned at the call of death, whether we have made any advance towards the heavenly inheritance or not. And why are we still? Is it because we are required to withdraw our affections from the earth? If so, we are to be gainers by it (1Pe 1:4). And we ourselves often profess a desire to possess such a home. And often do we picture to ourselves a home where all that renders this life painful will be found no more. We desire a land which is very good. Such a home, such a land, Gods Word speaks of to us, and says that it is laid up for those who seek it (1Co 2:9). Yet few of us really seek this home; and so, in the words of the spies, we are again and again rebuked for our indifference. Behold the land is very good: and are ye still? be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land. Now the spies declared, concerning the people of Laish: When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land.
1. The security here alluded to was a false security. It was that careless indifference to danger–that want of thought for their own safety–which the people of Laish indulged. There was peace about them. They did not think of the possibility of its being broken. They, in fact, prepared the way for their own destruction. And Holy Scripture tells us who seek the heavenly inheritance: When ye go ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land. But this security is a true one (2Sa 22:2-3).
2. It is a large land. In it we shall dwell in peace with those who now enjoy its blessedness. Our entrance there will be followed by the gift of our God to us of fuller measures of love. Could we possibly desire a life more blessed than this?–a life passed with angels, and archangels, and all Gods faithful ones. Behold, then, the land is very good, and the people dwell secure: and are ye still? In order to rouse their countrymen, and to hasten them forward towards Laish, the spies declared, God hath given it into your hands. Now these words either set forth the faith of the spies, and mean, God will give it into your hands, or they refer to Gods promise of old to Abraham (Gen 15:18), and mean, Know ye not that it is yours already by promise? God hath given it into your hands, since He sware unto Abraham that he and his seed should possess it. And we would borrow their words, and say of heaven, God hath given it into your hands. For ever since the Saviour shed His blood for you, heaven has been purchased thereby for your everlasting inheritance. Heirs, by promise, thereof, your baptism made you. Citizens of heaven ye are now. Take heed that ye forfeit not, by following the world and its lusts, your citizenship. Moreover, it was not purchased to be bestowed arbitrarily, and after the manner of men, upon a few. And this is evident from the whole of our blessed Lords teaching. In it there are many mansions. It is a large country. And though many have passed from the earth, and are sure to enter it, yet there is room. But for whom is their room? Oh, not for the proud and the haughty. Not for those who cry Lord, Lord, yet do not the things which He hath commanded. Not for those who love this present world, yet profess to seek a better, but are still! There is room in heaven for the poor and humble in spirit, for those who follow temperance, soberness, and chastity. The spies also sought to urge their countrymen on by declaring, concerning Laish, that it was a place where there is no want of anything that is in the earth. So tempting a prize as this would, we should think, put away all hesitation, all fear of difficulties. And we declare the same of heaven. The blessings offered to the Danites had respect unto the present life. The blessings offered to us are those of the eternal life with God in heaven. Do you desire peace? It is there. Heaven is the abode of holiness; and where holiness is, there also is peace. Do you desire joy? It is there. In heaven sorrows and tears are not. Do you desire security? In heaven nothing shall disturb your peace, nothing shall diminish your joy. Do you long to offer unto God a worship holy and undefiled? In heaven you shall offer it. There you will join the sinless angels, and the just made perfect, and with them worship and adore your God. (C. P. Longland.)
Be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land.–
Practical attention to religion
I. Some considerations to induce an earnest, practical attention to religion.
1. Consider the glory and the grandeur of the inheritance to which you aspire. You see much of the wisdom of God in furnishing figurative descriptions of the blessedness of heaven.
2. Consider the encouraging assurances we have of success in our pursuit.
3. Consider the danger of remissness and indifference where interests so momentous are at stake.
II. Brief suggestions as to the means of promoting spirituality of mind.
1. Endeavour to form a high standard of that holiness of character in which fitness for heaven consists.
2. Serious and devout meditation upon the Word of God should form a part of the business of every day.
3. Cultivate a devotional spirit. (Homiletic Magazine.)
Fetched the carved image, the ephod, and the teraphim.–
The stolen gods
Micah and his household worshipping the images of silver, the Levite officiating at the altar, seeking counsel of Jehovah by ephod and teraphim, the Danites who steal the gods, carry off the priest, and set up a new worship in the city they build–all these represent to us types and stages of what is really schism, pitiful and disastrous–that is, separation from the truth of things and from the sacred realities of Divine faith. Selfish untruth and infidelity are schism, the wilderness and outlawry of the soul.
1. Micah and his household, with their chapel of images, their ephod and teraphim, represent those who fall into the superstition that religion is good as insuring temporal success and prosperity, that God will see to the worldly comfort of those who pay respect to Him. Even among Christians this is a very common and a very debasing superstition. The sacraments are often observed as signs of a covenant which secures for men Divine favour through social arrangements and human law. The spiritual nature and power of religion are not denied, but they are uncomprehended. The national custom and the worldly hope have to do with the observance of devout forms rather than any movement of the soul heavenward. A Church may in this way become like Micahs household, and prayer may mean seeking good terms with Him who can fill the land with plenty or send famine and cleanness of teeth.
2. The Levite represents an unworthy, worldly ministry. Very few of those in the ranks of the Christian ministry are entirely concerned with the respect paid to them in society and the number of shekels to be got in a year. That he keeps pace with the crowd instead of going before it is perhaps the hardest thing that can be said of the worldly pastor. He is humane, active, intelligent; but it is for the Church as a great institution, or the Church as his temporal hope and stay. So his ministry becomes at the best a matter of serving tables and providing alms–we shall not say amusement. Here, indeed, is schism; for what is farther from the truth of things, from Christ?
3. Once more, we have with us to-day, very much with us, certain Danites of science, politics, and the press, who, if they could, would take away our God and our Bible, our Eternal Father and spiritual hope, not from a desire to possess, but because they hate to see us believing, hate to see any weight of silver given to religious uses. Not a few of these are marching, as they think, triumphantly to commanding and opulent positions, whence they will rule the thought of the world. And on the way, even while they deride and detest the supernatural, they will have the priest go with them. They care nothing for what he says; to listen to the voice of a spiritual teacher is an absurdity of which they would not be guilty; for to their own vague prophesying all mankind is to give heed, and their interpretations of human life are to be received as the Bible of the age. Of the same order is the socialist who would make use of a faith he intends to destroy, and a priesthood whose claim is offensive to him, on his way to what he calls the organisation of society. In his view the uses of Christianity and the Bible are temporal and earthly. He will not have Christ the Redeemer of the soul, yet he attempts to conjure with Christs words, and appropriate the power of His name. The audacity of these would-be robbers is matched only by their ignorance of the needs and ends of human life. (R. A. Watson, M. A.)
Ye have taken away my gods.–
The loss of gods
I. All men have a God.
1. Whatever a mans god be, he deems it the greatest good.
2. But mans ideas of God are very deficient and conflicting. Some make a god of the means of gratifying their passions and lusts; others make money and riches their god; others the praise and approbation of their fellow-creatures, and others the outward rites and ceremonies of religion.
3. It is one thing to be religious; another and a very different matter to be godly, worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth.
II. False gods can be taken from their devotees.
1. Often in life. Many, long before they die, lose the means of gratifying sense; many, early in life, though lovers of money, become pitifully poor; and many, by some means or other, are deprived of the means to pursue their accustomed mode of attending to religious rites, and therefore lose their gods.
2. In death. Sense cannot be gratified in the grave. No miser has ever been able to take a grain of his adored money to another world. The worlds praise and blame are equally unimportant when a man feels he is to be ushered before the judgment-seat; and all religious rites and formularies are left behind for ever when we enter a world of spirits.
III. The loss, even of a false god, will be felt to be a great loss. What have I more? To tear the thing we have made our god from us is the greatest bereavement. Even though the thing is bad, it has been loved supremely, and the loss of it will create a vacuum and an agony intolerable. But the conscious loss of the true God–this is the climax of suffering. Then the soul is a chaos, an orphan in the universe. (Homilist.)
Micah the Ephraimite
Consider the plan of life he made, and the reason why it turned out so badly.
1. He was not a heathen, though he was an idolater. He thought to serve God through the medium of idols. It was more comfortable to remain at home, and it was more easy to worship by means of what could be seen. He was like people who say that it is not necessary to go to church, because they can read the Bible and say their prayers at home; as if reading the Bible and saying prayers were the whole duty of the man! He was also like those who think that worship must be comfortable: they are not called upon to rise early or to adopt more than a sitting posture. You can see what the influence of idols would become in this mans life. Micah would gradually forget the unseen world of which they were supposed to remind him, and his image-shop would call for his constant care and attention. What soul he possessed would be centred there, and the presence of the Levite would soothe him with the notion that all was well. Nor was the life a lonely one, for others, it seems, lived near, and took an interest in the carved image, the ephod, the teraphim, and molten image: in fact, there was quite a comfortable little schism formed into which no one was likely to inquire. Such was the plan of Micahs religious life–a cheap one, you will observe, in spite of the ten shekels of silver and apparel and victuals, for no journeys need now be undertaken to other seats of worship, and no money offered to them.
2. And why did such an inexpensive way of serving God fail? Some rude travellers robbed him of his gods and his priest, and what had he more? It might have been possible to replace them, but the cost would have been much; besides, he had grown fond of these images, and this priest, and his heart was with them. It was too late to begin life again, and such handsome images it would be difficult to make. All might still have been well had he known what worship meant, but unfortunately in his service of God he had left out God. God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, Is there anything akin to us in the character of this poor man, who began by cheating others and ended by being cheated himself?
1. True religion cannot be easy, at least at first. It never can be cheap. To do Gods will entails the sacrifice of ourselves, soul and body, to the Almighty. And so easy-going religion is popular. Men will not go far to a service. If they have their temple at their door they can drag their wearied limbs so far, but, unlike their forefathers, they do not care to walk a few miles to Gods house. As for time and money, what a little suffices often to soothe the sleepy conscience!
2. Micahs religion was self-made. Has he not followers in those who teach that we can please ourselves in the manner and method of worship? Is it perfectly immaterial whether our Saviour made a Church or not, whether we continue steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayer, or not? And if these things do matter, surely they are worth a little hard thought. We are all going the same way, people tell you. Yet it is inconceivable that all can be equally right. Are we not bound to give, each for himself, a reason for the form of the faith we hold?
3. Micahs religion failed him. His gods were taken away, and his priest, and what had he more? God was left out of sight. We can take the warning to ourselves. Our religion, it may be, has been largely outward: we have said formal prayers morning and evening; we have come to church and gone through services; we have read a few verses of the Bible as a disagreeable duty; we have hoped all was well; and suddenly, a big blow falls–and where are we? Is our religion a comfort? does it help to support us? Not a bit. Why? Because it was only skin-deep. (W. R. Hutton, M. A.)
The stable and the unstable in religion
This story has but a faint analogy with what I wish to speak of–but yet it illustrates a principle applicable in all ages, that essential religion is some thing which cannot be stolen. Now there are all sorts of Danites–real hostile Danites, and men accounted such by timid souls who are not so at all. There are ruthless Danites, whose honest, or dishonest, aim it is to remove what they really seem to think religion is wrapped up in. And then there are friendly Danites, who would remove idol images out of a real love for a more spiritual and vital faith. But whoever the Danites be, this is true–that nobody is afraid of the Danites unless he has gotten a Micah religion; and nobody encourages the raids and raileries of the Danites–What aileth thee?–like the man who cries, What have I more?
I. Any religion which centres in a form or organisation can be stolen. This is only to say that external aids to devotion, and diverse organisation of Gods host may be changed, and yet destroy none but a Micah faith which is wrapped up in them. But what has seemed so permanent and vital at different times, and to different souls, is just this very thing! The Micah faith of the Jews could be, must be, stolen away. But what was permanent? Reverence and worship of Almighty God. Again, take the New Testament. It was a zeal in Gods name by which Jesus Himself cleansed the temple of His Father! And who ever stole away the Micah elements of religion as did our Lord Himself, in mingled love and indignation for Gods eternal law? Again, have you ever realised that the great argument all through the Epistles of Paul is just this carrying-off process of that system, glorious in its purity and needed for its day, but now to pass, in its essential elements, into a different form of growth? His great contention every where is that there were shadow and substance both in the old Mosaic economy; that form was vanishing, its truth permanent; that Christ had fulfilled, or filled full, those great moral and spiritual needs of men which once were best fed by other means. Did He take away a single element that was permanent?
II. Standards of what is right and wrong in conduct may be stolen, and yet not carry off the eternal obligations of mortality. How often people have been trying to say that this, that, and the other thing is eternally right or wrong for everybody and all nations to do or not to do! It is this spirit which goes to the Bible, and in Leviticus and Ecclesiastes, as well as in John and Romans, would find, on one level of authority, some word to decide, as by a talisman, whether this or that is consistent for everybody everywhere to do or not to do. How this confuses and misrepresents the Bible! The Bible is a book of life, and so it has progressively changed and raised its forms of moral obligation from age to age. Right in the midst of the Old Testament, like a lighthouse in a storm, stand the ten commandments–true, not because they are there, but there because universally true; and yet even they are not true because that is the best or highest form of moral obligation; for Jesus says of that law, It says so and so, but I say–carrying those same principles further and higher, and adding entirely new and deeper motives and sanctions. Negative Thou shalt not accomplishes for one man or one age what Jesus positive Thou shalt love does for another–two forms of the same thing. See the progress in Bible standards!
1. Thou shalt not do wrong.
2. Thou shalt love God and man.
3. Love one another, as I have loved you. There is a vast difference between these three ways of looking at one thing.
III. What is true of forms of worship and standards of morals is true also of forms and proportions of theological issues. Judged by the Micah creeds of men we might suppose the Christian world would have nothing left of faith after the Danites of each generation had carried away some things upon which every thing seemed to hang. We are living in a time when hosts of Christian people think the ark of God is in danger as it never was before. But when was there an age in which people did not say the same thing? This is said to be an era of readjustment and revolution. Yes; but so has nearly every age been accounted since Jesus came, if we may judge from the fearful auguries of every century. There are always some people perfectly sure if this or that doctrine is not held just as their fathers, or their Church or themselves hold it, that men are cutting loose from all sure anchorage. The reassuring thing is that that is just what men have always been saying, and yet despite dark doubt and augury, hostile Danites, and men so counted Danites in one age to be canonised in the next, have all stolen only what was either false or only one-sided and temporary. There is not a great fact or essential truth of Christian revelation which is not held as firmly this very day as ever before. (A. R. Merriam.)
The Indian problem
Do we consider that a man situated as this man was a fit object of pity and sympathy or not? The stern, uncompromising iconoclast would certainly say, No. He would feel that it was better for such an one to find out by bitter experience how vain and useless were the idols in which he trusted. In and through his desolation he might be brought to seek for help where alone it could be found. The mild, tolerant student of comparative religion would probably say, Yes. He would urge on his behalf that at that particular point in the evolution of Jewish religion from its primitive worship of invisible forces it was inevitable that the worshipper should seek to give concrete form and embodiment to the anthropomorphic idea of God which was then being assimilated from the nations around. For such an one to be deprived of his idols was to be put out of rapport and correspondence with his religious environment, and as that meant spiritual death, he clearly deserves our pity in his destitution. Turning, however, from the merely speculative interest which the ancient Israelites case presents, I wish to transfer it, as in a figure, to the very real and practical interest presented by the parallel situation of a large section of our fellow-subjects in India, and to endeavour to answer the question just raised by considering what our duty to them is. For in the main the plea of the Jew of Mount Ephraim is being echoed now either in unexpressed feeling or in outspoken utterance by thousands of religious-minded Hindus in India. It is only with one portion of the problem that I would attempt to deal; that, namely, which is connected with the sphere of Christian education. It would be to repeat an oft-told tale to recount at any length what has been and will be increasingly the necessary result of such contact of the West with the East as our rule in India has brought about. That contact is unique and unprecedented in some if not all of its conditions, and must be expected to produce strange and unlooked-for, even contradictory, results. But it is of the moral aspect of them only that I wish to speak. When the Government of India decided that State education must be conducted on the principle of religious neutrality and non-interference, it does not appear whether the disintegrating effect of purely secular instruction was fully realised. What, in short, was not foreseen, but is now being daily found to be the inevitable result of the State system of education, is that while it tends to destroy much that was hurtful and fatal to progress, it fails to supply the place of what it destroys by any new and vital principle of cohesion and solidarity. The son goes back to his home and announces to his parents that he has learnt to rise superior to caste traditions and prejudices, and it is found that what this amounts to practically is, that while he has a veneer of Western learning and science, he has lost his hold of what is the very life and soul of any society, the sense of obedience, of reverence, of duty in the family and in the State. He has gained, indeed, ideas of freedom, of independence, of equality, of self-assertion, but if he has lost or is in danger of losing these other ideas, which surely it is true to say are more fundamental and indispensable for the well-being of the family and the nation, is not the loss likely to be greater than the gain, at any rate for the Indian? If there is any virtue which the caste system can claim to have developed and preserved, it is the instinct of reverence and obedience. And it is this instinct which it is the tendency of our education to weaken if not to destroy. And further, it is precisely in those parts of India which are most advanced in Western knowledge where this tendency is seen in its fullest development. What wonder is it, then, that the parent who hears of the boasted advantages of Western science and education bewails the result of it in words which seem an echo of the cry of the Jew of Mount Ephraim Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and what have I more? and how then say ye unto me, What aileth thee? But this is not all. The student, bereft of the moral sanctions of his religion, and supplied with no new motives of obedience and rectitude, is exposed to yet other dangers. If the demon of superstition has been expelled, there are the seven other spirits more wicked than the first, ready to rush in and occupy the vacant, cheerless room. For the mental facilities of the Indian student are far in advance of his moral faculties. This is so naturally; and when the course of education tends almost exclusively to develop the intellectual part of him, the disparsity becomes all the more marked. The moral element in him, already of weakened vitality, is gradually starved out, and the struggle for superiority is rather between the animal and the intellectual. There are many noble exceptions, but they cannot redeem a system which condemns the majority to moral sterility. It is to the Christian Church, and that alone, that we must turn for the assertion and vindication of the principles of true reform, as well as for the moral dynamic which is to energise and embody them in and through an actual visible living society. And it is quite wonderful to notice how Indias need of the gospel is being recognised on all sides and in the most unexpected quarters. The politician looks to the spread of Christianity as one great source of strength and stability for the permanence of British Empire. The educationalist looks to our native Christian women as at present the most hopeful means of making female education effective among the upper classes. Sir W. W. Hunter has lately said, Christianity holds out advantages of social organisation not offered by Hinduism or Islam. It provides for the education and moral supervision of its people with a pastoral care which Islam, destitute of a regular priesthood, does not pretend to. It receives the new members into its body with a cordiality and a completeness to which Hinduism is a stranger. I believe, he says, it is reserved for Christianity to develop the highest uses of Indian caste, as a system of conservative socialism. . . . But it will be Indian caste humanised by a new spiritual life.Or to take one or two more specific cases. The tahsildar or head native officer of a large country town appeals to a missionary to send a Christian teacher for a Hindu school, because he finds the Hindu teachers have yielded to the prevailing immorality of the town. The municipality of a large city in the Punjab appoints a native Christian minister its chairman because they can find no other man so high-minded and honest for the post. The only great modern religious reformer India has produced bore witness on his death-bed to Indias need of Christ. When the man of Macedonia stood before St. Paul that night in the vision, did not the pathos of the cry, Come over and help us, arise from the very fact of its being the unconscious appeal of the heathen world for help? And if the response to that cry was the mission to Europe, which was the origin and cause of all that is highest and best and noblest in our life and thought here to-day, shall the Churchs response to Indias cry be less prompt, less devoted, less full of faith and hope and love, when she has that greatest of all examples to inspire and stimulate her, the experience of the power of the message he bore to support and guide her in her task, the certainty of final victory, not in our time, but in Gods time, to cheer and encourage her till Christ comes to claim the kingdom for His own? (S. S Allnutt, M. A.)
And what have I more?—
The beyond in religion
It was natural that Micah should deplore the loss of his images. We may smile at his grief, and say that he was a very ignorant and a very superstitious man. Doubtless he might have reflected that the loss was not irreparable; doubtless he might have consoled himself with the thought of what remained. And yet we, with our purer faith and nobler creed, need to remind ourselves that such superstition is not altogether unknown amongst us. There has always been a tendency to mistake the outward and visible for the inward and spiritual, to think or to act as if these were all, and to forget the beyond; even to imagine that if these are withdrawn and taken from us, then all is gone and nothing more is left. Idolatry in its grosset forms has passed away, and it is not likely to return; but the tendency still exists to pay undue deference to and to depend upon what is visible and material and transitory, while we ignore those unseen and abiding elements in which alone the true vitality of religion consists. Let us trace this tendency in three directions.
1. Religion is enshrined in ceremonies. Forms may be not only useful in religion, they are to certain extent necessary. In Christian worship there has always been more or less of form, ceremonial, ritual. Men have tried at various times to maintain a religion which should be purely spiritual, but the effort has not in the long run been successful. In early days Christian worship was severely simple. It was so partly by design, in contrast with the sensuous materialism of surrounding idolatry; partly of necessity, because of the poverty of the worshippers. In later times came the elaboration of ceremonial. The question for us is, What have we more? Do our worship, our ceremonies lead us to what is beyond? Are we relying on the accessories, or on the everlasting truths they enshrine? What have we more? I may, for instance, be accustomed to a place of worship where the services are rendered with the most exquisite musical taste, where the art of the sculptor or the painter ministers to my sense of culture and refinement; but what have I more? If altered circumstances should force me to worship with none of those surroundings, could I know that there in the meanest and poorest temple is no less the presence of God? If I should be condemned as an invalid to pass weary months and even years within the four walls of my sick-room, could I rest in the assurance that still Christ is with me, and that possessing Him I possess all things? This is to penetrate into the kernel of religion; this is to have the power as well as the form of godliness, and it is to this that all form, all ritual, should lead up, and without this they profit nothing.
2. But religion is not only enshrined in form; it is embodied in phrases. Churches have their creeds and their catechisms. Religious truth must find its expression in doctrine, in portable forms which are easily remembered, though the doctrine probably expresses very inadequately the truth it inculcates. A sound creed is the basis of a strong character. Words are the necessary embodiment of truth. But there is always a danger lest the mere framework of words be taken as a substitute for the truth it indicates. There are those who worship, instead of a living Christ, their own wooden and stony forms of theology, which may leave them just as hard and just as narrow and just as loveless as any other form of superstition. The history of Christianity is full of examples. This tendency to depend on words is especially seen in the decadence of any religious movement. Phrases which were at one time pregnant with meaning are repeated with parrot-like accuracy by those who are very far from being animated by their spirit. They think that because they have the words they must also have the truth. What have I more? We have our doctrines, our creeds, our catechisms; but do they lead us to what is beyond? Do we reach forth with the strong grasp of a living faith to the unchanging and eternal truths which the words embody? Do you remember that it is one thing to say, I believe in God, another to believe in God with heart and soul as the great Factor in our lives? Phrases may change; but God does not change. Truth cannot change, though it may be conveyed through different means. Creed is important, but character is greater than creed. Life is more than orthodoxy, and goodness than correct opinions.
3. Once more, religion is not only enshrined in ceremonies and creeds, but also in persons. When St. Paul says that the Church is the body of Christ, he implies that our Lord works through Christian people, and that they are His representatives on earth. As a matter of fact all our earlier impressions, and many of our later impressions, in religion, have come to us through persons. The mother who taught our infant lips to pray, the teacher who first instructed us in the simple truths of the gospel, the pastor at whose feet we sat as children, the friend so noble and so brave on whom we leaned for counsel and guidance–these and others were those who first brought religion to our notice as the great power in the world. And no one can overrate the power and the value of religious training and Christian friendship. But yet even the best and purest and holiest of earthly influences may sometimes be almost the idol, whose removal may be the wreck of our hopes. I sometimes tremble for the religion of the young lad who goes forth from a holy and happy village home into the crowded thoroughfares of the great city. Will he stand fast in the future? Will he be true to the teaching of his boyhood in the presence of increasing temptations? Will he keep to the old faith in the land that is new? He will not, if his faith is merely second-hand. He will not if he has never really made his parents belief to be his own belief. The great question is, What have I more? I have Christian influence around me, I have religious friends; but what have I more? If God should see fit to take away these, have I learnt to trust in the one Friend from whom neither distance nor death can part? Can I lean on Him when every earthly prop is removed? Some years ago I was called to visit an aged lady who was on her death-bed. She was a very sincere Christian, who had led an exceptionally useful life of active benevolence. But she had drunk deep of the cup of sorrow; she had been reduced through monetary losses to comparative poverty; her husband had deserted her, and she had few, if any, relatives who could help her. And as I sat by her bedside, a few hours before her death, she talked of her trials, her sorrows, her losses, when, suddenly raising herself, she pointed upward to a text above her bed, and said, But I have found that true all along. I looked up and read the text. It was the familiar promise, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. Yes, earthly friends might fail and leave her, but there was One who would never forsake her, the unchanging Friend who had strengthened and supported her in life as in death. Certainly the day will come to us all when all earthly helps will leave us, and we shall have to fall back on the unseen realities, or on–nothing. At such a time, if ever, we shall need to depend on the reality and not the shadow. No forms, no phrases, no friends can help us then. Nothing but the living Christ can then be our strength and stay; He and He only can say, When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee. May God keep us from trusting in the shadow rather than the substance. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. (Christian World Pulpit.)
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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XVIII
Some Danites, seeking an inheritance, send five men to search
the land, who arrive at the house of Micah, 1, 2.
They employ the Levite, who served to his house as priest, to
ask counsel for them of God, 3-5.
He inquires, and promises them success, 6.
They depart, and go to Laish, and find the inhabitants secure,
7.
They return to their brethren, and encourage them to attempt
the conquest of the place, 8-10.
They send six hundred men, who, coming to the place where Micah
dwelt, enter the house, and carry off the priest and his
consecrated things, 11-21.
Micah and his friends pursue them; but, being threatened, are
obliged to return, 22-26.
The Danites come to Laish, and smite it, and build a city there,
which they call Dan, 27-29.
They make the Levite their priest, and set up the images at this
new city, 30, 31.
NOTES ON CHAP. XVIII
Verse 1. There was no king in Israel] See Jdg 17:6. The circumstances related here show that this must have happened about the time of the preceding transactions.
The tribe of the Danites] That is, a part of this tribe; some families of it.
All their inheritance] That is, they had not got an extent of country sufficient for them. Some families were still unprovided for, or had not sufficient territory; for we find from Jos 19:40, &c., that, although the tribe of Dan did receive their inheritance with the rest of the tribes of Israel, yet their coasts went out too little for them, and they went and fought against LESHEM, (called here Laish,) and took it, &c. This circumstance is marked here more particularly than in the book of Joshua. See on Jos 19:47.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
In those days; not long after Joshuas death, of which See Poole on “Jdg 17:6“.
The tribe of the Danites; a part or branch of that tribe, consisting only of six hundred men of war, Jdg 18:16, with their families, Jdg 18:21; or, a family of the Danites; for the word schebet, which properly signifies a tribe, is sometimes taken for a family, as Jdg 20:12, as elsewhere family is put for a tribe, as Zec 12:13. All their inheritance had not fallen unto them; the lot had fallen to them before this time, Jos 19:40, &c., but not the actual possession of their lot, because therein the Philistines and Amorites opposed them, not without success. See Poole on “Jos 19:40“; See Poole on “Jdg 1:34“.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1-6. In those days . . . the Danitessought them an inheritance to dwell inThe Danites had aterritory assigned them as well as the other tribes. But eitherthrough indolence, or a lack of energy, they did not acquire the fullpossession of their allotment, but suffered a considerable portion ofit to be wrested out of their hands by the encroachments of theirpowerful neighbors, the Philistines. In consequence, being straitenedfor room, a considerable number resolved on trying to effect a newand additional settlement in a remote part of the land. A smalldeputation, being despatched to reconnoitre the country, arrived ontheir progress northward at the residence of Micah. Recognizing hispriest as one of their former acquaintances, or perhaps by hisprovincial dialect, they eagerly enlisted his services inascertaining the result of their present expedition. His answer,though apparently promising, was delusive, and really as ambiguous asthose of the heathen oracles. This application brings out still moreclearly and fully than the schism of Micah the woeful degeneracy ofthe times. The Danites expressed no emotions either of surprise or ofindignation at a Levite daring to assume the priestly functions, andat the existence of a rival establishment to that of Shiloh. Theywere ready to seek, through means of the teraphim, the informationthat could only be lawfully applied for through the high priest’sUrim. Being thus equally erroneous in their views and habits asMicah, they show the low state of religion, and how much superstitionprevailed in all parts of the land.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
In those days there was no king in Israel,…. No supreme magistrate, no judge, for it was before the time of the judges, after the death of Joshua and before Othniel the first judge; this is observed before, Jud 17:6 and here repeated to account for the evil things done by the Danites, their consulting Micah’s oracle, taking away his priest and his gods, and setting up his graven image in Dan, by which means idolatry was spread in Israel, and brought on their servitude to Chushanrishathaim, from which Othniel the first judge was their deliverer:
and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; that is, a family of them, as in the next verse, not the whole tribe; for as a family is sometimes put for a tribe, Jos 7:17 so a tribe for a family, Jud 20:12
for unto that day [all their] inheritance had not fallen to them among the tribes of Israel: we rightly supply the words “all their”; for otherwise an inheritance had fallen to them by lot, as the other tribes. Jos 19:40, but that was not only too little for them,
Jos 19:47 but all that was allotted to them did not come into their possession, but a part remained unsubdued; and some they had possession of they could not keep, either through the superior strength of the Amorites, or their own sloth and cowardice, or for want of the help of their brethren; see Jud 1:34.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
This took place at a time when Israel had no king, and the tribe of the Danites sought an inheritance for themselves to dwell in, because until that day no such portion had fallen to them among the tribes as an inheritance. To the expression (had not fallen) we must supply as the subject from the previous clause; and signifies in the character of a nachalah , i.e., of a possession that could be transmitted as hereditary property from father to son. , to fall, is used with reference to the falling of the lot (vid., Num 34:2; Jos 13:6, etc.). The general statement, that as yet no inheritance had fallen to the tribe of Dan by lot, has its limitation in the context. As the Danites, according to Jdg 18:2, sent out five men from Zorea and Eshtaol, and, according to Jdg 18:11, six hundred men equipped for fight went out to Laish, which the spies had discovered to be a place well fitted for a settlement, and had settled there, it is very evident from this that the Danites were not absolutely without an inheritance, but that hitherto they had not received one sufficient for their wants. The emigrants themselves were already settled in Zorea and Eshtaol, two of the towns that had fallen to the tribe of Dan by lot (Jos 19:41). Moreover, the six hundred equipped Danites, who went out of these towns, were only a very small part of the tribe of Danites, which numbered 64,400 males of twenty years old and upwards at the last census (Num 26:43). For a tribe of this size the land assigned by Joshua to the tribe of Dan, with all the towns that it contained, was amply sufficient. But from Jdg 1:34 we learn that the Amorites forced the Danites into the mountains, and would not allow them to come down into the plain. Consequently they were confined to a few towns situated upon the sides or tops of the mountains, which did not supply all the room they required. Feeling themselves too weak to force back the Canaanites and exterminate them, one portion of the Danites preferred to seek an inheritance for themselves somewhere else in the land. This enterprise and emigration are described in Jdg 18:2. The time cannot be determined with perfect certainty, as all that can be clearly inferred from Jdg 18:12, as compared with Jdg 13:25, is, that it took place some time before the days of Samson. Many expositors have therefore assigned it to the period immediately following the defeat of Jabin by Barak (Jdg 4:24), because it was not till after the overthrow of this powerful king of the Canaanites that conquests were possible in the north of Canaan, and the tribe of Dan at that time still remained in ships (Jdg 5:17), so that it had not yet left the territory assigned it by the sea-shore (Josh 19). But these arguments have neither of them any force; for there is nothing surprising in the fact that Danites should still be found by the sea-shore in the time of Deborah, even if Danite families from Zorea and Eshtaol had settled in Laish long before, seeing that these emigrants formed but a small fraction of the whole tribe, and the rest remained in the possessions assigned them by Joshua. Moreover, the strengthening of the force of the Canaanites, and the extension of their dominion in the north, did not take place till 150 years after Joshua, in the days of Jabin; so that long before Jabin the town of Laish may have been conquered by the Danites, and taken possession of by them. In all probability this took place shortly after the death of Joshua, as we may infer from Jdg 18:30 (see the exposition of this verse).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Expedition of the Danites. | B. C. 1406. |
1 In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel. 2 And the children of Dan sent of their family five men from their coasts, men of valour, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land: who when they came to mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, they lodged there. 3 When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice of the young man the Levite: and they turned in thither, and said unto him, Who brought thee hither? and what makest thou in this place? and what hast thou here? 4 And he said unto them, Thus and thus dealeth Micah with me, and hath hired me, and I am his priest. 5 And they said unto him, Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous. 6 And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the LORD is your way wherein ye go.
Here is, 1. The eye which these Danites had upon Laish, not the whole tribe of Dan, but one family of them, to whose lot, in the subdivision of Canaan, that city fell. Hitherto this family had sojourned with their brethren, who had taken possession of their lot, which lay between Judah and the Philistines, and had declined going to their own city, because there was no king in Israel to rule over them, v. 1. It lay a great way off, separate from the rest of their tribe; it was entirely in the enemy’s hand, and therefore they would sponge upon their brethren rather than go far to provide for themselves. But at length necessity forced them to arouse themselves, and they began to think of an inheritance to dwell in. It is better to have a little of one’s own than always to hang upon others. 2. The enquiry which this family of the Danites made concerning Laish: They sent five men to search the land (v. 2), that they might know the character of the country, whether it was an inheritance worth going so far for, and the posture of the people, whether the making of themselves masters of it was a thing practicable, what force was necessary in order thereunto, and which was the best way of making an attack upon it. The men they sent were men of valour, who, if they fell into their enemies’ hands, knew how to look danger in the face. It is prudent to look before we leap. Dan had the subtlety of a serpent by the way (Gen. xlix. 17), as well as the courage of a lion’s whelp, leaping from Bashan, Deut. xxxiii. 22. 3. The acquaintance which their spies got with Micah’s priest, and the use they made of that acquaintance. It seems, they had know this Levite formerly, he having in his rambles been sometimes in their country; and, though his countenance might be altered, they knew him again by his voice, v. 3. They were surprised to find him so far off, enquired what brought him thither, and he told them (v. 4) what business he had there, and what encouragement. They, understanding that he had an oracle in his custody, desired he would tell them whether they should prosper in their present undertaking, v. 5. See their carelessness and regardlessness of God and his providence; they would not have enquired of the Lord at all if this Levite’s mentioning the teraphim he had with him had not put it into their heads. Many never think of religion but just when it falls in their way and they cannot avoid it, like chance customers. See their ignorance of the divine law, that they thought God, who had forbidden the religious use of graven images, would yet own them in consulting an image, and give them an answer of peace. Should he be enquired of by them? Ezek. xiv. 3. They seem to have had a greater opinion of Micah’s teraphim than of God’s urim; for they had passed by Shiloh, and, for aught that appears, had not enquired there of God’s high priest, but Micah’s shabby Levite shall be an oracle to them. He betakes himself to his usual method of consulting his teraphim; and, whether he himself believed it or no, he humoured the thing so well that he made them believe he had an answer from God encouraging them to go on, and assuring them of good success (v. 6): “Go in peace, you shall be safe, and may be easy, for before the Lord is your way,” that is, “he approves it” (as the Lord is said to know the way of the righteous with acceptation), “and therefore he will make it prosperous, his eye will be upon you for good, he will direct your way, and preserve your going out and coming in.” Note, Our great care should be that our way be such as God approves, and, if it be so, we may go in peace. If God care for us, on him let us cast our care, and be satisfied that we cannot miss our way if he go before us.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Judges – Chapter 18
Danite Search Party, vs. 1-6
Notice is again made that there was no king in the land of Israel at this time. The inference is that had there been he might have subjected the enemy of the Danites and allowed them to possess their inheritance, or else he might have forbidden them to leave their inheritance and go to another area possessed by another people. Looking back to Jos 19:40-48 it is found that the present incident was anticipated there. It is stated that their coast “went out too little for them.” Why was this? The area allotted Dan was ample, as large as some of the other tribes. The reason is that they lacked the faith to believe they could take it by the power of the Lord out of the hands of the Philistines, though the Lord had promised to give it to them (Jos 1:3-4). The land had been subjected in the conquest under Joshua, but the tribes allowed the return of the pagan Canaanites and the infiltration of the Philistines so that the conquest was lost to them in many areas.
The weakness of faith and lack of trust in the Lord on the part of the Danites is quite evident in this account under study. It persisted through the years, so that several centuries later in the time of Samson, there was still the same old problem of domineering Philistines and weak Israelites. Rather than turn to the Lord in faith these early Danites decided to take affairs in their own hands. They would search out and find a place which they could wrest from the inhabitants with relative ease and move there. The very area they left from was the later home of Manoah and Samson. Five men were sent to spy out a place for them.
When these spies were passing the god-house of Micah they heard a familiar voice. It was Jonathan, the young Levite priest Micah had installed in his god-house. Evidently that young rover in his roaming had been in Dan where he had become known to these Danite men. They talked to him and learned how he had come to such good fortune as he now seemed to enjoy. Since he was a purported priest they asked him to inquire of the Lord whether the journey they were on to seek another homeland would be prosperous. Jonathan went through the pretense of seeking the will of the Lord in the matter, coming up with the answer he knew they wanted, “Go in peace: before the Lord is your way wherein ye go.”
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
THE BOOK OF JUDGES
Judges 1-21.
THE Book of Judges continues the Book of Joshua. There are some Books of the Bible, the proper location of which require careful study, but Judges follows Joshua in chronological order. The Book opens almost identically with the Book of Joshua. In the latter the reading is, Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua. In the Book of Judges, Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the Children of Israel asked thd Lord, saying Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. God always has His man chosen and His ministry mapped out. We may worry about our successors and wonder whether we shall be worthily followed, but as a matter of fact that is a question beyond us and does not belong to us. It is not given to man to choose prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers. That prerogative belongs to the ascended Lord, and He is not derelict in His duty nor indifferent to the interests of Israel. Before one falls, He chooses another. The breach in time that bothers men is not a breach to Him at all. It is only an hour given to the people for the expression of bereavement. It is only a day in which to calm the public mind and call out public sympathy and centralize and cement public interest.
Men may choose their co-laborers as Judah chose Simeon; leaders may pick out their captains as Moses did, and as did Joshua; but God makes the first choice, and when men leave that choice to Him, He never makes a mistake.
Whenever a captain of the hosts of the Lord is unworthily succeeded, misguided men have forgotten God and made the choice on the basis of their own judgment.
People sometimes complain of some indifferent or false preacher, We cant see why God sent us such a pastor. He didnt! You called him yourself. You didnt sufficiently consult God. You didnt keep your ears open to the still, small voice. You didnt wait on bended knees until He said, Behold your leader; follow him!
When God appoints Judah, he also delivers the Canaanites and the Perizzites into his hands. Adoni-bezek, the brutal, will be humbled by him; the capital city will fall before him; the southland will succumb, also the north and the east and the west, and the mountains will capitulate before the Lord of Hosts.
But the Book of Judges doesnt present a series of victories. There is no Book in the Bible that so clearly typifies the successes and reverses, the ups and downs, the victories and defeats of the church, as the history of Israel here illustrates. It naturally divides itself under The Seven Apostasies, The Successive Judges, and The Civil War.
THE SEVEN APOSTASIES
The first chapter is not finished before failure finds expression. Of Judah it was said he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron (Jdg 1:19). Of the children of Benjamin it was said, They did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem (Jdg 1:21). Of Manasseh it was said, They did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shean and her towns, nor Taanach and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns: but the Canaanites would dwell in that land (Jdg 1:27). Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer, (Jdg 1:29); neither did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Kitron (Jdg 1:30), nor the inhabitants of Mahalol. Neither did Asher (Jdg 1:31) drive out the inhabitants of Acho nor of Zidon; neither did Naphthali drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shemesh (Jdg 1:33), and this failure to clear the field results in an aggressive attack before the first chapter finishes, and the Amorites force the children of Dan into the mountain (Jdg 1:34).
If one study these seven apostasies that follow one another in rapid succession, he will be impressed by two or three truths. They resulted from the failure to execute the command of the Lord. The command of the Lord to Joshua was that he should expel the people from before him and drive them from out of his sight, and possess their land (Jos 23:5). He was not to leave any among them nor to make mention of any of their gods (Jos 23:7). He was promised that one of his men should chase a thousand. He was even told that if any were left and marriage was made with them that they should know for a certainty that the Lord God would no more drive out any of these nations from before them; that they should be snares and traps and scourges and thorns, until Israel perished from off the good land that God had given them (Jos 23:13). How strangely the conduct of Israel, once in the land, comports with this counsel given them before they entered it; and there is a typology in all of this.
The Christian life has its enemiessocial enemies, domestic enemies, national enemies! Ones companionship will determine ones conduct; ones marriage relation will eventuate religiously or irreligiously. The character of ones nation is more or less influential upon life.
The ordinance of baptism, the initial rite into the church, looks to an absolute separation from the world, and is expressed by the Apostle Paul as a death unto sin, the clear intent being that no evil customs are to be kept, nor companions retained, nor entangling alliances maintained. The word now is as the word then, Come out from among them, and be ye separate (2Co 6:17).
They imperiled their souls by this forbidden social intercourse. It is very difficult to live with a people and not become like them. It is very difficult to dwell side by side with nations and not intermarry. Intermarriage between believers and unbelievers is almost certain to drag down the life of the former to the level of the latter. False worship, like other forms of sin, has its subtle appeal; and human nature being what it is, false gods rise easily to exalted place in corrupted affections.
If there is one thing God tried to do for ancient Israel, and one thing God tries to do for the new Israel, the Church, it was, and is, to get His people to disfellowship the world.
There are men who think God is a Moloch because He so severely punished Israels compromises. They cant forget that when Joshua went over Jordan and Israel lay encamped on the skirts of the mountains of Moab, her people visited a high place near the camp whereon a festival of Midian, idolatrous, licentious in the extreme, was in process, and they went after this putrid paganism and polluted their own souls with the idolatrous orgy. Then it was that Moses, speaking for the Lord, said, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, and while that hideous row of dead ones was still before their eyes, the plague fell on the camp and 24,000 of the transgressors perished! But severe as it was, Israel soon forgot, showing that it was not too severe, and raising the question as to whether it was severe enough to impress the truth concerning idolatry and all its infamous effects.
Solomon is commonly reputed to have been the wisest of men, and yet it was his love alliances with the strange women of Moab, Ammon, Zidon and the Hittites, these very people, that brought the Lords anger against him and compelled God to charge him with having turned from the Lord God of Israel and in consequence of which God said, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant (1Ki 11:11).
Again and again the kingdom has been lost after the same manner. The present peril of the church is at this point, and by its alliance with the world, the kingdom of our Lord is delayed, and Satan, the prince of this world, remains in power, and instead of 24,000 people perishing in judgment, tens of thousands and millions of people perish through this compromise, and swallowed up in sin, rush into hell.
But to follow the text further is to find their restoration to Gods favor rested with genuine repentance. There are recorded in Judges seven apostasies; they largely result from one sin. There are seven judgments, increasing in severity, revealing Gods determined purpose to correct and save; and there are seven recoveries, each of them in turn the result of repentance. God never looks upon a penitent man, a penitent people, a penitent church, a penitent nation, without compassion and without turning from His purposes of judgment. When the publican went up into the temple to pray, his was a leprous soul, but when he smote upon his breast and cried, God be merciful to me a sinner, his was the instant experience of mercy. When at Pentecost, 2500 sincere souls fell at the feet of Peter and the other Apostles, and cried, Men and brethren, what shall we do, the response was, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and the promise was, Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
When David, who was a child of God, guilty of murder and adultery combined, poured out his soul as expressed in the Fifty-first Psalm, God heard that prayer, pardoned those iniquities, restored him to the Divine favor, and showered him with proofs of the Divine love.
When Nineveh went down in humility, a city of 600,000 souls, every one of whom from Sardana-palus, the king on the throne, to the humblest peasant within the walls, proving his repentance by sitting in sackcloth and ashes, God turned at once from the evil He had thought to do unto them and He did it not, and Nineveh was saved.
The simple truth is, God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He never punishes from preference, but only for our profit; and, even then, like a father, He suffers more deeply than the children upon whom His strokes of judgment fall.
What a contrast to that statement of Scripture, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, is that other sentence, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. The reason is not far to seek. In the first case it is death indeed; death fearful, death eternal. In the second case, death is a birth, a release from the flesh that held to a larger, richer, fuller life. In that God takes pleasure.
There is then for the sinner no royal road to the recovery of Gods favor. It is the thorny path of repentance instead. It is through Bochim, the Vale of Tears; but it were just as well that the prodigal, returning home, should not travel by a flowery path. He will be the less tempted to go away again if his back-coming is with agony, and home itself will seem the more sweet when reached if there his weary feet find rest for the first time, and from their bleeding soles the thorns are picked; if there his nakedness is clothed, his hunger is fed and his sense of guilt is kissed away. Oh, the grace of God to wicked men the moment repentance makes possible their forgiveness!
The court in Minneapolis yesterday illustrated this very point. When a young man, who had been wayward indeed, who had turned highway-robber, saw his error, sobbed his way to Christ and voluntarily appeared in court and asked to have sentence passed, newspapers expressed surprise that the heart of the judge should have been so strangely moved, and that the sentence the law absolutely required to be passed upon him, should have been, by the judge, suspended, and the young man returned to his home and wife and babe. But our Judge, even God, is so compassionate that such conduct on His part excites no surprise. It is His custom! Were it not so, every soul of us would stand under sentence of death. The law which is just and holy and good has passed that sentence already, and it is by the grace of God we have our reprieve. Seven apostasies? Yes! Seven judgments? Yes! But seven salvations! Set that down to the honor and glory of our God! It is by grace we are saved!
THE SUCCESSIVE JUDGES
Evidently God has no special regard for some of our modern superstitions, for in this period of conquest He deliberately chooses thirteen judges and sets them over Israel in turn, beginning with Othniel, the son of Kenaz, and nephew of Caleb, and concluding with Samson, the son of Manoah.
They represented varied stations of Israelitish society. A careful review of their personal history brings a fresh illustration of the fact that God is no respector of persons; and it also illustrates the New Testament statement that Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. With few exceptions these judges had not been heard of until their appointment rendered necessary some slight personal history. That is the Divine method until this hour. How seldom the children of the great are themselves great. How often, when God needs a ruler in society, He seeks a log cabin and chooses an angular ladAbe Lincoln. The difference between the inspired Scriptures and yesterdays newspaper is in the circumstance that the Scriptures tell the truth about men and leave God to do the gilding and impart the glory, instead of trying to establish the same through some noble family tree. There is a story to the effect that a young artist, working under his master in the production of a memorial window that represented the greatest and best that art ever knew, picked up, at the close of the day, the fragments of glass flung aside, and finally wrought from them a window more glorious still. Whether this is historically correct or not, we know what God has done with the refuse of society again and again. Truly
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
That no flesh should glory in His presence * * * * He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (1Co 1:27-29; 1Co 1:31).
Out of these un-named ones some were made to be immortalGideon, Jephthae, Samson, Deborah.
Gideon, the son of Joash, became such because he dared to trust God. The average Captain of hosts wants men increased that the probabilities of victory may grow proportionately. At the word of the Lord Gideon has his hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands reduced to a handful. What are three hundred men against the multitude that compassed him about? And what are pitchers, with lights in them, against swords and spears and stones; and yet his faith failed not! He believed that, God with him, no man could be against him. When Paul comes to write his Epistle to the Hebrews and devotes a long chapter of forty verses to a list of names made forever notable through faith, Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthaethese all appear, and they are put there properly, reason confirming revelation. Barak had faced the hundreds of iron chariots of the enemy, and yet at the word of the Lord, had dared to brave and battle them. Samson, with no better equipment than the jaw-bone of an ass, had slain his heaps. Jephthae, when he had made a vow to the Lord, though it cost him that which was dearer than life, would keep it. Such characters are safe in history. Whatever changes may come over the face of the world, however notable may eventually be names; whatever changes may occur in the conceptions of men as to what makes for immortality, those who believe in God will abide, and childrens children will call their names blessed. Gideon will forever stand for a combination of faith and courage. Barak will forever represent the man who, at the word of the Lord, will go against great odds. Jephthae will forever be an encouragement to men who, having sincerely made vows, will solemnly keep the same; and Samson will forever represent, not his prowess, but the strength of the Lord, which, though it may express itself in the person of a man, knows no limitations so long as that man remains loyal to his vows, and the spirit of the Lord rests upon him.
Before passing from this study, however, permit me to call your attention to the fact that there was made a political exception in the matter of sex. We supposed that the putting of woman into mans place is altogether a modern invention. Not so; it is not only a fact in English language but in human history, that all rules have their exceptions. Gods rule for prophets is men, and yet the daughters of Philip were prophetesses. Gods rule for kings is men, and yet one of the greatest of rulers was Queen Victoria. Gods rule for judges is men, and yet Deborah was long since made an exception. Let it be understood that the exception to the rule is not intended to supplant the rule. The domestic circle is Gods choice for womankind, and her wisdom, tact and energy are not only needed there, but find there their finest employment. And yet there are times when through the indifference of men, or through their deadness to the exigencies of the day, God can do nothing else than raise up a Deborah, speak to a Joan of Arc, put on the throne a Victoria.
I noticed in a paper recently a discussion as to whether women prominent in politics proved good mothers, and one minister at least insisted that they did. We doubt it! The text speaks of Deborah as a mother in Israel, but we find no mention of her children. Our judgment is that had there been born to her a dozen of her own Israel might never have known her leadership. The unmarried woman, or the barren wife, may have time and opportunity for social and political concern; but the mother of children commonly finds her home sphere sufficient for all talents, and an opportunity to reach society, cleanse politics, aid the church, help the world, as large an office as ever came to man. However, let it be understood that all our fixed customs, all our standard opinions, give place when God speaks. If it is His will that a woman judge, then she is best fitted for that office; if He exalts her to lead armies, then victory will perch upon her banners; if He calls her to the place of power on the throne, then ruling wisdom is with her.
In the language of the Apostle Paul, And what shall I say more, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Samson and of Barak and of Jepkthae. They are all great characters and worthy extended discussion. It would equally fail me to rehearse the confusion, civil and religious, that follows from the seventeenth chapter of this Book to the end, but in chapters nineteen to twenty-one there is recorded an incident that cannot in justice to an outline study, be overlooked, for it results in
THE CIVIL WAR
Tracing that war to its source, we find it was the fruit of the adoption of false religions. We have already seen some of the evil effects of this intermingling with heathen faiths, but we need not expect an end of such effects so long as the compromise obtains. There is no peace in compromise; no peace with your enemies. A compromise is never satisfactory to either side. Heathen men do not want half of their polytheism combined with half of your monotheism. They are not content to give up a portion of their idolatry and take in its place praises to the one and only God. The folly of this thing was shown when a few years since the leaders of the International Sunday School Association attempted to temporarily affiliate Christianity with Buddhism. The native Christians in Japan, in proportion to their sincere belief in the Bible arid in Christ, rejected the suggestion as an insult to their new faith, and the followers of Buddha and the devotees of Shintoism would not be content with Christian conduct unless the Emperor was made an object of worship and Christian knees bowed before him. It must be said, to the shame of certain Sunday School leaders, that they advocated that policy and prostrated themselves in the presence of His Majesty to the utter disgust of their more uncompromising fellows. The consequence was, no Convention of the International Association has been so unsatisfactory and produced such poor spiritual results as Tokios.
Confusion is always the consequence of compromise, and discontent is the fruit of it, and fights and battles and wars are the common issue.
Idolatry is deadly; graven images cannot be harmonized with the true God. The first and second commandments cannot be ignored and the remainder of the Decalog kept. It is God or nothing! It is the Bible or nothing! It is the faith once delivered or infidelity!
The perfidy of Benjamin brought on the battle. We have already seen that men grow like those with whom they intimately associate. This behavior on the part of the Benjamites is just what you would have expected. The best of men still have to battle with the bad streak that belongs to the flesh incident to the fall; and, when by evil associations that streak is strengthened, no man can tell what may eventually occur. Had this conduct been recorded against the heathen, it would not have amazed us at all. We speedily forget that as between men there is no essential difference. Circumstances and Divine aidthese make a difference that is apparent indeed; but it is not so much because one is better than the other, but rather because one has been better situated, less tempted, more often strengthened; or else because he has found God and stands not in himself but in a Saviour.
Pick up your paper tomorrow morning and there will be a record of deeds as dark as could be recorded against the natives of Africa, or those of East India or China, Siberia or the South Sea Islands. The conduct of these men toward the concubine was little worse than that of one of our own citizens in a land of civilization and Christianity, who lately snatched a twelve-year-old girl and kept her for days as his captive, and when at last she eluded him, it was only to wander back to her home, despoiled and demented. Do you wonder that God is no respecter of persons? Do you wonder that the Bible teaches there is no difference? Do you doubt it is all of grace?
The issues of that war proved the presence and power of God. There are men who doubt if God is ever in battle; but history reveals the fact that few battles take place without His presence. The field of conflict is commonly the place of judgment, and justice is seldom or never omitted. We may be amazed to see Israel defeated twice, and over 40,000 of her people fall, when as a matter of fact she went up animated by the purpose of executing vengeance against an awful sin. Some would imagine that God would go with them and not a man would fall, and so He might have done had Israel, including Judah and all loyal tribes, been themselves guiltless. But such was not the truth! They had sins that demanded judgment as surely as Benjamins sin, and God would not show Himself partial to either side, but mete out judgment according to their deserts. That is why 40,000 of the Israelites had to fall. They were facing then their own faithlessness. They were paying the price of their own perfidy. They were getting unto themselves proofs that their fellowship with the heathen and their adoption of heathen customs was not acceptable with God.
Many people could not understand why England and France and Belgium and Canada and Australia and America should have lost so heavily in the late war, 19141918, believing as we did believe that their cause was absolutely just. Why should God have permitted them to so suffer in its defense? Millions upon millions of them dying, enormous wealth destroyed, women widowed, children orphaned, lands sacked, cities burned, cathedrals ruined, sanctuaries desecrated. The world around, there went up a universal cry, Why? And yet the answer is not far to seek. England was not guiltless; France was not guiltless; Belgium was not guiltless.
Poor Belgium! All the world has turned to her with pity and we are still planning aid for the Belgians and to preach to them and their children the Gospel of grace, and this we should do; but God had not forgotten that just a few years ago Belgium was blackening her soul by her conduct in the Belgian Congo. Natives by the score and hundreds were beaten brutally, their hands cut off because they did not carry to the Belgian king as much rubber and ivory as Belgian avarice demanded. American slavery, in its darkest hour, never knew anything akin to the oppression and persecution to which Belgium subjected the blacks in the Congo. Significant, indeed, is the circumstance that when the Germans came into Belgium, many Belgian hands were cut off; hapless and helpless children were found in this mangled state. Frightful as it was, it must have reminded Belgian authorities of their sins in Africa and of the certainty and exactitude of final judgment.
We have an illustration of this truth in the Book of Judges. When Judah went up against the Canaanites and the Lord delivered them into his hands, they slew in Bezek 10,000 men. They found Adoni-Bezek, the king, and fought against him, and caught him and cut off his thumbs and great toes. We cry Horror! and wonder that Gods own people could so behave; but, complete the sentence, and you begin to see justice, And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table. As I have done, so God hath requited me (Jdg 1:7).
Think of England in her infamous opium traffic, forcing it upon natives at the mouths of guns, enriching her own exchecquer at the cost of thousands and tens of thousands of hapless natives of East India and China!
Think of France, with her infidelity, having denied God, desecrated His sabbath, rejected His Son and given themselves over to absinthe and sensuality!
Think of the United States with her infamous liquor traffic, shipping barrels upon barrels to black men and yellow men, and cursing the whole world to fill her own coffers.
Tell me whether judgment was due the nations, and whether they had to see their sin in the lurid light of Belgian and French battlefields; but do not overlook the fact that when the war finally ends, Benjamin, the worst offender, the greater sinner, goes down in the greatest judgment, and one day Benjamins soldiers are almost wiped from the earth! Out of 26,700, 25,000 and more perish. Tell us now whether judgment falls where judgment belongs!
Take the late war. Again and again Germany was triumphant, but when the Allies had suffered sufficiently and had learned to lean not to themselves but upon the Lord; when, like Israel, they turned from hope in self and trusted in God, then God bared His arm in their behalf and Germany went down in defeat, a defeat that made their come-back impossible; a defeat that fastened upon them the tribute of years; a defeat that proved to them that, great as might have been the sins of the allied nations, greater still, in the sight of God, was their own sin; for final judgment is just judgment.
God is not only in history; God has to do with the making of history. If men without a king behave every one as is right in his own eyes, the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords, will do that which will eventually seem right in the eyes of all angels and of all good men. That is GOD!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
THE IMAGE WORSHIP EXPANDING INTO TRIBAL IDOLATRY
HOMILETICS
I. The straits to which unbelief reduces the strong. Jdg. 18:1.
The tribe of Dan sought them an inheritance to dwell in. Not that they had had no inheritance till now. When a distribution was made of the land by Joshua, a considerable territory was allotted to the tribe of Dan (Jos. 19:40-47). The other tribes, having received their proportion first, a small area comparatively was left for this tribe. But Judah gave up to them several of its northern towns, such as Zorah, Eshtaol, Bethshemesh, etc. This latter town, however, was afterwards given to the Levites. Ephraim also gave to Dan some of its southern towns. Stretching from the west of Benjamin on to the Mediterranean, the territory included first the hill country, and then all the lowlands, or the shephelah, being a large part of the extremely fertile plain of Sharon, having in it such towns as Jehud, Bene-barak, and others, all the way to Joppa.
But a large part of this terrestrial paradise was, at the time of the appointment, occupied by the Philistines, or Amorites, and these had to be subdued ere the Danites could enter on possession. This was no easy matter, for these enemies had iron chariots. The all-conquering faith, through which the Israelites gained all their victories, was awanting in this tribe, so that they did not succeed in driving out these doomed inhabitants. On the contrary, the Amorites forced Dan up into the mountains, and would not let them come down into the plain (Jdg. 1:34-35). As the plain, or valley, was much the larger part of their inheritance, this confined the Danites within very narrow limits indeed, and hence the great straits to which they were reduced. Yet that tribe was strong in numbers, and not deficient in courage. At the latest enumeration, previous to this date, they had upwards of 64,000 men able to go forth to war. Their weak point was their unbelief. They could do nothing without their God, and He would do nothing for them, unless in so far as they trusted Him. If they had had but a strong faith, not an Amorite would have been left in all the plain, and the whole expanse of Sharon would have been theirs.
In the Christian life, from how many causes of trouble and disquiet on every side would the Saviours friends be set free, were their trust in the Angel that redeems from all evil, only more complete! Over how many green pastures would they roam, and beside how many still waters would they sit down, telling to all around that one day spent in the presence of the Rose of Sharon was worth a thousand of the best days the world could give!
II. Discontent with a Divinely marked lot leads to evil. Jdg. 18:2.
The Danites would have been pleased with the shephelah, or rich plains between the hill country and the sea. But with the conditions attached, that they must drive out the Amorites, they were greatly offended. It was not impossible to comply with that condition. The fathers of that generation had conquered the larger part of the land through that faith, and in the same manner, they might have finished the conquest through faith. But it was irksome, and they wanted the faith; so that they refused to take their inheritance in Gods appointed way, and sought another way of their own. It is always dangerous to reject the lot which God has appointed for us, and instead, to take the ordering of our lot into our own hand. The consequence in this case was, that God left them to fall into idolatry. For if they had remained on their own proper soil, they would not have entered into the house of Micah, nor have been tainted with his forbidden image-worship (Psa. 125:5; 2Ch. 15:2). We cannot walk long in ways of our own devising, without meeting with checks to show that we are wrong.
III. Trifling circumstances often lead to the discovery of sinful schemes. Jdg. 18:3.
They knew the voice of the young man. Some say, it should be the sound ofnot his voice, but of the bells that were attached to the priests dress, and which the Levite was wearing (Jdg. 17:10). The reference here is to the passage in Exo. 28:35an explanation more ingenious than accurate, for it was not at all likely, that there was a supposed need for bells in Micahs house. Either these spies had known the Levite before, and now recognised the voice of their old friend, or they noticed at once from his speech, that he wanted the peculiar accent of the Ephraimites. This led to their questions, and those again revealed the whole truth of Micahs evil arrangement. How simply it is done! and yet how complete is the revelation! What an illustration of the solemn assurance, Be sure your sin will find you out. This story must soon have come to be known all over Israel. Very numerous are the instances where dark plots against the ways of righteousness and truth are unexpectedly brought to light, and men are made to know that there is a God that judgeth in the earth.
IV. Silent neglect at first, leads afterwards to open rejection of Gods ordinances. Jdg. 18:5.
These Danites seem never to have given one thought to Gods appointed way of worship at Shiloh, and they must have gone near to it in passing through Mount Ephraim. They simply entirely neglected the worship which God had instituted in connection with His people, through the Ark of the Covenant, but the moment they hear of an illegitimate method of worship of Micahs invention, they turn aside and ask counsel at this new shrine. They practically renounce Shiloh, and place their confidence in Micahs priest, and Teraphim. This was an advanced step in the downhill road, and ere long they ceased to acknowledge Shiloh at all, and set up a system of idol-worship systematically, when they reached their new settlement in the north (Jdg. 18:30-31). Sin grows.
V. The most inoffensive people are not safe from the attacks of evil men. Jdg. 18:7; Jdg. 18:9-10.
When Gods claims are put aside, the rights of fellowmen are but lightly regarded. The fear of God is the true restraint on mans lawless passions everywhere, and in every form. What a relief to Josephs brethren, when in the hands of those who seemed to be rough men they heard the ruler say, I fear God! (Gen. 42:18). How uncomfortable did Abraham feel when residing for a little time in Gerar, he was constrained to say to himself, Surely the fear of God is not in this place! In the antediluvian age, the earth was filled with violence, because all fear of God was gone. Lot had a very troubled life in Sodom for the same reason. No chain is so binding, no clasp is so secure on its victim, as the fear of God on the conscience of man. Among the Danites, the knowledge of the God of Israel had already become very faint in their minds, and placed little or no restraint on their evil desires. On how many sides is the wisdom of true religion as a benefit to man vindicated.
VI. Religion is sometimes invoked to aid the plots of the ungodly. Jdg. 18:5.
Though there is no real reverence for Gods name and character with this class, there is yet a secret conviction that it would be safe to have Him on their side. However intense the wish of the heart to get away from the thought of God, that is not able to smother the conviction of the understanding, that there is a God, and that our lot and life are really in His hands. So strong is this conviction, that even when the knowledge of the true God is lost, false gods start up in the mind in His stead (2Ki. 1:1-16).
VII. Indirectness is a character of the worlds counsel. Jdg. 18:6.
How vague the reply of the Levite priest. It simply said nothing. To the ear it had the sound of success, but to a calm analysis it might be construed into either success or failure. But this is a feature of the worlds speech on religious subjects. It seems to sound well, yet it wants the true ring. A haze hangs over their language, and there is no direct coming to the point. Instead of plain, straightforward statement, there is a certain indefiniteness in the expressions employed; you see the crook of the old serpent, and the meaning is left in doubt and uncertainty. On the contrary, when the heart is right with itself, and with its God, everything is distinct, direct, and unhesitating. These are the characters impressed on truth.
VIII. False worshippers take refuge in imitating the appearances of the true. Jdg. 18:14; Jdg. 18:17, etc.
The symbols of worship which Micah adopted were a copy of those made use of at Shiloh. The ephod was the most important part of the priests vestments, the graven image and molten image corresponded probably with the Shekinah and the ark, the teraphim answered to the Urim and Thummim, and the Levite belonged to the sacred tribe. Now be felt sure of the Divine blessing, though everything was but a caricature of the true. Thus multitudes believe that if they but wear the semblance of religion, keep up an external form of respect for its requirements, show reform of manners, and go through certain observances, all will be well with them, though there is no real giving of the heart to the Lord. They retain their idols, and so many of their evil ways, but because they proudly do many things, and hear the gospel gladly, they think themselves in a good way for the Divine blessing here, and for heaven itself hereafter. The Jews also thought that because they had Abraham as their father, because they had the temple of God among them, and had the name of being Gods people, therefore it was, and must be, well with them, though they lived wicked lives, and refused to walk in the way of Gods commandments. Many still build similar hopes on their having pious parents, being enrolled as members of a Christian church, and enjoying the privileges of Christian society, though they have nothing of the spiritual life in their hearts.
IX. Divine Providence often offers no interruption to the execution of the designs of the wicked.
We assume that the designs of the Danites were wicked, because, firstthe district of Leshem appears to have been beyond the doomed territory of the Canaanites that was marked out for destruction; and secondbecause the motives by which they were actuated were simply lust of territory, without regard to any question of title or right. And besides Leshem was not any portion of the land given to them. They were therefore guilty of robbery on the one hand, and of wholesale murder on the other. Yet no thunders roll, and no lightnings flash, to show the anger of righteous heaven against such conduct. Thus it often is in daily life. Men are allowed to go on in their wickedness meantime, and even atrocious deeds are done while God keeps silence. Yet for all these things God will bring them one day to judgment (2Pe. 2:3; Rom. 2:4-9; Ecc. 12:14).
X. The sudden destruction of the man-made religion. Jdg. 18:15-20.
Micahs religion was, like that of many others, only an appearance, not a reality. It had no foundation of principle to stand on. It was a case of building on the sand. Job. 8:11-16.
XI. Prayer will not secure the Divine blessing on a wrong action. Jdg. 18:5-6, also Jdg. 18:18-19.
The Danites wished prayer to be offered for them by the priest, that God might prosper their journey. Yet that journey meant high-handed robbery and murder. How could they presume to expect that God would prosper such villany? How could they dare to ask Gods countenance in sin?
XII. Worldly minds care little for accuracy in spiritual things. Jdg. 18:17-19.
They would stand out for rigid accuracy as to the measure of land allotted to them. And in any mercantile transaction, they would see to it with the keenest particularity that the exact thing stipulated for was given. But when it is a matter of paying to God the reverence which is due, they make small inquiry whether they do it in the appointed manner or not. Those that are curious in their diet, in their purchases, in their attire, in their contracts, are yet in Gods business very indifferent.
XIII. Neither moral principle nor sound reason can be expected of those who deny to God His natural rights.
It was base in the extreme for those very men whom Micah had so hospitably entertained to turn upon him, and callously rob him of all that he counted most sacred in his dwelling. To take away forcibly his graven and molten images, his ephod, and his teraphim, along with the priest himself, was a rough act of brigandage at the very least, if it should not rather be called sacrilege. True it was a righteous judgment from God on the transgression of Micah, but the Danites did not mean it so, neither in their hearts did they know it to be so.
And what a miserable mockery of reason was it, for the lawless men to set up as gods, objects that could not save themselves from being stolen! How could they expect the gods, to bless the men that stole themmen who had virtually been guilty of sacrilege! Why make so much of objects that are graven by art, or mans device? Why should rational creatures worship the work of their own hand?
XIV. Success in evil is no proof of the Divine approval.
God gives temporal gifts (not blessings) or successes to the wickedspiritual good things only to His own children.
XV. True service is not to be expected from a false priest. Jdg. 18:20.
The Levite priest was a mere mercenary. Good wages were all that he cared about; and having no religion he had no morality. What a miserable caricature of a priest!
XVI. The excessive importance which an idolater attaches to his gods. Jdg. 18:24.
The exclamation, Ye have taken away my gods, and what have I more? was the truest thing to which Micah gave utterance in this short but sad history. It may have arisen from two causes.
(1.) The apparatus of images, ephod, teraphim, and priest, was really all the religion he had. In his heart of hearts he had none. When the externals were taken away he was left absolutely bare. He had the delusion, that he was a religious man, and he could not afford to want the delusion. Alas! how many are in the same predicament. It is a fancy, not a power. It is all paper money with no gold in exchange; or rather when the cheque is presented, the reply is, No effects. But the mere name of having something, such persons cannot want. When the consciousness breaks in on the soul that it is utterly religionless, in a moment the inward monitor is aroused, and the very thunder in the heavens is too feeble, to echo the voice that rolls through the soul of the poor spiritual bankrupt! Also.
(2.) His worldly estate was invested in his gods. True, only 200 shekels were given to the founder for making the images, but the remaining 900, spoken of may have been expended on the ephod, the teraphim, the fitting up of the house as a temple, the support of the priest, and other matters not mentioned. But the main idea is, that for the future, he looked to the proceeds that might be derived from consulting his oracle as his real income. He meant in fact to trade on the superstitious fears of the community all around him. His house of gods was his mint. He coined money thereby. How easily is the formalist deprived of his religion! It is not shut up in the iron safe, and doubly, trebly locked, but is left outside the dwelling, exposed to the fierce winds, and a prey to the passer by. Only that religion we can keep safely in all circumstances, which is laid up in our heart of hearts, and which gives colour, variety and force to all the outgoings of the life.
How different from Micahs complaint is that of the truly pious man! The light of Gods countenance is his riches, and his language is, O that I knew where I might find Him! I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory! Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me; restore to me the joy of Thy salvation, &c.
XVII. The extraordinary development of an evil seed. Jdg. 18:30-31.
Little did the mother and son think that day, when the one told the other, that the supposed lost money was after all safely treasured up, and when the proposal was made to carve a graven image with it, that the little seedling would in a few months time wax into a wide-spreading tree, covering hundreds of homes in Israel with a deadly night-shade. It was the opening of a little poisonous spring which soon acquired the breadth and force of a river, and for many years proved a curse to a large section of a tribe among the people of God.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Micah and the Danites Jdg. 18:1-31
In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.
2 And the children of Dan sent of their family five men from their coasts, men of valor, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land: who when they came to mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, they lodged there,
3 When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice of the young man the Levite: and they turned in thither, and said unto him, Who brought thee hither? and what makest thou in this place? and what hast thou here?
4 And he said unto them, Thus and thus dealeth Micah with me, and hath hired me, and I am his priest.
5 And they said unto him, Ask counsel we pray thee, of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous.
6 And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the Lord is your way wherein ye go.
7 Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people that were therein, how they dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure; and there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame in any thing; and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man.
8 And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye?
9 And they said, Arise, that we may go up against them: for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: and are ye still? be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land.
10 When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land: for God hath given it into your hands; a place where there is no want of any thing that is in the earth.
11 And there went from thence of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men appointed with weapons of war.
12 And they went up, and pitched in Kirjath-jearim, in Judah: wherefore they called that place Mahaneh-dan unto this day: behold, it is behind Kirjath-jearim.
13 And they passed thence unto mount Ephraim, and came unto the house of Micah.
14 Then answered the five men that went to spy out the country of Laish, and said unto their brethren. Do ye know that there is in these houses an ephod, and teraphim, and a graven image, and a molten image? now therefore consider what ye have to do.
15 And they turned thitherward, and came to the house of the young man the Levite, even unto the house of Micah, and saluted him.
16 And the six hundred men appointed with their weapons of war, which were of the children of Dan, stood by the entering of the gate.
17 And the five men that went to spy out the land went up, and came in thither, and took the graven image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image: and the priest stood in the entering of the gate with the six hundred men that were appointed with weapons of war.
18 And these went into Micahs house, and fetched the carved image, the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image. Then said the priest unto them, What do ye?
19 And they said unto him, Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be a priest unto the house of one man, or that thou be a priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel?
20 And the priests heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people.
21 So they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the cattle and the carriage before them.
22 And when they were a good way from the house of Micah, the men that were in the houses near to Micahs house were gathered together, and overtook the children of Dan.
23 And they cried unto the children of Dan. And they turned their faces, and said unto Micah, What aileth thee, that thou comest with such a company?
24 And he said, Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and ye are gone away; and what have I more? and what is this that ye say unto me, What aileth thee?
25 And the children of Dan said unto him, Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, with the lives of thy household.
26 And the children of Dan went their way: and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back unto his house.
27 And they took the things which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire.
28 And there was no deliverer, because it was far from Zidon, and they had no business with any man; and it was in the valley that lieth by Beth-rehob. And they built a city, and dwelt therein.
29 And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.
30 And the children of Dan set up the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.
31 And they set them up Micahs graven image, which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.
1.
When did the events recorded in this capter take place? Jdg. 18:1
The events recorded in this chapter occurred in the time before the establishment of the monarchy. Chapter eighteen follows immediately upon chapter seventeen, and the two chapters together form what is often called the first appendix to the book of Judges. This second reference to the lack of a centralized government is an indication of the books having been written when the people were clamoring for a king or immediately after Samuel had anointed Saul, Israels first king. Certainly the events did not necessarily happen after the death of Samson, although his judgeship has already been recorded (chapters thirteen through sixteen). This establishment of false worship in Dan probably occurred quite early in the time of the judges. Since reference is made to the cessation of services of the house of God in Shiloh, the events were probably not recorded until after the Philistines captured the Ark and took it away from the land of Israel in the days of Eli (1 Samuel 4).
2.
Where was Zorah? Jdg. 18:2
Zorah was a city on the border of the land given to the people in the tribe of Dan. It lay near Eshtaol and Ir-Shemesh (see Jos. 19:41). This spot was the birthplace of Samson as we learn from Jdg. 13:2. In Jos. 15:33, the site is also listed with the cities belonging to the people in the tribe of Judah. It must therefore have been on the border between the two tribes with Judah lying on the southeast and Dan on the northwest. After the Babylonian captivity, the site was occupied by the children of Judah (Neh. 11:29). A modern village called Sura occupies a summit of a lofty hill on the north side of Wady es-Surar, better known as the Valley of Sorek. From this city the people of Dan selected certain men of valor to spy out an area where they might expand their territory and settle.
3.
Where was Eshtaol? Jdg. 18:2 b
Eshtaol was near Zorah; and from the two cities, the people of Dan selected five men to serve as spies on their behalf as they looked for additional land to occupy. A modern site called Eshwa which is thirteen miles northwest of Jerusalem is probably the location of ancient Eshtaol. The town is mentioned first in the list of cities assigned to Judah (Jos. 15:33), but later is assigned to Dan (Jos. 19:41). It, too, like Zorah must have been a border town; and both Judah and Dan may have occupied surrounding territory.
4.
How did the Danites know the voice of the Levite? Jdg. 18:3
Quite possibly the Danites merely were able to determine from the vocabulary used by the young man that he was reared as a Levite and was familiar with the many expressions which were typical of those used by the priests in leading the people of Israel in their worship. It is not likely that the Danites had known the Levite personally and were thus able to identify him from his speech. There is no reason for their desiring the services of a particular Levite. It was enough for them that he was of the priestly tribe.
5.
Why did the Danites require the services of the Levite? Jdg. 18:5
Joshua had been instructed to go to Eleazar, the high priest, to find out the will of God. It was his custom to inquire concerning the will of the Lord before leading the people into battle or undertaking any project of significance. Even though the Levite was established in a center of false worship, the men of Dan thought his inquiry would reveal whether or not their mission would be successful. When the Levite informed them of the likely success of their venture, they were happy to continue on their expedition.
6.
Where was Laish? Jdg. 18:7
Laish was near the headwaters of the Jordan river. It lay at the feet of Mount Hermon and represented the northernmost point within the territory occupied by the children of Israel. Isolated as it was from the mainstream of life in Canaan, the people were not careful to erect defenses or to train men of war to protect them from invasion. Their manner of life was compared to the easy life of the Sidonians, inhabitants of the famous seaport city of Sidon, directly west of Laish. Although their manner of life was quiet and secure like the life of the Sidonians, the men of Laish had no direct connections with these Phoenician coastal dwellers. So peaceable was their life that they had no need of magistrates to keep law and order among them.
7.
How did the spies describe the land to their brethren? Jdg. 18:8-10
Contrary to the way in which the ten spies had described the entire land of Canaan to their faint-hearted brethren, the five spies sent out from Dan brought back a glowing report of the possibilities of their inhabiting the land around Laish. Certainly the territory was well watered. It lay in a fertile valley beneath the foot of Mount Hermon, and it gave great promise of providing the additional territory desired by the people of Dan. The five men sent out to see about the land urged their fellow tribesmen to arise quickly to go and possess the land.
8.
How many men of war went out from Dan? Jdg. 18:11
Six hundred men, armed for war, went out from the land of Dan along the Mediterranean seacoast to take possession of the territory around Laish on the northern border of Canaan, When the Danites were numbered in Abel-shittim, there were sixty-four thousand and four hundred men twenty years of age and older who were able to go to war. The six hundred who went out to possess Laish were thus a very small portion of the total fighting force which Dan could have mustered. The smallness of this band indicates the ease with which the spies anticipated they could take the new home.
9.
Where was Kiriath-jearim? Jdg. 18:12
Kiriath-jearim was that promontory on the west border of Benjamin which also formed a part of the east border of Dan. The spot was along the north border of the tribe of Judah and was named when the borders of all three of these tribes were given. As travelers made their way up from the Mediterranean seacoast, they came to this high hill and caught their first glimpse of the city of Jerusalem. Pilgrims were accustomed to stopping, taking in the view, and resting before they continued on their way up to the Temple during the later years of Israels blessed history.
10.
What is the meaning of the name Mahaneh-dan? Jdg. 18:12
The term, Mahaneh-dan, means the companies of Dan. The name was used to describe the place where the troop from Dan encamped before going on into the hill country of Ephraim as they made their way to the northern part of Canaan. The author, writing from the standpoint of one who lived in the center of the land, said the spot was behind Kiriath-jearim, evidently signifying its location as being west of this better-known site.
11.
What were all the sacred articles in Micahs house? Jdg. 18:14
The five men who had made the original trip through the hill country of Ephraim knew of the existence of an ephod, teraphim, a molten image, and a graven image in the house of Micah. The ephod was the distinctive garment of the priests, and one who wore the garment for religious purposes was considered a man who could learn the will of the Lord. Teraphim were household gods, usually small images. The Bible student will remember they were small enough to be hidden in the camels baggage when Rachel stole such idols from Laban, her father (Gen. 31:34). The graven image was probably the pedestal of the molten image which Micah made with the money he had stolen from his mother. Such an outfitting of a center of false worship indicates an extensive practice of idolatry, and the objects were of great interest to the men of Dan.
12.
What was the proposal made to the Levite by the men of Dan? Jdg. 18:19
The men of Dan told the Levite to put his hand on his mouth. He had asked them what they were doing, and they had instructed him not to make any outcry as they made off with the sacred objects of Micahs sanctuary. To induce him to cooperate with them, they asked him to accompany them and serve as their tribal priest. The carnal nature of this man is emphasized as the author of Judges says his heart was glad. He considered it to be a position of great prestige when he was asked to be a priest to a whole tribe. His position as priest to Micah was one of service only to one man. Without any regard to the rightness or wrongness of his position with the Danites, he considered only the fact of his being a religious leader among several hundred people.
13:
What was Micahs cry? Jdg. 18:24
The people who lived around the house of Micah gathered together and accompanied him as he went after the men of Dan. The concern of these other men indicates the spread of the idolatry practiced by Micah. What started out to be a private worship of an individual had become a matter of concern to several families. When Micah overtook the men of Dan, he made a pitiable cry, Ye have taken away my gods. . . . This was similar to the cry made by Laban when he overtook Jacob. He said, wherefore hast thou stolen my gods? (Gen. 31:30). Such is the dire strait into which one may fall when he worships gods made with hands.
14.
How did the men of Dan answer Micah? Jdg. 18:25
The men of Dan were quite sure of their military prowess. They told Micah to cease his crying after them before some of them lost their self-control and turned upon him. Micah saw the strength of the men of Dan and knew he would be unable to fight against them. He took the advice of the men and turned back from following them. Thus the man who had stolen from his mother, had taken the money which was in question and secured a graven and molten image to be the central part of a false worship presided over by a renegade Levite, and finally had watched as his objects of worship were stolen turned back empty-handed and sick of heart.
15.
Why did no one attempt to save Laish? Jdg. 18:28
The men of Laish had not entered into any alliance with a stronger power to protect themselves. Even when they were threatened by the invading Danites, they did not make any overtures to kings or governors of nearby cities and territories. Since they had felt removed from the mainstream of activity in Canaan and the surrounding areas, they made no provisions on their own for protection against outsiders. Truly they had no business with any man. Thus the men of Dan were able to overpower them and take possession of the town and the land adjacent to it.
16.
Where was Beth-rehob? Jdg. 18:28 b
Beth-rehob was in the northern part of the territory occupied by the Israelites. Nearby was the valley in which Laish, or Dan, was situated. The valley itself formed the upper part of the lowland around Lake Huleh, through which the central source of the Jordan River flowed. The name of the town means house of the street, and the spies sent out by Moses went as far north as this site when they spied out the land (Num. 13:21). The entire area around Beth-rehob was isolated from the other communities in the northern part of Canaan, and the men of Dan saw in it a place admirably suited to their intentions of expansion.
17.
Why did the men rename the city? Jdg. 18:29
The name Laish had no meaning to the men of the tribe of Dan. When they took the city, they renamed it, giving it the name of the founder of their tribe. Dan was the son of Jacob by Bilhah, Rachels handmaid. He was the fifth son born to Jacob and was the first son born to any mother except Leah. God saw that Jacob did not love Leah as much as he loved Rachel; and He dealt kindly with her, allowing her to bear four sons to Jacob before any son was born to another mother. Rachel saw her womb was closed and gave Bilhah, her haidmaid, to bear a son to Jacob in her name. She named him Dan, saying God had judged between her and Leah and heard her petition. The word Dan means judge. The troop of men who went out from their inheritance on the seacoast in the heart of Canaan thought it fitting to give this name to their new home. Since this was on the extreme northern border of Canaan, it became common in later years to signify the extent of Israel by saying it reached from Dan, the northernmost point, to Beersheba, the last important town on the southern border.
18.
Who was Jonathan? Jdg. 18:30
Some think the young Levite, who first served as Micahs priest, was named Jonathan. His genealogy is given, and he is identified as being the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh. How he could be a Levite and still be a son of Manasseh is not clear; and many commentators point to another manuscript reading which is as follows: Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses. We do know that Moses had a son named Gershom (Exo. 2:22), Moses was the son of Amram, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi (Exo. 6:16-27). Which reading is better? Many commentators believe the original reading was the latter and that a scribe, unable to believe a son of Moses would enter into such a false worship, deliberately changed the reading. On the other hand, since the worship was false through and through, it seems better to suppose the Danites secured the services of a Manassite. The men of Manasseh were their neighbors to the south and east, and the Danites would have no twinge of conscience in making such a man to serve as priest. This was the way Jeroboam established his false worship in Israels later history. Jeremiah wrote, he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi (1Ki. 12:31). These Danites probably did a similar thing in making a man of Manasseh a priest.
19.
What was the captivity of the land? Jdg. 18:30
Many Bible students jump to the conclusion that this is a reference to the Babylonian captivity. If so, this verse could not have been written by Samuel. Samuel died before David was made king in 1010 B.C. The Babylonian captivity did not begin until around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. Reference here is evidently to the dreadful Philistine captivity of the land which reached its height when the Ark was captured and taken from Shiloh (1 Samuel 4). The Philistines oppressed the Israelites at this time until the people of Israel hid themselves in caves and tombs. They took away all their weapons of war and made them go to Philistine blacksmiths to sharpen their plowshares, coulters, axes, and mattocks (1Sa. 13:20).
20.
How long was the house of God in Shiloh? Jdg. 18:31
Joshua established the Tabernacle in Shiloh soon after he led the people of Israel into the Promised Land (Jos. 18:1). The center of Israels worship was at this spot all through the times of the judges, a period of not less than three hundred years. The God-fearing parents of Samuel, Elkanah and Hannah, made their way to this spot yearly in order to worship (1Sa. 1:3). Eli was high priest there at that time. Reference is made to a yearly feast at Shiloh in the time of the civil war which resulted in the near-extermination of the tribe of Benjamin; for the last two hundred surviving men of Benjamin were allowed to catch wives for themselves from among the daughters of Shiloh who went out yearly for the feast held there (Jdg. 21:19-20). Only when the wicked sons of Eli took the Ark into the battle against the Philistines was the worship there interrupted. At that time the Ark was lost, Hophni and Phinehas were killed, and Eli died when told the shocking news of the loss of the Ark (1Sa. 4:18). Reference is made to the same era by the two phrases: until the day of the captivity of the land (Jdg. 18:30) and all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh (Jdg. 18:31). The captivity of the land began when the house of God was torn away from Shiloh.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) In those days . . .The repetition of the phrase does not necessarily prove the use of different documents. It may only emphasise the reason for the occurrence of such disorders and irregularities.
The tribe.Shebet sometimes means a whole tribe, and sometimes apparently the division of a tribe (Jdg. 20:12).
The tribe of the Danites.There seems to be a difference between tribe of Dan (Shebet Dan) and tribesmen of the Danites (Shebet had-Dani). In Jdg. 18:11 they are called Mishpecath had-Dani; but the distinctions between Mishpecath (family) and Shebet (tribe) do not seem to be accurately kept. (See Notes on Jdg. 18:19 and Jdg. 20:12.)
Sought them an inheritance.See Jdg. 1:34; Jos. 19:47-48.
Unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them.Their inheritance is described in Jos. 19:40-46. The inheritance had been assigned to them; but they had not been able to conquer it, owing to the opposition of the Philistines and the Amorates. The English Version interpolates the words all their before inheritance, apparently to avoid difficulties. But these glosses, however well meant, are almost always a violation of the primary duty of translation, which is to be rigidly faithful to the* original. The failure of the Danites to conquer their allotment, and the low condition to which they dwindled, are the more remarkable because in the wilderness they were the strongest of all the tribes, numbering 62,700, and because they received the smallest assignment of land of all the tribes.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE DANITE CONQUESTS IN THE NORTH, Jdg 18:1-31.
1. The Danites sought them an inheritance The Danites were the last of the tribes to receive their portion of the Promised Land, but, according to Jos 19:47, their coast “went out too little for them.” Their lot fell in the rich and fertile plain of northern Philistia. but, according to Jdg 1:34, “the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountain; for they would not suffer them to come down into the valley.” Being thus shut in among the hills about Zorah and Eshtaol, they felt the necessity of seeking an addition to their inheritance, and, finding themselves unable to drive out the inhabitants of the neighbouring valley, they sent an exploring party northward to spy the land.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Chapter 18. The Sanctuary of Dan.
This chapter describes how the Danites, being unsuccessful in their allotted inheritance, sent out spies to search the land, and discover if they could find a better place to settle and expand. These spies returned and reported that Laish was such, and encouraged the Danites to go with them and possess it. For that purpose they sent six hundred men to capture it, who on their way called at the house of Micah, and stole his priests and his gods. Having captured Laish, they set up Micah’s graven image there.
Jdg 18:1
‘ In those days there was no king in Israel, and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought for themselves an inheritance to settle in, for up to that day their inheritance had not fallen to them among the tribes of Israel.’
The reference to the king is of special importance here. It refers to the fact that Dan ignored the Kingship of Yahweh and His official allotment of territory to the tribe of Dan, and without consulting Him went to seek something new. It was an act of unquestioned disobedience. Here the king must be Yahweh unless the statement is a platitude.
Dan had had a hard time in trying to settle their allotted inheritance. The Amorites had combined to keep them out of the best parts of the territory (Jdg 1:34-36) and then the Philistines had infiltrated among them and were seeking to seize power over them. Had Israel been united, and concerned for every member of the tribal confederacy, things might have been different, but as it was they were languishing. Thus a large part of the tribe of Dan opted on their own cognisance to find somewhere else to settle.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jdg 18:12 And they went up, and pitched in Kirjathjearim, in Judah: wherefore they called that place Mahanehdan unto this day: behold, it is behind Kirjathjearim.
Jdg 18:12
Jdg 18:30 And the children of Dan set up the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.
Jdg 18:30
[32] F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1963), 118-9.
[33] Christian Ginsburg writes, “The fact, however, that the grandson of the great lawgiver should be the first priest of idolatry was considered both degrading to the memory of Moses and humiliating to the national susceptibilities. Hence in accordance with one of their canons to avoid all cacophony the redactors of the text suspended the letter Nun ( ) over the name Moses ( ), thus making it Manasseh.” See Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (London: The Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897), 335-6.
When the later Massorites came to affix the vowel points to the Old Testament Scriptures, they left the text as it was. Therefore, they added the vowels that matched the name of Manasseh, rather than Moses for easier pronunciation. Thus, this letter has stayed within the text until today. However, the correct and original reading is “Moses”, as some modern translations reveal.
Darby, “ And the children of Dan set up the graven image; and Jehonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses ; he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.”
Rotherham, “ And the sons of Dan set up for themselves the graven image, and, Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Moses , he and his sons, became priests to the tribe of the Danites, until the day of the captivity of the land.”
NAB, “The Danites set up the carved idol for themselves, and Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Moses , and his descendants were priests for the tribe of the Danites until the time of the captivity of the land.”
NIV, “There the Danites set up for themselves the idols, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses , and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land.”
RSV, “And the Danites set up the graven image for themselves; and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses , and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.”
WEB, “ The children of Dan set up for themselves the engraved image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses , he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.”
Comments – The Scriptures tell us that Gershom was the son of Moses and not Manasseh (Exo 18:2-4, 1Ch 23:15).
Exo 18:2-4, “Then Jethro, Moses’ father in law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after he had sent her back, And her two sons; of which the name of the one was Gershom ; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land: And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh:”
1Ch 23:15, “The sons of Moses were, Gershom , and Eliezer.”
This is corrected in many modern translations. There is no other Scripture saying that Jonathan was the son of Gershom.
Jdg 18:30 “until the day of the captivity of the land” – Comments – The phrase “until the day of the captivity of the land” either makes a reference to the Assyrian captivity of Israel in 722 B.C. (2Ki 17:5-6) or perhaps the campaign of Tiglath-Pileser III in 734-732 B.C. (2Ki 15:29). Therefore, the book of Judges was edited much later than it was initially written, or it was written in its entirety after 722 B.C., which is less likely.
2Ki 15:29, “In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abelbethmaachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.”
2Ki 17:5-6, “Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Danites Seek a New Location
v. 1. In those days there was no king in Israel, v. 2. And the children of Dan sent of their family five men from their coasts, v. 3. When they were by the house of Micah, v. 4. And he said unto them, Thus and thus dealeth Micah with me, v. 5. And they, v. 6. And the priest, v. 7. Then the five men departed, v. 8. And they, v. 9. And they said, Arise, that ye may go up against them; for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good; and are ye still? v. 10. When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, v. 11. And there went from thence of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men appointed with weapons of war, v. 12. And they went up, and pitched in Kirjath-jearim, in Judah,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Jdg 18:1
In those days, etc. See Jdg 17:6. The tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance, etc. This does not mean that the whole tribe of Dan were still seeking their inheritance. The bulk of the tribe, as we read in Jos 19:40-48, did receive their inheritance by lot before the death of Joshua (Jos 19:49) and Eleazar (Jos 19:51). But as long as any part of the tribe was not settled, the tribe as such, in its unity, was still seeking a settlement. The land for their inheritance had not yet fallen to the tribe in its integrity. This is in part accounted for by what we read Jdg 1:34, that the Amorites would not suffer the children of Dan to come down to the valley, so that those who could not get possession of their land there would be crowded into other parts of the tribal territory. These Danites, of whom we are here reading, were dwelling in Zorah and Eshtaol (Jdg 13:1, Jdg 13:25), as we see by Jdg 1:2, Jdg 1:11. Unto that day, etc. Translate this clause, For unto that day the land (meaning the whole land) had not fallen unto them in the midst of the tribes of Israel for an inheritance. The words the land must be supplied after the analogy of Num 34:2. What follows in this chapter is a more detailed account of what was briefly mentioned in Jos 19:47, where, however, the A.V. went out too little for them is not a translation of the Hebrew text, which is very difficult to explain. Houbigant, by an ingenious conjecture, gives the sense was too narrow for them. Prom the mention of this migration in the Book of Joshua, it is probable that it took place not many years after Joshua’s death.
Jdg 18:2
They came to Mount Ephraim (Jdg 17:1, Jdg 17:8). The hill country of Ephraim would be on their way to the north from Eshtaol. They would naturally avoid the plain where the Amorites and Philistines were strong.
Jdg 18:3
When. Rather, while. By the house. Rather, in or at the house. They knew the voice, having, as some think, known him before he left Bethlehem, or perceiving a southern accent. But it may merely mean that they discerned his voice as he was singing or reciting prayers in the house of God. Micah’s house seems to have been a collection of houses (verses 14, 22), approached by one gateway (verse 16), in one of which the Levite dwelt. They turned in thither. This seems to have been next morning, when they were starting on their journey. Hearing the Levite’s voice, they turned aside into his house. What makest thou, etc. Rather, What doest thou in this place? and what is thy business here?
Jdg 18:4
And I am his priest, or, to be his priest.
Jdg 18:5
Ask counsel of God, or simply Ask God, as the identical phrase is rendered in Jdg 1:2, where see note.
Jdg 18:6
And the priest said, etc; having first, it is to be presumed, put on the ephod (see Jdg 8:26, Jdg 8:27, note; Jdg 17:5). Before the Lord is your way, i.e. he looks upon it with favour, has respect unto it, and will make it successful, as it is said in Psa 34:15 : “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous.” “Whether,” says Bishop Patrick, “he had any answer from the teraphim, or feigned it out of his own head, is uncertain.”
Jdg 18:7
To Laish. Called in Jos 19:47 Leshem, which is perhaps a corruption caused by the statement that they called it after the name (Ke-shem) of Dan, or it may be only another form. The name is strangely corrupted in the Septuagint of Jos 19:29 of this chapter into Oulamais, and in Jos 19:47 into Lesem-dan. St. Jerome, misled by the Septuagint, has Lesem Dan. Laish was situated four Roman miles from Bahias, on the road to. Tyre, on one of the sources of the Jordan. Robinson identifies it unhesitatingly with Tell-el-Kady, “the mount of the judge” (where Kady has the same meaning as Dan), close to the great fountain, “one of the largest fountains in the world,” called el-Leddan, which is the source of the lesser Jordan (Josephus), and which may very possibly be the ultimate form of ed-Dan, corrupted into Eddan, el-Eddan, Led-dan, el-Leddan, by successive incorporations of the article el into the word itself, of which there are other examples. The remainder of this verse is exceedingly obscure; a probable translation is as follows: “And they saw the people that was in the midst of it dwelling in security after the manner of the Zidonians, ‘quiet and secure, and none doing any injury to any one in the land, possessing wealth;’ and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man.” The words in italics are probably a poetical quotation, descriptive of the people of Laish, which would account for the peculiar diction and the grammatical changes; for whereas the word dwelling is in the feminine gender, agreeing with people, the words quiet and secure and possessing are in the masculine, which can be readily accounted for if they are a quotation. This would also account for the tautology, “dwelling in security,” “quiet and secure,” and for the poetical character of the phrase “possessing wealth,” and for the unusual form of the word here rendered wealth (‘etzer with an ain, instead of the usual otzar with an aleph), in accordance with the Septuagint and Vulgate and Gesenius, who derive the meaning of wealth from collecting, from which the common word atzereth derives its meaning of a collection or congregation of people.
Jdg 18:9
To go, and to enter. The exact meaning is, Be not slothful to go (i.e. to go on your way from hence), so as to enter in and possess the land. This would be expressed by leaving out to before enterto go and enter.
Jdg 18:10
Translate, “When ye come, ye shall come unto a people secure; and the land is very large (for God hath given it into your hands), a place where there is no want,” etc. The Hebrew of very large is, literally, wide on both hands. The parenthetic for God hath given it into your hands, merely explains why they speak so confidently about it (cf. Deu 8:9).
Jdg 18:11
The familymeaning the tribe (see Jdg 13:2, note, and cf. Jos 7:17). Possibly a reason for the use of the word family here and in Jdg 18:2, as applied to Dan, may be that there was only one family in the tribe of Dan, that of the Shuhamites (Num 26:42). Six hundred men. With their wives and sisters and children (see Jdg 18:21), the whole company, must have amounted to two or three thousand souls.
Jdg 18:12
Kirjath-jearim (city of forests), otherwise called Kirjath-Baal and Baalah, in the hill country of Judah (Jos 15:60). It, lay on the border of Benjamin (Jos 18:14, Jos 18:15). Its modern representative in all probability is Kurit-el-enab, nine miles from Jerusalem, on the road to Joppa. The district is still very woody. Mahaneh-dan, i.e. the camp of Dan (see Jdg 13:25). Behind, i.e. to the west of. The exact site of Mahaneh-dan has not been identified with certainty. Mr. Williams was shown a site called Beit-Mahanem in the Wady Ismail which answers well in position, but it has not been noticed by any other traveller (‘Dictionary of Bible’).
Jdg 18:14
In these houses, showing that Beth-Micah, the house of Micah, was in fact a small village (see verse 22).
Jdg 18:15
Even unto the house, etc. Rather, at Beth-Micah.
Jdg 18:17
Went up, viz; into the upper chamber, where it appears the chapel wan So we read in 2Ki 23:12 that there were altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz (cf. Jer 19:13). And came up, and took. There is no and in the Hebrew, and the tense of the verb is changed. A fuller stop must be put after went up. And then the account proceeds, with a certain solemnity of diction, They came in thither; they took the graven image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image (full stop). The narrative goes on, Now the priest was standing in the entering of the gate, etc. But these five went into Micah‘s house, etc; as just related, and of course brought them out to the gate where the priest was standing with the 600 Danites.
Jdg 18:18
The carved image. It should be the graven image, as elsewhere. The Hebrew text here has the graven image of the ephod, as was noticed in Jdg 17:3, note. But it is very possible that the vav, and, has fallen out of the text by accident, and it does not seem likely that a different phrase should be adopted in this one place from that followed throughout in the enumeration of the articles in Micah’s chapel, so that the A.V. is probably right. Then said the priest, etc. When he saw the idols and teraphim in the hands of the five men he cried out in alarm. It is remarkable that here and in the preceding verse he is styled the priest.
Jdg 18:19
Lay thine hand upon thy mouth. Cf. Job 21:5; Job 29:9; Job 40:4. A father and a priest. See Jdg 17:10, note.
Jdg 18:20
The priest’s heart was glad, etc. The prospect of greater dignity and greater emolument stifled all sentiments of gratitude and loyalty to Micah, and made him cheerfully connive at an act of theft and sacrilege.
Jdg 18:21
They turned, i.e. turned their backs upon Beth-Micah, and went on their way to the north. The little ones. The term necessarily includes the women of the emigrant party. Compare Jacob’s care for his wives and children (Gen 33:1-5); only Jacob expected an attack from Esau in front, the Danites an attack from Micah from behind. The carriage. It is the same word as is translated in Gen 31:1 glory; it might be rendered valuables. It would no doubt include the precious images and ephod which they had just stolen.
Jdg 18:22
The houses near to Micah’s house. See verse 14, note. Year to, the same Hebrew word as is rendered by in verse 3, where see note.
Jdg 18:23
That thou comest, etc.literally, that thou art gathered together, the same word as in Jdg 18:22. It is the idea of the clan, or family, or tribe which causes the phrase. Just as Israel or Judah designates the whole nation, or the whole tribe, under the name of their patriarch, so here Micah would include all the clan who dwelt in Micah’s house; and hence the Danites speak of Micah being gathered together.
Jdg 18:24
My gods, or, as some render it, my god. But the plural is probably right, as Micah was thinking of the molten and graven images, and the teraphim, and called them gods, without perhaps meaning to imply that there was any God but Jehovah.
Jdg 18:25
Run upon thee. Rather, run, or fall, upon you; it is the plural pronoun, comprehending the whole party. The argument of the Danites was the argument of the stronger.
Jdg 18:26
The verse tells us what the two parties did, but not in the Order in which an English writer would express it; for no doubt the Danites, encumbered with their women, and children, and baggage, did not go on their way till Micah and his party had turned back, though in English the contrary order is rather implied. The Hebrew merely puts the actions side by side, and leaves the order to be inferred.
Jdg 18:27
And they. In the Hebrew the they is emphatic. It would be better expressed in English by repeating The children of Dan. The repetition of the epithets quiet and secure, as applied to the people of Laish, rather seems to indicate the writer’s reprobation of the deed as cruel, like that of Simeon and Levi in slaying Hamor and Shechem. They smote them with the edge of the sworda phrase denoting an exterminating slaughter (Exo 34:26; Jos 19:47; 1Sa 15:8, etc.). And they burnt the city, etc. Perhaps they had made the people and city a cherem, a devoted thing, and therefore slew the one and burnt the other (cf. Num 21:3; Jos 8:19; Jos 11:11, etc.); or the burning of the city may have been one of the means by which they destroyed the people.
Jdg 18:28
Because it was far, etc. He reverts again to the description given in Jdg 18:7. That lieth by Beth-Rehob. It is literally, which belongeth to Beth-Rehob, i.e. the valley here spoken of was part of the territory of the Syrians of Beth-Rehob in the time of David (and very likely earlier), as we read in 2Sa 10:6. It seems to have taken its name, House of Rehob, from Rehob the father of Hadadezer, king of Zobah (2Sa 8:12), and to have been called Beth-Rehob very much as Micah’s settlement was called Beth-Micah. It was also called for shortness Rehob, as Num 13:21; Jdg 1:31; 2Sa 10:8. It was situated, as we learn from Jdg 1:31, in the bounds of the tribe of Asher, in the extreme north of the Holy Land, near the entering in of Hamath, the site of which, however, is unknown (see Num 13:21). The valley is that through which the Leddan fountain flows (Jdg 1:7, note), and is the upper part of the plain called el-Hulleh, which is the northern continuation of the Jordan valley. They built a city. Rather, they rebuilt the city.
Jdg 18:29
Howbeit Laish was the name, etc. The strange form here given in the Septuagint, Oulamais, arises from their having taken the Hebrew word for howbeit (oulam) as part of the name, and left out the L of Laish (see Jdg 18:7, note).
Jdg 18:30, Jdg 18:31
And the children of Dan, etc. It was probably the long existence of this semi-idolatrous worship of the graven image at Dan that induced King Jeroboam to set up one of his golden calves at Dan, as we read 1Ki 12:28-30. And Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh. The Hebrew text really has the son of Moses. But a little n is written above the line between the M and the S of Moses (Mosheh), so as to be read Manasseh, as thus: MSH; so that they avoided the pain of reading aloud that the grandson or descendant of Moses was an idolatrous priest, without actually altering the written text. It is indeed most sad that it should have been so, though like examples are not wanting, as, e.g; the sons of Eli and of Samuel. For Gershom the son of Moses see Exo 2:22; Exo 18:3; 1Ch 23:14-16. It does not follow that Jonathan, the priest of the Danites, was literally the son of Gershom. It may merely mean that he was of the family of which Gershom was the head. Until the day of the captivity of the land. There is great diversity of opinion as to the meaning of this phrase. Many understand it, as is the obvious meaning of the words, of the Assyrian captivity (2Ki 15:29; 2Ki 17:6). But some of the best commentators, as Kimchi among the Jews, and many moderns, think it refers to the taking captive of the ark by the Philistines in the days of Eli, because this is the time indicated in the next verse by the mention of the house of God in Shiloh. The ark of God never returned to Shiloh after it was taken thence (1Sa 4:3, 1Sa 4:4) and captured by the Philistines (ibid. 1Ch 23:11). It is also noticed that the expression, The ark of God is gone into captivity (is taken, A.V.), occurs in 1Sa 4:21, 1Sa 4:22. It certainly would be strange that one verse (30) should speak of the worship of the graven image lasting till the Assyrian conquest of the land, and the next verse (31) limit it to the time that the house of God was in Shiloh, some 300 years earlier. At the same time it should be noticed that verse 30 speaks of the time that Jonathan’s sons were priests to the tribe of Dan, and verse 31 of the worship of Micah’s image. It is quite possible that the descendants of Jonathan may have been appointed priests at Dan to Jeroboam’s golden-calf worship, though the original graven image of Micah may have been destroyed by Saul or David; and in the interval between such destruction of Micah’s image and the setting up of Jeroboam’s calves they may have been the priests of an irregular worship on a high place at Tell-el-Kady. And this would enable us to give what is certainly its natural meaning to the words, “the captivity of the land.” But no certainty can be arrived at without more actual knowledge. Many commentators adopt Houbigant’s conjecture to read ark for land at the end of verse 30 (aron for aretz). Others think that some deportation of the Danites by the Syrians or other neighbouring people not recorded in history is here spoken of. All the time the house of God, etc. This must have been written not earlier than the time of Samuel, and possibly much later. The house of God, i.e. the tabernacle, was in Shiloh from the days of Joshua (Jos 18:1) till the days of Eli (1Sa 1:3), after which we have no account of where the house of God was till the ark was brought up to Jerusalem by King David from the house of Obed-edom the Gittite (2Sa 6:12), and placed in the tabernacle that David had pitched for it (2Sa 6:17); but whether this was the tabernacle that had been pitched at Shiloh or a new one does not appear. It is not improbable that Samuel may have moved the tabernacle from Shiloh to Ramah (1Sa 7:17). The ark had rested in the house of Abinadab at Baaleh or Kirjath-jearim for twenty years (1Sa 7:2) previous to its removal by David.
HOMILETICS
Jdg 18:1-31
Society without a head ceasing to be society.
The writer of the five last chapters of the Book of Judges had a painful task to perform. Writing the history of his people, and they the people of God, he had to tell a tale of violence, plunder, bloodshed, brutality, civil war, and extermination, on the secular side, and of superstition, schism, and idolatry, on the religious side of his story. And we may observe, by the way, that we have a striking evidence of the truthfulness and impartiality of the narrator in this merciless exposure of the sins and misdeeds of his countrymen. Nor are we at a loss to draw the lesson which he intended us to draw from the account which he has given; for no fewer than four times in the course of his brief narrative does he impress upon the mind of his readers the fact that in the days when these shameful deeds were done “there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Jdg 17:6; Jdg 18:1; Jdg 19:1; Jdg 21:25). No doubt the writer referred particularly to that government with which he was acquainted, the government of kings properly so called, of whom Saul was the first, and David and his long line were the successors. But when we remember that in its best days the Israelitish nation had no king but God, and was governed under him by such rulers as Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, and the other judges, we shall perceive that the lesson to be learnt is not so much that of the superiority of monarchy over other forms of government, as of the absolute necessity, for the religious and civil welfare of a people, that a firm government should exist, to control by the force of law the excesses of individual will, and to compel within certain limits the action of individuals for the sake of the public good. Looking at their several influences upon the body of the Israelite people, how pernicious was the theft by Micah of his mother’s hoarded treasure; how injurious to the community was the idolatrous worship set up by Micah, and that for generation upon generation; how disastrous to the commonwealth of Israel was the brutal outrage of the men of Gibeah; how intolerable was the marauding expedition of the Danites, both to the quiet dwellers in the land and to peaceful neighbours beyond its border; and what a complete loosening of all the joints of social life do the several transactions display! Nowhere do we see any common aim for the common good, but each man’s covetousness, superstition, lust, anger, cruelty, pursuing private objects at the expense of public interests. The ideas of a society, a commonwealth, a Church, a nation, were lost in individual selfishness. Now this was in a great measure due to the want of a central supreme authority to repress, to direct, and to overrule. Just as material nature, if the power of gravitation were removed, would fall to pieces, and all cohesion would be gone, so, without a common authority wielding the power of law, human society would fall to pieces, and be reduced to chaos. Men are blinded by their own passions; particular sections of society can see nothing but their own fancied interests; lawless violence would plunder here; impulsive zeal would rush onwards there; a fanatical superstition would set up its altars where it ought not; fierce rivalry would rise upon the ruins of its antagonist; revenge would glut itself with destruction; one trade would seek the suppression of all that stood in its way; one interest would devour another, one class supplant another, one rank tread down another. It is the business of law wielded by sovereign power to look with an equal eye upon all the different interests of the State, to favour all by favouring none at the expense of others, to repress all individual action which would hurt the whole, and to regulate all the separate forces which would be injurious to the whole. Law, like the eye of God, is impartial in its look-out; its end is to produce order, harmony, and peace. Under the even reign of law eccentric violence is unknown, and its steady but irresistible pressure gives consistency and strength to the whole fabric of society. Under its reign full scope is given to every energy for good, and all the scattered forces of the separate parts are concentrated for the benefit of the whole. Under its wholesome restraints the selfish passions of man are not allowed to injure themselves or others, and the folly of the foolish and the wickedness of the wicked are checked in their injurious courses. Not that which is right in his own eyes, and which self-will desires, but that which the law, the reflection of God’s mind, commands, is the rule by which every man’s actions must be squared. The perfection of a human polity is one in which wise laws govern the whole social movement as surely as the laws of nature govern the material world. It is the interest of all classes of the community to bow to this supremacy of law, and to unite in a firm compact to support the central authority in repressing every act of lawlessness, whether committed by an individual or by a company. It is only thus that social chaos can be avoided, and that civil cosmos, which alone is civilisation, can be maintained for the true liberty and welfare of mankind. It is just the same with the Church of God, which is the commonwealth of his saints. In it the word of God must reign supreme. In it individual opinions, sentiments, wishes, and feelings must all be subordinated to the Divine law. In it selfish eccentricities, ambitions, activities must all be restrained by a wise and even rule if the Church is to be the abode of order, peace, and love. In the surrender of individual will to the discipline of the supreme authority the sacred commonwealth finds its perfect balance, and each member is enabled to yield that service which indeed is perfect freedom; because the unchecked power to do that which is right in his own eyes is not a man’s liberty, but his bondage. Self-will is set in motion by sin; but law is the fruit of wisdom and justice moving for the happiness of all, securing right, and stopping up the gangways of wrong. From the spirit of lawlessness deliver thy Church, O Lord!
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR
Jdg 18:1-13
The history of a man-made ministry: 2. Its abuse.
A special instance of the manner in which it wrought mischief afforded in the migration of the Danites. The proximity of Micah’s house to the great northern highway made it a natural resting-place for travellers, and so the spies find their way there. By them the young priest, who turns out to be a previous acquaintance, is recognised. The existence of the “house of gods” is thus made known, and they desire him to consult the oracle concerning their fortunes. Although their adventure was a wicked and unscrupulous one, they are told, “Go in peace: before the Lord is your way wherein ye go.” The visit of the spies to Laish, their report to their brethren, and the setting out of the 600 Danites, who arrive in the first stage of their march once more at Micah’s house, are then narrated. We see, therefore
I. HOW A MERCENARY PRIESTHOOD AND SHRINE MAY BE PROSTITUTED TO BASE USES. The oracle at Shiloh was symbol and seal of the national, unity, and its priesthood represented the national conscience. It would have been impossible for them to sanction such a crime. But it was otherwise with Micah’s priest and “house of gods.” The latter was a mercantile speculation, a private enterprise, and was therefore obnoxious to any temptation like this. A striking parallel to this is afforded by the Church of Rome, with its sale of indulgences, etc.
II. HOW EAGER UNHOLY MEN ARE FOR RELIGIOUS SANCTIONS IN THEIR FRAUDULENT AND MURDEROUS DEEDS. When religion becomes a matter of money, and its advantages are sold to the highest bidder, it ceases to be the judge of right and wrong. The contradiction between the errand upon which they were sent and the spirit of God’s revelation ought to have struck them. Yet this is but one instance of an all but universal error. They imagine that true religion can call evil good and good evil.
III. HOW THEREBY A TURBULENT TRIBE IS ENCOURAGED IN ITS DESIGNS UPON‘ A PEACEFUL DISTRICT, AND A PERMANENT WRONG IS INFLICTED. The moral latent in the incident is thereby sharply pointed. It must appear to all how mischievous, how subversive of human society and of religion, such an institution must be. The only safeguard against such evils is in the central authority at Shiloh being recognised, and that authority being enforced by a duly elected king.M.
Jdg 18:14-31
Its transfer and establishment in a lawless community.
The spies had evidently taken counsel with the 600, for the theft of the gods is done in a cool, business-like way; and they have evidently a settled design concerning them. Everything that would encumber or be detrimental to them is sent on in front. The real or feigned remonstrance of the priest, and his willing compliance with their desire, and the pursuit by Micah, are realistic touches that add greatly to the interest and naturalness of the narrative. That the slaughter, etc. at Laish was of the most horrible description is suggested”There was no helper.”
I. THOSE WHO SUBVERT THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY SHOULD NOT EXPECT TO BE TREATED ACCORDING TO THOSE PRINCIPLES.
II. HOWEVER APPARENTLY RELIGIOUS WRONG–DOERS ARE, THEIR CONDUCT DOES NOT LOSE ITS ESSENTIAL CHARACTER, AND WILL BE JUDGED. The record of the occurrence has preserved it for all time, and it is condemned before the bar of the righteous conscience.
III. THE GREATEST CARE SHOULD BE TAKEN AT THE FIRST INDICATION OF SCHISM OR ERROR, AS SUCH THINGS TEND TO PERPETUATE THEMSELVES. A regular priesthood is instituted, with its hereditary privileges and duties.
IV. THE REAL EFFECT OF SUCH RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IS TO THE DETRIMENT OF TRUE RELIGION. The “house of gods” at Laish is a rival to the “house of God” at Shiloh. During those early days of Hebrew nationalisation and religious training, the mischief and hindrance occasioned by it must have been enormous. True religion is ever opposed in the world. Its worst foes are those who most nearly resemble it in outward ceremony, but whose motives are impure.M.
Jdg 18:23, Jdg 18:24
The idolater’s distress.
Micah has at one fell swoop lost gods and ephod and priest. As his chief gains and his fancied importance were derived from this source, he was desolate.
I. THOSE WHOSE TRUST IS IN OUTWARD THINGS, AND WHOSE HEART IS BOUND UP IN THEM, ARE EXPOSED TO GRAVE DANGERS AND DISADVANTAGES. The losses of life; the anxieties and dreads; bereavement. The religion of external details, how easily disarranged! The whole “establishment” may be swept away!
II. THE SPIRITUALLY–MINDED ARE FREED FROM THESE CARES, AND ALTHOUGH SUFFERING SIMILAR DEPRIVATIONS AND LOSSES, ARE NOT WITHOUT COMFORT. “God is a spirit, and they that worship him,” etc. The heart that rests on Christ is secure against all outward perils. Forms, externals, etc. are not essential to true religion. The “means of grace” are not to become an end in themselves, and where the end is reached otherwise they can be dispensed with.M.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Jdg 18:5
The religion of convenience.
I. MEN WHO ARE UNWILLING TO DO THE WILL OF GOD ARE SOMETIMES ANXIOUS TO SECURE HIS HELP. These Danites are little better than freebooters; they are determined to go their own way; they have no wish to be guided by God; they simply wish to be assured of success. So there are many who have sufficient religious faith to desire the blessing of God on their life, but not sufficient to submit to his guidance and authority. True loyalty to God will make us not merely consult him as to the success of our work, but as to its rightness, and not merely inquire whether the way in which we are determined to go shall prosper, but ask what way God would have us take.
II. THE PRAYER FOR PROSPERITY UNACCOMPANIED BY SUBMISSION TO GOD‘S WILL DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE COURSE OF ACTION TO WHICH IT RELATES. We have superstitions about prayer. We are too ready to imagine that all is well if we have sought God’s blessing upon our work. But we have only a right to ask for this when we are doing right. Prayer cannot sanctify a bad action. The Danites were not justified in their marauding expedition because they first consulted a supposed Divine oracle. Men seek God’s blessing on their business while they conduct it dishonestly, on their country while they favour aggressive wars and national injustice, on their private lives while they pursue a worldly, perhaps even an immoral, course. Such conduct rather aggravates than mitigates guilt, because it betrays blindness of conscience in the searching light of God’s presence.
III. AN ASSURANCE OF SUCCESS IS NO PROOF OF THE FAVOUR OF GOD. We are too ready to worship success as though it were a justification of the means by which it was attained. In this world, viewed from a human standpoint, goodness often fails and wickedness often succeeds. Our own feeling of assurance is no ground of reasonable confidence. They who are on the best of terms with themselves are not therefore on the best of terms with God. The timid, diffident, despondent soul may be really regarded with favour by God, while the vain, self-elated soul may be living under his frown. The faith which saves is not self-confidence nor the assurance of success, but submissive and obedient trust in a Lord and Saviour.
IV. THEY WHO MAKE A CONVENIENCE OF RELIGION WILL FIND IN THE END THAT IT WILL BE THEIR CONDEMNING JUDGE. The priest told the Danites that their way was before the Lord. God would watch them. They had invoked his name. They would see ultimately what his presence involved. The recognition of God which is involved in seeking his blessing will increase our condemnation if we disregard his will.A.
Jdg 18:19, Jdg 18:20
The mercenary priest.
Greed and ambition are the besetting sins of depraved priests. Both of these evil characteristics are apparent in Micah’s Levite.
I. THE PRIESTLY OFFICE IS DEGRADED BY MERCENARY GREED. Micah had adopted the Levite when he was homeless and destitute, and had treated him with the kindness of a father to his son; yet as soon as he discovers a chance of better pay, the miserable man deserts and robs his patron. No man can serve God truly if the money wages of his service are the chief consideration with him. Though he may take such just payment as is given to him if he is God’s faithful servant, he will, like the faithful Levites, feel that his real portion is the Eternal (Jos 13:33). Such a man should also consider himself bound by ties of affection and friendly obligation to the people among whom he ministers. If he seeks promotion simply for the sake of pecuniary advantage, and irrespective of the loss which may be sustained in his present sphere, and of his possible unfitness for a larger sphere, he is guilty of gross worldliness and wicked selfishness.
II. THE PRIESTLY OFFICE IS DEGRADED BY SELFISH AMBITION. The Levite is tempted by the prospect of exercising his functions in a larger way as the priest of a tribe. Such an offer would only be possible in Israel under circumstances of religions decline and social disorder. Even then the Levite must have known that he was no priest at all according to the law of God, for he did not belong to the family of Aaron. But ambition tramples on law for its own advancement. Of course there are occasions when a man may naturally endeavour to rise in the world, and if he can be sure that he will extend his usefulness, it is his duty to do so. But
1. The opportunity of enlarged service elsewhere is no justification for unfaithfulness to our present service. Plainly the Levite was treating his benefactor with unpardonable ingratitude and treachery in deserting him for the service of the Danites.
2. It is only a culpable ambition which will lead a man to seek a higher position simply for his own honour and profit, and not for the good of those who are intrusted to his care. The priest exists for the people, not the people for the priest. But the latter condition has been only too apparent in the course of the corruptions of Christendom. Office has been sought solely for the satisfaction of the greed and ambition of the aspirant. How contrary to the teaching of Christ, who said, “Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant”! (Mat 20:27).A.
Jdg 18:24
The lost gods.
Micah’s distress at the loss of his gods and priest may be regarded on two sideson the side of superstition and on that of genuine devotion.
I. THE SUPERSTITIOUS SIDE OF MICAH‘S DISTRESS.
1. The god that can be stolen must be no true God. Micah should have seen the folly of his idolatry in the catastrophe which had befallen him. If the idols could not protect their own shrine, what could they do for their owner’s home?
2. The man whose character is corrupt is worthless as a priest. Yet after the Levite had behaved in the vilest way Micah still felt the loss of him bitterly. This distress came from his superstitious belief in the efficacy of the residence of an official priest in his house, no matter what was the baseness of the man’s character or the emptiness of his services.
3. A religion which depends on any material things or human offices for its efficacy is foreign to the character of the spiritual worship of the true God. It was a mistake for Micah to suppose that he would lose the presence of God by losing the images which he had made, or the blessing of God by losing his priest. Nothing that is done to a man’s outside life can affect his religious blessings. God dwells in the shrine of the heart. No persecution can rob us of his presence. The Waldenses in their mountain cave had lost every earthly comfort, but they had not lost God. God’s blessings are not dependent on external ordinances, though these are the usual channels through which they flow. If we have no visible temple, altar, priest, or service, God can still bless us fully.
II. THE NATURAL SIDE OF MICAH‘S DISTRESS. There is much in it which speaks well for Micah. Micah is a religious man. To him the loss of what he believes to be the source of religious blessings is a great trouble. Are not they who can lose the real presence of God in their hearts without any feeling of compunction far more astray than this man with all his idolatry and superstition? God is the light and life of the soul. How strange then that any should live without him and yet not know that anything “aileth” them! But whatever a man makes into a god for himself will interest him deeply. If he makes a god of his money, his art, his child, the loss of his god will plunge him into the darkness of despair.
1. Since we are thus deeply affected by the object of our supreme devotion, let us see that this is no earthly thing which can be stolen or destroyed, but the true, eternal God who will never leave us.
2. God sometimes takes from us the earthly treasures of which we have made gods that we may see the mistake of our idolatry, and so learn to lift up our hearts to the ever-abiding presence.A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
CHAP. XVIII.
The Danites seek an inheritance, and in the journey enter into the house of Micah, and carry off his image and his priest: they take the city Laish, which they burn, build another in its place, and set up there Micah’s graven image.
Before Christ 1426.
Jdg 18:1. In those days there was no king in Israel The exact period here referred to is uncertain; but it is generally supposed to have been before there was a judge in Israel, between the death of Joshua and the elders who survived him, and the time of Othniel, who was the first judge raised up for them by God. See Josephus, Antiq. lib. 5: cap. 2 and the note on the first verse of the former chapter. Houbigant renders the latter part of this verse, for not yet, even to this time, they had sufficient inheritance among the tribes of Israel. Instead of the tribe of the Danites, some would read a tribe, or family, &c.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
The tribe of Dan, desirous of more room, despatches explorers. These, after spending a night near Micahs religious establishment, become aware of its existence, and consult its oracle. Proceeding, they find at Laish an inviting place, easy of conquest. They return home, and a colony of six hundred families is sent out
Jdg 18:1-13.
1In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their [no] inheritance1 had not [omit: not] fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel. 2And the children [sons] of Dan sent of their family five men from their coasts [of their whole number], men of valour, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land: who when [and] they came to mount Ephraim, to [as far as] the house of Micah, [and] they 3lodged there. When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice2 of the young man the Levite: and they turned in thither, and said unto him, Who brought thee hither? and what makest [doest] thou in this place? and what hast thou here? 4And he said unto them, Thus and thus dealeth Micah with me, and hath [he] hired me, and I am [became] his priest. 5And they said unto him, Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous. 6And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the Lord 7[Jehovah] is your way wherein ye go. Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people that were therein, how they dwelt3 careless [securely], after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure; and there was no magistrate [potentate] in the land, that might put them to shame [injure them] in any thing and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man [had no intercourse with other men]. 8And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye? 9And they said, Arise, that we may [and let us] go up against them: for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good: and are ye still? be not slothful to go, and to enter [come] to possess the land. 10When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land: for God hath given it into your hands; a place where there is no want of any thing that is in the earth [land]. 11And there went from thence of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men appointed [girded] with weapons of war. 12And they went up, and pitched [encamped] in Kirjath-jearim, in Judah: wherefore they called [call] that place Mahaneh-dan [Camp of Dan] unto this day: behold, it is behind Kirjath-jearim. 13And they passed thence unto mount Ephraim, and came unto [as far as] the house of Micah.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[1 Jdg 18:1. properly means: in the character of an inheritance, as an inheritance, cf. Num 26:53, etc. The nominative to is to be supplied from the thought of the preceding clause, either in the form of or, better, in the more general form of , land. The writer probably intended to introduce the subject after the verb, but as he proceeded his attention was diverted by subordinate clauses, and so he ended with an anacoluthon.Tr.]
[2 Jdg 18:3.. Dr. Cassel renders sound, see his explanation below. Keil and others understand it of dialectic pronunciation or other peculiarities of speech. Bertheau thinks that inasmuch as the envoys had to turn aside from their way in order to get to Micahs temple, they could not have been near enough to hear the Levites voice or note his pronunciation. He therefore assumes that what they recognized was the tidings that were told them of the sanctuary near by. But why not take the words in the sense in which any man would naturally take them at the first reading? The Levite had been a wanderer; some one (or more) of the five envoys had met with him, and now recognizes his voice, as they lie encamped near by. The conversation that ensues when they meet with him is certainly exactly such as would be expected under such circumstances; and the account which Micah gives of his personal affairs (Jdg 18:4), can scarcely be explained on any other supposition.Tr.]
[3 Jdg 18:7. is predicate to , and as such ought to be masculine. The feminine is accounted for on the principle that the writers imagination identifies the people with the city in which they live, and so speaks of them as feminine, of Ewald, Lehrb. 174 b; Green, Gram. 275, 2, b. The appositional masculine participles only show that this identification is no longer in the mind of the writer.Tr.]
EXEGETICAL AND DOCTRINAL
Jdg 18:1. In those days there was no king in Israel. This is repeated in order to intimate that the author does not approve of what he is about to relate concerning the Danites. Such a piratical expedition was possible only when there was no organic national authority to guard the public peace and watch over the enforcement of law. The kingly office is a guaranty of the safety of property and of the continuance of public peace, and does not permit adventurous expeditions, undertaken for the injury of others. These very evils, however, were prevalent in Germany, notwithstanding imperial rule; and that not only in the Middle Ages. It was a matter of great difficulty, in the fourteenth century, to bring about the formation of local peace-compacts; and even then they had inserted in them the clause of the West-phalian treaty of 1371, according to which a city or lord was only forbidden to engage in hostilities without a previous declaration of war. Even this principle would have condemned the Danites, it is true, but the organic government in the interests of peace and order which Israel understood by , kingdom, royal dominion, had no existence in Germany, even until after the thirty years war.
For that unto that day no inheritance had fallen unto them. These words do not express the view of the narrator, but rehearse the complaint of the Danites, which was causeless however. Dan had certainly received an inheritance; and in proof of it is the fact that even at this time the tribe dwelt in the district of Zorah and Eshtaol. Its territory extended over Timnah and Ekron, as far as Joppa on the coast (Jos 19:41-46); but it had been crowded into the mountains by the Amorites (Jdg 1:34), and had failed to dispossess the Philistines of the plain along the sea-coast. On this account the tribe might indeed have too narrow bounds; but instead of enlarging their borders by making war on their heathen neighbors, they complained. If they had not been lacking in the true enthusiasm of faith in Jehovah, their onsets of irresistible prowess would not have failed to win the territory allotted to them. But it was easier, it must be allowed, to surprise undefended houses and lands, than to contend with the five princes of the Philistines, and their numerous armies. The words before us are only the subterfuge with which Dan defended the unusual resolution it had taken before the other tribes.
Jdg 18:2. And the sons of Dan sent of their family five men. Only in Israel was it an unusual thing to look about for other possessions than those which had been assigned. Among other nations, the reduction of a too numerous population by means of colonization, was a matter of frequent occurrence (cf. Movers, Phnizier, iii. 5, etc.). In the case of Dan, however, the resolution to look about for new territory was not arrived at by a few adventurers, who unceremoniously cut themselves loose from their people, but by the whole community. The commissioners and envoys to whom the promotion of the scheme was entrusted, were elected from among the whole () and were not ordinary spies, but chosen men ( ), upon whom the matter naturally devolved. (Compare the Roman plan of appointing commissioners to supervise the establishment of a colony.) The express statement that they were told Go, explore the land, is added, in order to relieve them from every appearance of having acted only on their own responsibility.
Jdg 18:3-4. There, near the house of Micah, they recognized the sound. There (),4i. e., in the vicinity of the temple-house, which is here, in a special sense, called the house of Micah. When they were near this house (), they heard the sound () of the young Levite. This has been curiously enough understood of the voice of the Levite. But how could the Danites tell by the voice that it belonged to a Levite? The statement, however, becomes instructive, when we call to mind what is written in Exo 28:35. The Levite in Micahs House wore the priestly dress, which was provided with bells, in order that their sound may be heard ( ) when he enters into and comes out of the Holy Place. The Danites, having passed the night (), heard, in the morning, the bells of the officiating priest, and thus learned, to their astonishment, that there was a Levite there.
Jdg 18:5-6. Inquire, we pray thee, of God (Elohim). The Danites, it is evident from all they do, are not steadfast in their faith in Jehovah. Hence, also, they find no fault with the Levite for having hired himself to Micah; nor do they hesitate, when they learn that he has an ephod and teraphim (Jdg 18:14), to consult his oracle about the success of their undertaking; but that Jehovah was worshipped here, did not appear to them to be the case. The narrator indicates this very delicately, by making them say, Inquire of Elohim, although the Levite, in the account he gave of himself, had used the name Jehovah, for to his service Micahs House was nominally devoted. The Levites response is oracular, i. e., thoroughly ambiguous: Go in peace: . is simply equivalent to coram; no such accessory idea as favorable, lies in the words. Your way is before Jehovahan answer unquestionably correct. The Danites probably explained it in a favorable sense, on account of the go in peace which preceded it.
Jdg 18:7. And the five went, and came to Laish. Since the city was afterwards called Dan, whose name and situation at one of the sources of the Jordan (and that not the spring at Bnis), was known in the time of Josephus, Robinson was doubtless right in saying (B. R. iii. 392), that of the identity of its situation and that of Tell el-Kdy there can be no question. Ritter (xv. 217) even communicates Wilsons observation, according to which the name Dan, i. e., judge, survives by translation in Kdy, the surname of the Tell Laish, however, lay in the valley that leads to Beth-rehob (Jdg 18:28). This valley can scarcely be any other than the present Wady et-Teim, the great longitudinal valley which extends from the plain of Lake Hleh upward to Rsheiya. Through this valley and the Bukaa runs the direct road from the sources of the Jordan to Hamath (Rob. iii. 371). The spies of Moses explored the land as far as Rehob, where the road leads to Hamath (Num 13:21). Rehob (prop. Rechob) is a name suggested by topographical characteristics, and recurs therefore in various places. It always presupposes the presence of a plain or level surface.5 It is to be noted that Scripture itself does not speak of either Dan or Laish, as situated at the sources of the Jordan. We may, nevertheless, venture the conjecture that this situation may be found indicated in the name Laish (). Laish signifies a lion; and ancient, originally Egyptian, symbology, has made the lion the sign of flowing stream-sources. For as soon as the sun enters his sign in the zodiac, the sources of the Nile begin to rise. Hence, says Horapollo, the mouths of fountains are provided with the figures of lions. This also accounts for the statement of Pollux, that the lion is called , guardian of springs, and for the wide-extended usage of setting up figures of the lion near springs. The place of the source of the Orontes is named Lebweh, which also means lion. The river which rises near Baalbek-Heliopolis was called Leontes (at present Ltny); and the lion himself, as Egyptian symbol, signified House of the Sun. On the front-side of a building over the spring of Ain Anb there are found figures of animals, considered to be either lions or dogs (Ritter, xvii. 676). The name Laish may be supposed to indicate in a similar manner the fountain, one of the largest in the world, which leaps down in an immense stream from Tell el-Kdy (Rob. iii. 390). We are reminded by it of the blessing of Moses (Deu 33:22): And of Dan he said, Dan is a (lions whelp); he leaps forth from Bashan. The attribute thus expressed corresponds, as it were, to that indicated in the name Laish. Leshem, the name under which the place appears in Jos 19:47, gives literal expression, perhaps, to the same idea which was figuratively indicated by Laish. The verb , to break through (of a spring), to flow, belongs to an ancient and widely diffused root. Hence, as the source of the Jordan was called , so the warm springs near the Dead Sea were called , Lesha, changed afterwards into Callirrho (cf. lehhan, Licus, Lech, Celtic, Leis, Lias, and numerous similar river names).
Jdg 18:7. There was no hereditary potentate in the land, to oppress them in any respect. The observations of the five envoys are remarkable. They find the city, as a colony of Sidon, quietly devoted to industrial arts, after the manner of the mother city. It had not entered into relations for mutual protection with other cities, probably on the ground of its being a colony. That notwithstanding this, it could feel itself secure, and live without much warlike vigilance, although Sidon was so far away, evinces the very peaceful condition of the Syria of that day. The envoys observe also, that there is no in the land. The expression is obscure by reasou of its uncommonness. It seems to me, that it can only be understood in this way: The Danite envoys, during their stay in Laish, investigate particularly the ability of the city to defend itself. In this investigation they find not only that the people are engaged in peaceful industry (), while their natural allies are far away, but also that there is no , i. e., no dynast or tyrant, in the land, with armed troops in his pay, ready for war. The presence of such a one would make it necessary to anticipate serious and ready resistance. Hence, the Persians, when they took possession of Ionia, deposed the tyrants and instituted popular governments everywhere (Herod, vi. 43). Under the of our passage, we are to understand what the Greeks called dynasts, hereditary despots, who exercised supreme control in the city. There is no thought here of a king or of suffetes, but of a tyrannical oppressor, who without consent of the inhabitants has become their master, and who surrounds himself with armed troops, in order, as instances in both Greek and Phnician islands and cities sufficiently prove, to preserve the succession to this sort of government in his own family by means of force. In this explanation, may either be taken as the object after , in the sense of enforced supremacy,in which case 1Sa 9:17 may be compared, for is indeed, both in letter and sense, the Latin arcere, and sometimes also equivalent to coercere; or it may be regarded as standing in subjective opposition to and be compared with =, lord, commander (cf. the Sanskrit ira), in the Aramaic names Nebuchadnezzar and Esarhaddon (cf. my Ortsnamen, i. 118). Since such a Joresh-etser wields his power by violence and without the consent of his subjects, it is not said that none such reigns in the land, but , none such injures, oppresses.6 But for defense against attacks from without, such a ruler is undoubtedly well adapted, as may be seen in the instance of Polycrates. The envoys, therefore, are right, when they consider the absence of such a commander, where powerful friends are far away, and military activity is altogether wanting, as favorable to the success of an assailant.
Jdg 18:8-10. And they said, Arise, and let us go up against them. The narrative allows ancient manners to speak for themselves in a very delicate way. The five envoys, on their arrival at home, keep quiet, until they are asked, What have ye? Then, however, they are the ones who stimulate the irresolute and doubtful: why are you silent? be not slothful , ,; for to go, to come, and to have what you desire, is one and the same thing. You will find an attractive country without defense, a large land, to which nothing (either of wealth or attractiveness) is wanting. This representation was not extravagant. Laish was situated in the valley, perhaps on the same spot afterwards occupied by the Daphne mentioned by Josephus; which name, in the Hellenistic period, was only given to attractively situated places. Accordingly, Josephus himself also speaks of his Daphne as a delicious place, rich in water-springs (Wars, iv. 1, 1). The tract of land in which it lay, is still called Ard Difneh, and is covered with glorious wheat-fields and noble old trees (Rob. iii. 394). The emigrating Messenians were in similar manner invited by Anaxilaus of Rhegium to make themselves masters of Zankle in Sicily, being told that it was a blessed land, and in a fine part of the island (Paus. iv. 23). Seneca remarks (Consolatio ad Helviam matrem, cap. 6.), that many emigrants have been deceived by unmeasured praises of the fertile territory.
The envoys, in order to strengthen their people add that Elohim has given the land into their hands, referring probably to the response of the Levites oracle.
Jdg 18:11. And there broke up from thence six hundred men, girded with weapons of war. Six hundred families either volunteered, or were selected. The number may correspond with ancient usage. Livy relates that the Romans, when engaged in a colonizing enterprise, in the year 197 before Christ, sent out three hundred families into each several city (xxxii. 29). The Danites, like Greek and Roman colonies, set out as if for war, with banners, arms, and means of subsistence (Jdg 18:21). In a speech of Demosthenes it is said: (cf. Hermann, Griech. staatsalterthmer, 75, 2).
Jdg 18:12. Wherefore that place is called Camp of Dan, unto this day: behold, it is behind Kirjath-jearim. The expedition was at that time an extraordinary event. It seemed to renew the old marches of Israel in the desert, for the conquest of Canaan. There doubtless existed notices concerning the various stations which they made on the journey. It seems, however, that only three of the stations are known to us. The first was the Machaneh Dan, with which the first awakening of Samson to his life of heroism was connected (Jdg 13:25). It lay between Zorah and Eshtaol, and was therefore doubtless the place of rendezvous for the expedition, which came for the most part from those cities (Jdg 18:11, cf. Jdg 18:2). This cannot be the same with the Machaneh Dan near Kirjath-jearim, in the tribe of Judah, of which mention is here made. The researches of Robinson enable us to locate the latter near the modern Kuryet el-Enab, whence the high road appears to have gone over the mountains of Ephraim. The third is the sanctuary of Micah, where likewise the camping-place of Dan was probably long remembered. At all events, the remark, that since this expedition the name Machaneh Dan existed, shows that the event took place before the days of Samson (during which Dan appears also to have been in an enfeebled condition), and is therefore to be put between Gideon and Samson.
Footnotes:
[1][Jdg 18:1. properly means: in the character of an inheritance, as an inheritance, cf. Num 26:53, etc. The nominative to is to be supplied from the thought of the preceding clause, either in the form of or, better, in the more general form of , land. The writer probably intended to introduce the subject after the verb, but as he proceeded his attention was diverted by subordinate clauses, and so he ended with an anacoluthon.Tr.]
[2][Jdg 18:3.. Dr. Cassel renders sound, see his explanation below. Keil and others understand it of dialectic pronunciation or other peculiarities of speech. Bertheau thinks that inasmuch as the envoys had to turn aside from their way in order to get to Micahs temple, they could not have been near enough to hear the Levites voice or note his pronunciation. He therefore assumes that what they recognized was the tidings that were told them of the sanctuary near by. But why not take the words in the sense in which any man would naturally take them at the first reading? The Levite had been a wanderer; some one (or more) of the five envoys had met with him, and now recognizes his voice, as they lie encamped near by. The conversation that ensues when they meet with him is certainly exactly such as would be expected under such circumstances; and the account which Micah gives of his personal affairs (Jdg 18:4), can scarcely be explained on any other supposition.Tr.]
[3][Jdg 18:7. is predicate to , and as such ought to be masculine. The feminine is accounted for on the principle that the writers imagination identifies the people with the city in which they live, and so speaks of them as feminine, of Ewald, Lehrb. 174 b; Green, Gram. 275, 2, b. The appositional masculine participles only show that this identification is no longer in the mind of the writer.Tr.]
[4][Our author, both in his version of the Hebrew text and here, transfers from the end of one verse to the beginning of another, but without good reason.Tr.]
[5]On Rehob, equivalent to Paltos, compare above, on Jdg 1:31.
[6][Keils explanation of this passage is in all essential points very similar, except that he defines is one who seizes on power, and derives (rightly, no doubt) from in the sense of seizing, and not as our author does, in the sense of inheriting, or rather, perhaps, in both senses at the same time.Tr.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS.
The same melancholy subject of idolatry is the burden of this Chapter’. Certain Danites having called at the house of Micah, impiously consult the priest of Micah concerning their journey: being joined by others, they rob the house of Micah of his gods: and his priest, as might reasonably be expected, leaves the service of Micah to be priest to the robbers. Idolatry is long established among the children of Dan.
Jdg 18:1 In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.
The same preface introduceth this chapter as the former. No king, no government, no order. And what can the nation so circumstanced expect? How this tribe of Israel came to be so unprovided for in the general division of Canaan, is not said. Their father Jacob had prophesied of them, that they should be worldly-wise as the serpent, Gen 49:17 . And Moses declared them to be endued with the courage of the lion’s whelp. Deu 33:1
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jdg 18:3
‘It, is a vain thought,’ says Dinah Morris in Adam Bede, ‘to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the fullness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found, in loving obedience.’
Jdg 18:7
A man’s own safety is a god that sometimes makes very grim demands.
George Eliot.
Security, as commonly understood, is the state in which one fears no danger, where one is cheerful and hopes the best. We all begin our life in security…. We are all born optimists.
Martensen.
There are a multitude of persons who go through life in a safe, uninteresting mediocrity. They have never been exposed to temptation; they are not troubled with violent passions; they have nothing to try them; they have never attempted great things for the glory of God; they have never been thrown upon the world; they live at home in the bosom of their families, or in quiet situations… and when their life is closed, people cannot help speaking well of them, as harmless, decent, correct persons, whom it is impossible to blame, impossible not to regret. Yet, after all, how different their lives are from that described as a Christian’s life in St. Paul’s Epistles!
Newman.
References. XVIII. 7, 27, 28. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2490. XVIII. 9,10. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. ii. p. 330.
Jdg 18:19
So, in almost the same words, was the like bribe offered by one of the great religious houses of England to the monk who guarded the shrine of one of the most sacred relics in the adjacent cathedral of Canterbury ‘Give us the portion of St. Thomas’s skull which is in thy custody, and thou shalt cease to be a simple monk; thou shalt be Abbot of St. Augustine’s.’ As Roger accepted the bait in the twelfth century after the Christian era, so did the Levite of Micah’s house in the fifteenth century before it. Stanley.
Jdg 18:20
He that was won with ten shekels may be lost with eleven…. There is nothing more inconstant than a Levite that seeks nothing but himself.
Bishop Hall.
Reference. XVIII. 24. S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 109.
Jdg 18:27
When a Warr-like State growes Softe and Effeminate, they may be sure of a Warre. For commonly such States are growne rich, in the time of their degenerating: and so the Prey inviteth, and their Decay in Valour encourageth a Warre.
Bacon.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Jdg 18 (Annotated)
Jdg 18
1. In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe [may mean a tribe, or the division of a tribe] of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance [a description of their inheritance is given in Jos 19:40-46 ] had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.
2. And the Children of Dan sent of their family five men from their coast [their lords], men of valour [sons of force], from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land: and when they came to mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, they lodged there [Pythias was rich enough to entertain the whole army of Xerxes, a million men, yet he died a beggar].
3. When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice [perhaps by its dialect He had lived in Bethlehem] of the young man the Levite: and they turned in thither [into the room where he was officiating], and said unto him, Who brought thee hither? and what makest thou in this place? and what hast thou here?
4. And he said unto them, Thus and thus [according to this and according to that] dealeth Micah with me, and hath hired me, and I am his priest [because of the dearth of priests, Jeroboam made priests of the lowest of the people].
5. And they said unto him [having seen glittering ephods], Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God [for censure upon such inquiry, see Isa 30:4 ; Hos 4:12 ], that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous.
6. And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the Lord is your way wherein you go [carefully ambiguous].
7. Then the five men departed, and came to Laish [the mound of the judge], and saw the people that were therein, how they dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians [they were supposed to be a colony from Zidon], quiet and secure; and there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame in any thing; and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man [some read they had no business with Syria].
8. And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye?
9. And they said, Arise, that we may go up against them: for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good [Num 14:7 ; Jos 2:23-24 ]: and are ye still? be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land.
10. When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land [wide on both hands]: for God hath given it into your hands; a place where there is no want of any thing that is in the earth.
11. And there went from thence of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men appointed [girded] with weapons of war.
12. And they went up, and pitched in Kirjath-jearim [city of forests: nine miles from Jerusalem] in Judah: wherefore they called that place Mahaneh-dan [camp of Dan] unto this day: behold, it is behind [to the west of] Kirjath-jearim.
13. And they passed thence unto mount Ephraim, and came into the house of Micah [or precincts of the god-house].
14. Then answered the five men that went to spy out the country of Laish, and said unto their brethren, Do ye know that there is in these houses an ephod, and teraphim, and a graven image, and a molten image? now therefore consider what ye have to do [whether, and how, you would possess yourself of them].
15. And they turned thitherward, and came to the house of the young man [Jonathan] the Levite, even unto the house of Micah, and saluted him [“won with an apple, lost with a nut”].
16. And the six hundred men appointed with their weapons of war, which were of the children of Dan, stood by the entering of the gate.
17. And the five men that went to spy out the land went up, and came in thither, and took the graven image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image: and the priest stood in the entering of the gate [having been inveigled thither to talk to the six hundred men] with the six hundred men that were appointed with weapons of war.
18. And these went into Micah’s house, and fetched the carved image, the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image [not to destroy but to worship]. Then said the priest unto them, What do ye?
19. And they said unto him, Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth [finger on the lip, is the altitude of the Egyptian god of silence], and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be a priest unto the house of one man, or that thou be a priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel [the papists offered Luther the cardinalate to be quiet]?
20. And the priest’s heart was glad [and this was a grandson of Moses], and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people [where he was well guarded].
21. So they turned and departed, and put the little ones [so it was a regular migration] and the cattle and the carriage [the baggage] before them [expecting to be pursued].
22. And when they were a good way from the house of Micah, the men that were in the houses near to Micah’s house were gathered together, and overtook the children of Dan.
23. And they cried unto the children of Dan. And they turned their faces, and said unto Micah, What aileth thee, that thou comest with such a company [the grim humour of a tribe like a serpent on the way, an adder in the path, Gen 49:17 ]?
24. And he said, Ye have taken away my gods [remember Laban, Gen 30:31 ] which I made, and the priest, and ye are gone away: and what have I more? and what is this that ye say unto me, What aileth thee?
25. And the children of Dan said unto him, Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows [men bitter of soul] run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, with the lives of thy household.
26. And the children of Dan went their way: and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back unto his house.
27. And they took the things which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire [” Dan was no gainer. His name disappears from the records of 1Ch 4:1 , and he is not mentioned among the elected tribes in Rev. vii.”].
28. And there was no deliverer, because it was far from Zidon, and they had no business with any man; and it was in the valley that lieth by Beth-rehob [at the foot of the lowest range of Lebanon]. And they built a city, and dwelt therein.
29. And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel; howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.
30. And the children of Dan set up the graven image [some say it was in the form of a calf]; and Jonathan [the name has been withheld until this moment], the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land [probably the Philistine captivity].
31. And they set them up Micah’s graven image, which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.
Micah’s Sorrow
WE now reach a very disturbed state of the history of Israel. All is anarchy. We have thus an opportunity of seeing what men will do when they are left to themselves without government, discipline, sense of social or natural responsibility. We shall see what the bridge is when the keystone has dropped out of it. We are told again and again in these latter chapters that “there was no king in Israel,” so “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” What is the meaning of this? The meaning goes further back than the mere letter; there was no king in Israel, because in Israel there was no God. The Lord is King. You cannot have a king if you have not a God. There was no nominal renunciation of God, no public and blatant atheism, no boastful impiety; there was a deadlier heresy namely, keeping God as a sign but paying no tribute to him as a King, worshipping him possibly in outward form but knowing nothing of the subduing and directing power of godliness. That is more to be dreaded than any intellectual difficulty of a theological kind. Intellectual heresies can do but little to impede the progress of the kingdom of truth; but dead consciences, prayerless prayers, mechanical formalities these are the impediments which overturn for a time the chariot of Progress. This was the case in Israel. Where God is the king is. Not in any limited and measurable sense, as a man with a crown on, constituted of so much gold and so many precious stones; but a king in the sense of kingliness, sovereignty, authority, rule the spirit of obligation and responsibility. You may have a king under any form of government. Republicanism itself is monarchical. You find the monarch everywhere the right monarch where you find the right God. Herein is the utility of spreading far and wide right conceptions of the divine Being, as Sovereign, Father, Shepherd, Judge; let such conceptions be received into the mind; let them constitute part of the very substance of life, and you need not exhort men to keep correct weights and measures, and to pay the wages of the hireling; where the sovereign idea is right, and the supreme and dominating conviction is pure and noble, every finger of the hands serves the living God, and the whole breath is a continual sacrifice upon the altar of Righteousness. So, without going into narrow definitions of terms, we rest on the broad philosophy and reason that a right conception of God means a right conception of Man; a true, deep, complete love of God means an equal love of one’s neighbour; a true theology, properly understood, is the uppermost side of a true morality.
Every man was king in the anarchical days of Israel. What does anarchy do for society? Anarchy and society are irreconcilable terms. Where Self is king there can be no society; the ghastly image of it must be symbolical of injustice. The illustration and proof are found in this very chapter. Dan went out to see what could be had:
“The children of Dan sent of their family five men from their coasts, men of valour, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land” ( Jdg 18:2 ).
In other words: Let us see what can be done. They followed the good old rule, the simple plan, Let those take who have the power; Let those keep who can. This is the history of anarchy in a couplet: the strongest is the wisest, might is right, usurpation is justice. Things are turned upside down in their moral relations and applications when the great central thought is destroyed. Here a curious incident occurred. Dan, searching out the land and seeing what could be done, “knew the voice of the young man the Levite” in the house of Micah; “and they turned in thither, and said unto him, Who brought thee hither? and what makest thou in this place? and what hast thou here?” ( Jdg 18:3 ). Such are the coincidences of life the little points at which so-called providences are created by selfishness and injustice. Singular chances arise, and we construe these into visitations of Heaven, made directly on our behalf. The young man explained his circumstances; and the children of Dan said unto him: “Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous” ( Jdg 18:5 ). Here you have social injustice connected with the holiest names. It is sad to see how religion has been abused. It is mysterious, beyond all other mystery, to note how men, given up to injustice, usurpation, and plunder, must now and again be religious. Thieves go to church as well as honest men. Again and again it strikes the roughest mind and the most ill-treated conscience that another attempt at prayer may be an excellent investment. For irony, look to the history of the human conscience; read the history of the Christian Church. Men have thought they could build their way half up to heaven with stones taken by unjust hands out of the quarries of earth. Men “have stolen the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” Men, who would not for a moment deny God in words, have denied and rejected him in action. We should analyse our prayers, and cross-examine ourselves at the altar, and keep a strict watch upon ourselves at the holy board, even there the whole nature should undergo a species of vivisection, that out of its agony we may extort the truth.
The seventh verse presents a picture of the dangers of solitariness and self-security:
“Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people that were therein, how they dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure; and there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame in any thing; and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man.”
These circumstances have a wide application. They must not be limited by geographical lines, for they apply to the history of civilisation and to the position of every man in human society. There is a solitariness which means weakness; there is a “care lessness” which amounts to a temptation to those who behold it. Is this not so with regard to mind? Are there not persons who have intellectually no commerce with the world? they read no books, they hear no discourses, they listen not to the voice of education or of progress; they live retrospectively; they live upon themselves, and are in a sense suicides. This intellectual solitariness is often but another name for weakness. We should know all men, all nations, all languages; all civilisations should be familiar to us. Without such large commerce with the world we shall become little and less and less, day by day, falling swiftly backward to the vanishing point. We should travel more; otherwise we shall think that one country is the world, and be amused with a fool’s merriment when we hear of what is being done, in some distant kind of way, by nations which we are conceited enough to pronounce “foreign.” There should be no “foreign” nations now. Modern civilisation should have rendered that an impossibility. Every language should be a man’s mother-tongue in the ideal of it, in the innermost meaning of it; not that it is possible literally and mechanically, but perfectly possible sympathetically and philanthropically. It is sad to see people dwelling within their own little sect, wondering how other persons can have the “audacity” to differ from them forgetting that they themselves have the “audacity” to differ from other people. Why this fear of man? We should be familiar with the history of barbarism, so far as it may be said to have a history; or we should construct a history out of what we know concerning it, and out of the history extract a philosophy. This is the way to rebuke our own mind, to humble our own ambition, and to have our asperities struck off or smoothed down, by a large and continuous friction. So it should be in Christian culture. All Christian communions should intermingle. They would do one another good. They can never be constituted into one mechanical society, because of temperament, but they can realise a common brotherhood, because they may be stronger at the point of agreement than they are at the point of difference. What havoc the enemy makes upon solitary Christians! Sympathy is strength. Little trust is little support. No one Church can be the whole Church of the living God. But who does not like to live “quietly,” and “carelessly” that is, without care, not indifference at home, sitting, as we say, under his own vine and fig-tree? If there is a pitiable sight on the whole earth today, it is to see a man sitting under his own vine and fig-tree, when the rest of the world is in poverty, weakness, or necessity. Times there will be, sabbatic and sacred, when there will be sense of home, sense of security, sense of the blessedness of having a vine and fig-tree; but that should never be the dominating feeling in the Christian breast; the dominating feeling should rather be one of large-heartedness, spreading a table for every man, asking a blessing in every language, and preaching a gospel to every creature. This was Christ’s life; this was Christ’s philosophy; this was Christ’s practice. Let us be followers together of Christ, of God, “as dear children.”
The history having advanced so far, and the men of Dan having reported that they had found in certain houses “an ephod, and teraphim, and a graven image, and a molten image,” a singular transaction took place:
“And the five men that went to spy out the land went up, and came in thither, and took the graven image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image: and the priest stood in the entering of the gate with the six hundred men that were appointed with weapons of war” ( Jdg 18:17 ).
This was a capture of shrines and images. Rather than not have a god they thought it better to steal one; and having stolen the gods, of course they stole the priest. They put a case to him, saying: “Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be a priest unto the house of one man, or that thou be a priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel?” ( Jdg 18:19 ). It was an appeal to ambition. That was offering the man a “larger sphere of usefulness.” We have seen what his salary was in the house of Micah namely, twenty-five shillings a year, a suit of clothes, and his victuals. Now comes a “call of Providence.” Woe be unto us when we receive intimations of Providence through the lips of thieves! Distrust the devil even when he preaches a good doctrine; repel him even when he quotes Scripture by chapter and verse. What was the answer of the grandson of Moses? “And the priest’s heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people” ( Jdg 18:20 ). To trust a thievish priest one would say would be impossible. But such contradictions are repeated in human history. The children of Dan knew that all had been stolen, including the priest himself, and yet they had some kind of grim trust in all this wild arrangement. Truly, there was no king in Israel; truly, there was no God in Israel! We should simplify our relations to great central truths. We have managed, by some process not to be explained in words, to turn religion into a great complication, so that, not understanding it, we often pervert it. To what humiliation may the human intellect and conscience be reduced! To think that stolen images could do any good! On the other hand, to suppose that the gods stolen should consent to be the protecting divinities of thieves! Yet this is the danger of every day’s religious experience namely, the danger of a perverted conscience, an unbalanced judgment, a blurred confusion as to moral relations and obligations, so that having brought ourselves into intellectual and spiritual tumult, we justify our bad conduct by our bad metaphysics! Men may steal a god, but they cannot steal a character. They may take away a whole house of gods as Micah’s building was called and yet have no living temple, no inner sanctuary, in which to worship and to love.
Micah’s part in the matter is singularly illustrative of much that is taking place today. Micah having discovered the theft,
“overtook the children of Dan. And they cried unto the children of Dan. And they turned their faces, and said unto Micah, What aileth thee, that thou comest with such a company? And he said, Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and ye are gone away: and what have I more? and what is this that ye say unto me, What aileth thee?” ( Jdg 18:22-24 ).
The process of deprivation went on quickly. Having stolen a god, the thieves next stole a city; having corrupted a priest, they debased a memory; and they called the name of the stolen city Dan, “after the name of Dan their father.” So swiftly may men run on the smooth road to hell! Once get the hand well into wickedness, and the rest comes by daily custom and practice. We sanctify our bad deeds by attaching to some of them the names of illustrious ancestors. How deceitful is the heart and desperately wicked! What a mixture is life! what lines of various hue are shot through and through this fabric of being! Here are men stealing gods, and asking counsel of Heaven; stealing a priest and all the shrines they could lay hold of, and then justifying themselves thereby in taking a city; seizing a city occupied by inoffensive people, burning it, building another upon its ashes, and calling it by the name of a dead man. Who can analyse human life? Who can really take to pieces the mystery of human action? The whole history is not bad; certainly the whole history is not good. This, indeed, is the summary of life. Where is there a man speaking only now of the individual who is all bad? Surely there is not one; surely the drunkard sometimes pauses in his madness to think some good thought of the days of long ago when he tried to pray; surely even the thief does not take everything, and partly excuses himself for having taken something by saying that he has left something untaken; surely the liar sometimes strikes some note of truth; surely the unjust man has a sudden impulse upon him which leads him to do not only justly but generously. And where is the man who is all good, without stain or taint or flaw or drawback? Where? So, on the one hand, we have some reason for hope; on the other, much reason for humility and continual self-examination. But the time of judgment is not yet. God will judge us all, and he will find out the supreme motive of life, and by that he will determine everything. This is a gospel, and yet it is a judgment terrible to hear. Blessed be God, we stand in this conviction namely, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” God dwelleth in the humble heart and contrite spirit. God cannot be stolen, though his image and symbol may. Blessed are they who have passed beyond the letter into the meaning of the spirit of things, knowing somewhat of God’s own heart and entering sympathetically into God’s own purpose; then though the literal Bible be burned, revelation remains untouched; though the church built with hands “the sacrifice in stone” is demolished, the temple indestructible is in the heart; though forms and ceremonies are unremembered things, the soul goes up in continual aspiration, seeking the living God and desiring only to be found in the living Christ.
Selected Note
The worship in Micah’s house, in its object and intention, was the worship of Jehovah. Both mother and son did what they did “to the Lord.” Their “gods,” as they are called their “images,” “teraphim” were set up for the purpose of a service which was meant to honour” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”… They were significant emblems, something having a sacred meaning, which embodied religious ideas, and were to be used as a help in approaching God. They were visible types of spiritual things; material representations of what was unseen; vehicles, so to speak, by which the mind could be aided in rising upwards towards heaven, and through which divine virtue could flow down to man upon earth. It was the same with Aaron’s golden calf and the calves set up by Jeroboam. In each case the professed object of the service was Jehovah. The visible things were not to be worshipped; God was to be worshipped through them. “But the thing that was done displeased the Lord.” All such unauthorised attempts to aid devotion through “the likeness of anything in the heaven above or in the earth beneath” were rejected and stigmatised as sinful. Whenever employed, they “became a snare,” and “caused Israel to sin.”
Micah was, in his way, very religious. He was not pre-eminently honest; he had but a slight sense of relative duty, and cannot be supposed to have known much of personal moral culture. It is possible, indeed, that he stole his mother’s property with the pious intention of making it into images for “the honour of God.” His religion consisted in a blind and superstitious veneration for the outward and visible in divine worship, and in depending for spiritual grace (if ever he thought of that) on ceremony and ritual. Hence his anxiety to have “a father and a priest,” that the priest should be consecrated, that he should minister in the proper sacerdotal robe, and especially that he should be of the sacred tribe, and belong to the legitimate Levitical succession. His highest expectations were founded on this; not on character, either in the Levite or himself; not on intelligence and capacity to edify and instruct; simply on the fact that “he had a Levite for his priest.”
Thomas Binney.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XXI
MICAH AND THE DANITES, OUTRAGE OF THE MEN OF GIBEAH, AND THE NATIONAL WAR AGAINST BENJAMIN
Judges 17-21
What can you say of this whole section?
Ans. (1) It, like the book of Ruth, is an appendix to the book of Judges without regard to time order as to preceding events.
(2) While there are four distinct episodes, namely (a) the case of Micah, (b) the Danite migration, (c) the outrage at Gibeah, (d) the war of the other tribes against Benjamin, yet they go in pairs; the story of Micah is merged into the Danite migration and the outrage of Gibeah results in the war against Benjamin.
2. Show how one expression characterizes all four of the episodes and would serve for a text illustrated by each of the four stories in historical order.
Ans. The text is, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” First episode, Jdg 17:6 ; second episode, Jdg 18:1 ; third episode, Jdg 19:1 ; fourth episode, Jdg 21:25 .
3. What the bearing of this text on a late date of the composition of the book?
Ans. If the reference be to an earthly king, as usually supposed, it would only indicate that the book was compiled from tribal and national documents and edited by Samuel after the establishment of the monarchy, which theory is supported by many identical passages in parts of Joshua, Judges, and I Samuel. But if the reference be to Jehovah as King, then it proves nothing as to later authorship.
4. What the probability of its reference to Jehovah as King?
Ans. (1) The whole book is written to show a series of rejections of the theocracy that they might follow their own bent, some one way and some another (Jdg 2:11 ).
(2) Every one of the four instances of its use is introduced in a connection to emphasize a forsaking of Jehovah as a King, plainly marking insubordination against his royal authority. Its first use immediately follows and expounds Micah’s establishing an independent “house of gods” with an independent ephod and images and priesthood, Jdg 17:5-6 . Its second use introduces the rebellion of Dan in leaving the lot assigned to him by Jehovah and setting up at Laish a rival house of worship with images and independent priesthood, Jdg 18:1 . Its third use introduces a story of wickedness against Jehovah equaling the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, Jdg 19:1 ; Jdg 19:22-26 . Its fourth use does not occur in Jdg 20:1-18 , Judges 26-28, where the people seek Jehovah for counsel, but is reserved as a comment on the irreligious dancing of Shiloh’s daughters and the crafty expedient of supplying wives to the male remnants of Benjamin without appeal to Jehovah Jdg 21:16-25 .
(3) This series of the rejections of Jehovah as King culminated in demanding an earthly king, 1Sa 8:1-7 .
(4) When they did get an earthly king there was no tendency to check them in doing what was right in their own eyes, instead of in Jehovah’s eyes, but only increased it. See case of Solomon, 1Ki 11:1-4 ; Jeroboam, 1Ki 12:26-33 ; Ahab, 1Ki 16:30-34 , and many others. Hence there would be no relevancy in saying, “every man did that which was right in his own sight,” because there was no earthly king in Israel. The “doing what was right in his own sight” does not apply to everything but is limited in its four contextual uses to sins of rebellion against Jehovah’s kingly authority, and what earthly kings promoted rather than checked.
5. But is not late authorship clearly established by the declaration that Dan’s rival house of worship was continued by Jonathan and his sons as priests “until the day of the captivity of the land”?
Ans. It entirely depends upon what captivity is meant. It could not mean the Babylonian captivity of Judah, for long before that event the ten tribes, including Dan, had been led into captivity so perpetual they are called the lost tribes. It could not mean the captivity of the ten tribes by Sennacherib, for long before that event Jeroboam, the founder of the northern kingdom, had established at Dan a different worship. It could not have persisted during the times of David and Solomon when all recognized the central place of worship at Jerusalem. It could not have referred to any date beyond the period of the judges, because the duration of this rival Danite worship is limited in the very verse following the time the house of God was at Shiloh, Jdg 18:31 . So that “the captivity” referred to must have been the Philistian captivity in the days of Elithe judge, when the ark was captured, 1Sa 4:3-18 , and quite to the point the Hebrew text of 1Sa 4:21-22 , replaces the phrase “captivity of the land” by “captivity of the glory of the Lord.”
6. What the first episode?
Ans. The sin of Micah in establishing in his family a “house of gods,” with image worship and an independent priesthood.
7. State the case in detail to show Jehovah was not recognized as King in Israel.
Ans. (1) A son stole 1,100 shekels of silver from his mother, violating Jehovah’s Fifth and Eighth Commandments, afterwards confessing and restoring.
(2) The mother (a) usurped Jehovah’s prerogative in cursing the unknown thief; (b) she either lied in saying she had “wholly dedicated it to Jehovah” or) like Ananias and Sapphira, robbed God in keeping back more than four-fifths; (c) she violated the Second Commandment in making images for worship; (d) the son established in his family a rival house to Shiloh; (e) he first violated the law of the priesthood by setting apart his own sons as priests; (f) he substituted a stray Levite, out of a job, and not of the house of Aaron.
8. What the second episode?
Ana. The Danites, through cowardice failing to capture from strong enemies the land allotted them by Jehovah, sent out spies to find good land where the inhabitants were weak and peaceful. The spies on their way discover Micah’s private “house of God” and inquire of its false priest rather than of Jehovah at Shiloh, whether they will prosper in their intent. The subservient priest assures them it will come out all right. They come to a part of the territory allotted to another tribe and find a quiet, unwarlike community remote from the capital and power of their nation. The spies return with a glowing report of the good land, the helplessness of the inhabitants, and the little prospect of interference from their nation. An army is dispatched forthwith, which on the way over bids Micah for his recreant priest who, preferring to represent a tribe rather than a family, not only breaks his contract by slipping away, but helps to steal all Micah’s gods and paraphernalia of worship. Then the bereft Micah follows with his piteous remonstrance: “Ye have taken away my gods which I have made, and the priest, and gone away, and what have I more! And then mock me by saying, What aileth thee?” The grim response of the Danites reminds me of the ungrateful wolf’s reply to the crane in Aesop’s fable: “Count it reward enough that you have safely withdrawn your neck from a wolf’s throat.” So Micah returned empty-handed to reflect on the rewards of hospitality, the sanctity of contracts, the wisdom of investing good shekels in the manufacture of gods, and the ingratitude of God’s people in forsaking their Maker. But the imperturbable Danites, like Gallio, caring for none of these things, went marching on, and like a stealthy band of Comanches, swooped down upon the unsuspecting community, blotted it off the map and set up their rival to the house of God in Shiloh and went into tribal idolatry.
9. How does the incident prove ancestor Jacob a prophet?
Ans. “Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse’s heels so that his rider falleth backward.”
10. Wherein did the Mormons show their appreciation of the prophecy and its fulfilment?
Ans. By naming their terrible secret organization which perpetrated the Mountain Meadows Massacre, “the Danites.”
11. Who was this shabby, subservient Levite and how did later Jews seek to hide his identity?
Ans. His name was Jonathan, a grandson of Moses. See Standard Revision of Jdg 18:30 , and compare with common version “Manasseh” instead of Moses. The Jews in the Targum and Septuagint changed Moses to Manasseh, unwilling to tarnish the name of the great ancestor. But Manasseh had no son named Gershom while Moses did, as the genealogies show. It is not unusual for even sons of great men, much less grandsons, to degenerate and “peter out.”
12. What prophecy of Moses is also fulfilled in the incident ?
Ans. “And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion’s whelp, that leapeth forth from Bashan.” And it was from the mountains of Bashan that this “cub lion” leaped upon the hapless village of Laish in the valley below.
13. Why is the tribe of Dan omitted in the catalogue of tribes in Rev 7:4-8 ?
Ans. Probably because Dan migrated to Laish and there set up a rival worship.
13a. What event introduces the episode of the Benjaminites?
Ans. The horrible outrage perpetrated by the men of Gibeah, a city of Benjamin, Jdg 19 .
14. What do you gather from the first of this story?
Ans. (1) That the relation between a man and his concubine was a legal one counted here as marriage.
(2) It was the woman who sinned and the man who forgave.
(3) The instant reconciliation when he went after her and the insistent hospitality and welcome of the father-in-law.
(4) The Levite’s loyalty to Israel in refusing to lodge in the city of the Jebusites when by a little more travel he could reach a city of his own nation.
(5) The inhospitality of the men of Gibeah who would have suffered one of their nation to remain in the street all night, contrasted with the generous welcome to strangers extended by the sojourning Ephraimite.
15. What the moral condition of the city as disclosed by the horrible outrage?
Ans. It was as Sodom in the days of Lot. Compare Gen 19:1-11 , with Jdg 19:22-27 .
16. The Common Version and the Vulgate (Latin) make a certain Hebrew word of Jdg 19:22 , and other Old Testament passages, a proper name, as, “certain sons of Belial,” which the Canterbury Revision renders “certain base fellows” which is right?
Ans. The author is much inclined to favor the Common Version here and in 1Sa 2:12 . It is true that the Hebrew word etymologically means “base, reckless, lawless.” And it is also true that the Hebrew idiom “son of,” “daughter of,” “man of” does not imply a person when associated with “Belial.” Yet the atrocious and unnatural crime against Jehovah here and in some other cases implies a devilish origin. Particularly is this true when associated with idolatrous worship. It is certainly so interpreted in the New Testament, 1Co 10:27 ; 1Co 10:20-22 , and 2Co 6:15-18 . It was on account of these awful associations, being a part and practice of the religious worship of the Canaanite gods, as later of Greek and Roman gods, that idolatry was made a capital offense under the theocracy. When Milton, therefore, in Paradise Lost, makes Belial a person, a demon, it is not a case of poetic personification, but is the expression of a profound philosophical truth as well as scriptural truth in both Testaments. The ghastly, beastly, obscene, and loathsome debaucheries of heathen worship would never have been counted religion except under the promptings of the devil.
17. What steps did the wronged and horrified Levite take to make this local crime a national affair?
Ans. He divided the murdered woman’s body into twelve parts and sent one part to each tribe with the story of the wrong.
18. What impression was made by this horrible method of accusation?
Ans. “And it was so that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day. Consider it, take counsel and speak,” Jdg 19:30 .
19. Was he justified in making it a national affair?
Ans. Yes, otherwise the whole nation would have perished. Compare the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Compare the solemn declarations of Jehovah that on account of such abominations the measure of the iniquity of the Canaanites was so full that that very “land was ready to spew them out of its mouth.” Read carefully the solemn charge to the nation in Deu 13:12-18 , and the awful judgment of God on Eli because he merely admonished but did not restrain his sons for so corrupting Jehovah’s worship, 1Sa 2:12 ; 1Sa 2:17 ; 1Sa 2:22-25 ; 1Sa 3:11-14 .
20. What the result of the Levite’s ghastly method of accusation?
Ans. The whole nation was at once aroused. The public conscience was quickened and they assembled before the Lord at Mizpah to learn and do his will, and they strictly followed the direction of his oracle. Four hundred thousand warriors assembled as executors of God’s judgment.
21. Show how this was no mob action stirred by an impulse of sudden passion.
Ans. (1) They assembled under all the forms of law.
(2) They carefully examined the simple testimony of the Levite (Jdg 20:4-9 ), its very simplicity constituting its power.
(3) They deliberated gravely.
(4) They submitted every step proposed to God’s oracle.
(5) They sent messengers through all the tribe of Benjamin, giving notification of the crime, and giving opportunity for the tribe to clear itself by surrendering the criminals to justice according to the law of Jehovah.
22. What awful comment on the moral condition of Benjamin?
Ans. The whole tribe deliberately sided with the adulterous murderers and determined to protect them.
23. How was Israel taught the awful solemnity of acting as executors of Jehovah’s will?
Ans. They were humiliated by two disastrous defeats, losing 40,000 men in two battles, 14,000 more than Benjamin’s whole army. After each defeat they carried the case again to the Lord, with fastings, weeping, and sacrifices, which indicated their consciousness of their own sins.
24. What the result of the third battle?
Ans. The tribe of Benjamin was almost blotted out. They were surrounded, driven hither and thither with relentless pursuit and desperate battle. First 18,000, then 5,000, then 2,000, i.e., 25,000 out of Benjamin’s veterans perished on the battlefield and still Israel pursued, devoting to sweeping destruction city after city, men, women, children and cattle, until only 600 fugitives remained, who sheltered in the rocks of the wilderness four months.
25. What evidence that Israel fought not with malice against Benjamin?
Ans. (1) Their weeping cry before Jehovah: “Shall I go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin, my brother?” (2) After the victory they come again before the Lord in tears: “O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass that there should be today one tribe lacking in Israel?” (Jdg 21:3 ). There is no exultation. They mourn more over fallen Benjamin than over the thousands of their own dead. As this was a national assembly to accomplish a purgation by which alone the nation could be saved, what oaths had been sworn before Jehovah?
Ans. (1) That no man of the eleven tribes should give his daughter as a wife to a man of Benjamin.
(2) That whosoever would not come up before the Lord in the crusade for national salvation should be put to death.
27. What was their dilemma in view of the first oath and how were they preserved from it by the second oath?
Ans. By the first oath the 600 fugitives were barred from marriage and the tribe would have utterly perished, but by investigation they found that the city of Jabesh-Gilead had refused to obey the national oath and in virtue of the second oath was doomed. A detachment of 12,000 men smote it to destruction, reserving 400 virgins to be the wives of the two-thirds of the 600.
28. What expedient was adopted to provide wives for the remaining two hundred?
Ans. In Jdg 21:19-23 , the expedient is set forth by which, without technical violation of the oath, the 200 managed, at the suggestion of the elders, to capture a wife apiece from the dancing daughters of Shiloh.
29. What legend of early Rome is something similar?
Ans. The Romans captured the Sabine women at a festival. See Roman History , by Myers, pp. 58-59.
30. How is it alluded to in Scott’s lvanhoe?
Ans. DeBracy plots to carry off Rowena. Fitzurse said, “What on earth dost thou purpose by this absurd disguise at a moment so urgent?”
DeBracy replied: “To get me a wife after the manner of the tribe of Benjamin.”
31. Why is one left-handed called a Benjaminite?
Ans. Because the men of the tribe of Benjamin were left-handed.
32. What prophecy by Jacob fits the Benjaminites of this story?
Ans. “Benjamin is wolf that raveneth: In the morning he shall devour the prey. And at even he shall divide the spoil.” Gen 49:27 .
33. Who was the high priest through whom Jehovah makes known his will in the story of Benjamin, and what proof does the fact afford that the two stories of Dan and Benjamin occurred in the early period of the judges?
Ans. Phinehas was high priest (Jdg 20:28 ) who is referred to in Num 25:7 and Jos 22:13 ; Jos 22:30 . These last passages refer to an early period of the judges.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Jdg 18:1 In those days [there was] no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day [all their] inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.
Ver. 1. There was no king. ] See Jdg 17:6 .
All their inheritance had not fallen unto them.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
those days. Numbers 17 and Numbers 21, thought by some to record earlier events in the days of Othniel by Figure of speech Hysteresis (App-6). See note on Jdg 17:1, and Structure.
no king. No true “house of God” religiously (Jdg 17:5), leads to “no king” nationally (Jdg 18:1); and nationally to apostasy. See note on Jdg 18:6, above.
Danites. See note on Gen 49:17.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 18
Now that is setting the stage for the rest of this story. You got now this Levite, young kid from Bethlehem as a professional religious priest, personal priest of Micah in his house.
Now, in those days there was no king in Israel: and the tribe of the Danites sought an inheritance to dwell in ( Jdg 18:1 );
For they were unable to drive the Philistines out of that territory of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza and that beautiful valley area. And they were only, at this point, occupied a small little territory, oh, twenty miles from Jerusalem, fifteen miles from Jerusalem towards Tel Aviv, the little valley of Eshcol. But this whole territory was still occupied by the Philistines and they couldn’t drive them out and so they were beginning to look for another place to live. And so they sent out six men to sort of look out over the whole country to see if there isn’t another place that they might move that the tribe of Dan might inhabit in order that they can have more territory for farming and all because that area that they had taken just wasn’t sufficient for their needs.
And so these men started north and they came to Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and they stayed there. And when they were by thou house of Micah, they knew the voice of the young man the Levite: and so they turned in, they said unto him, What brought you here? And how much are you making in this place? And what are you doing? And he said unto them, Well, I came to Micah, and he needed a priest, so he hired me [and he gives me ten shekels of silver a year, a new suit, all my food], and I’m his priest. And they said, Well ask counsel of God, for us, that we might know whether we’re gonna be prosperous in our search. And so the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the LORD is our way wherein you go ( Jdg 18:2-6 ).
In other words, go in peace God is going before you and He’s gonna prosper you in your way.
So the five men departed, and they came to Laish, and they saw the people that were there, how they dwelt carelessly, after the manner of the Zidonians, they were quiet and they were secure; and there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame for any thing; and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man ( Jdg 18:7 ).
So they found the city of people there in Laish and the people were just really living very carelessly. They didn’t have business or trade with anybody else. They were a long way from Zidon, actually, they were clear over the Lebanese mountain range from Zidon and they were isolated and really they looked to be an easy prey.
Now they dwelt in a beautiful section of land. Right past the city there flowed the Jordan River and it was near the headwaters of Jordan. So there was no water pollution, the water was clear; it’s great and there’s good farming territory around there and it’s just a beautiful valley, fertile valley.
And they said, “Wow, look at this, you know, be nice to live up here.” So they came back to their tribe and they described the place that they had found; it’s beauty and its advantages. Ah, there’s plenty of water, good area to live and all and it’s beautiful, and it really is. It’s one of the most beautiful places in Israel.
And so they sent back an army of six hundred men in order to take this city. And so when they came back to the mount of Ephraim, they came back again to this priest. And these fellows went in and they said, “Hey fellow, look we need a priest, our tribe. Wouldn’t it be better for you to be a priest over a whole tribe than a priest in just one family? We’d give you a better salary.”
So the young man went with them but he ripped off the little idols and all that were there and took them with him. And so when Micah came home he found that the idols had been ripped off, the priest was gone, and so some of his neighbors gathered together and they were having big conflict and said, “Well they went that direction.” And so Micah went chasing after them. And these guys are six hundred tough guys heading off for war.
And Micah came up, said, “Hey, what’s the big idea ripping me off, taking away my priest and taking away my silver idols?” and so forth and he was really laying it on them.
And they said, “Hey man, looking for trouble? You might as well, you better go home, there’s no sense getting hurt.” And so he looked around and saw all these guys with their swords and everything else and so he decided to go home. Wisdom the better part of valor.
And so they went up with this young man and they came to Laish and they captured it. They destroyed the inhabitants and the tribe of Dan, a good portion of them, moved on up and inhabited the upper part of this Hula Valley where the headwaters of the Jordan River come out from Mount Hermon. And thus, that became the territory of the tribe of Dan and the city was called Dan, and the river itself was named Jordan or “out of Dan,” because there is the headwaters of the Jordan River and it comes out of Dan. And so that river became named Jordan, “out of Dan.”
So that is just one of the little stories that is told here. And the second story that gives us an insight to the confusion that existed, both civil and religious, during this particular time has to do with a story of a man who was a Levite. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
The account of the backsliding of individuals is followed by an illustration of its widespread existence among the people. While seeking new territory the Danites found Micah and the condition of things established in his house.
When presently they moved forward to success, they did not hesitate to size Micah’s images and capture his priest. The terrible decadence of the religious ideal is startlingly revealed in this whole story.
Deeply embedded in the character of the people was the consciousness of the importance of religion. Micah must worship and the Danites felt the necessity of their enterprise for maintaining some kind of relationship with God. Yet in each case there was the most violent prostitution of religion to purposes of personal prosperity.
Micah hoped by the maintenance of some form of worship and the presence of a Levite that Jehovah would be his God, by which he evidently meant that material prosperity would come to him. The Danites, searching for new territory, were anxious to maintain religion.
Wherever religion is acknowledged and adopted merely in order to ensure material prosperity, it suffers degradation. In these stories we have a revelation of the beginnings of those terrible conditions which eventually issued in the ruin of the people.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 18 The Danite Idolatry
1. The Danites seek an inheritance (Jdg 18:1-12)
2. Their robbery (Jdg 18:13-26)
3. Laish taken and idolatry consummated (Jdg 18:27-31)
The history of this chapter is closely linked with the preceding. The tribe of Dan had failed to take the God-given inheritance (Jos 19:40-46). The Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountain: for they would not suffer them to come down to the valley (Jdg 1:34). Then in self-will, entirely disregarding the will of God, they sent out spies to seek another inheritance. They meet Micahs priest, the hireling. Micahs idolatrous outfit including the hired priest are taken by the invaders. The hireling sees an advantage for himself, his usefulness is enlarged for filthy lucres sake. Then they killed the people of Laish and set their city on fire. The whole tribe of Dan becomes idolatrous. We have in all a picture of complete apostasy.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Now know I
A striking illustration of all apostasy. With his entire departure from the revealed will of God concerning worship and priesthood, there is yet an exaltation of false priesthood. Saying, “Blessed be thou of Jehovah,” Micah’s mother makes an idol; and Micah expects the blessing of Jehovah because he has linked his idolatry to the ancient levitical order.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
no king: The word mailech, which generally means a king, is sometimes taken for a supreme ruler, governor, or judge – see note on Gen 36:31, and see note on Deu 33:5, and it is probable it should be so understood here, and in the parallel passages. Jdg 17:6, Jdg 19:1, Jdg 21:25
the tribe: Jos 19:40-48
for unto: Jdg 1:34
Reciprocal: Gen 49:16 – General Jos 19:47 – the coast Jdg 18:28 – far from Mar 14:26 – hymn
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
At the last census, Dan had numbered 64,400 males of 20 years old upward and the land alotted to them would have been sufficient had the Amorites not forced them into the mountains (see Num 26:42-43 and Jdg 1:34 ). The men of Dan decided they did not have enough land to pass from father to son for an inheritance. So, they sent five men to spy out a land they could occupy.
They spent the night with Micah and heard an accent obviously not from that region. They asked the Levite how he came to be in the house of Micah and he told them he was serving as his priest. When they asked him to inquire of God as to their efforts, he said God knew of their plans and approved. They then went to Laish, which is called Leshem in Jos 19:47 , and found the people living by trade and commerce like the Sidonians with no one ruling over them and far away from their people ( Jdg 18:1-7 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Jdg 18:1. In those days there was no king in Israel These words seem to be repeated in order to assign the reason of such enormous practices as are recorded in this and the preceding chapter. They appear to have taken place not long after Joshuas death, probably between his death and that of the elders who survived him, and the time of Othniel, who was the first judge raised up for them by God. The tribe of the Danites A part of that tribe, consisting only of six hundred men of war, with their families, Jdg 18:21. Sought them an inheritance An inheritance had been allotted them as well as the rest of the tribes, (Jos 19:40, &c.,) but partly by their indolence, and partly for want of that brotherly assistance which ought to have been afforded them by other tribes, a considerable portion of this inheritance could not be acquired by them. Wanting room, therefore, for all their people and cattle, and being unable to contend with the Amorites, they sent some, as it here follows, to search out a new dwelling elsewhere.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jdg 18:1. Inheritance had not fallen to them. Dan had the seventh lot, but not enough for all his families.
Jdg 18:5. Ask counsel of God. Here was another total breach, both with Gods sanctuary and with the highpriest, whose right it was to consult the oracle. We marvel that Micah, cursed by his mother for sacrilege, should by some be washed white, and made a pure worshipper of the true God!
Jdg 18:6. Go in peace. The young levite either gave this answer, or the devil spake through the idol, as Menochius observes. Though the name of Jehovah be used here, he could give an oracle against a Sidonian colony which was not of the seven nations, to surprise and exterminate an unoffending people against the Hebrews. If the Lord, the high and holy One, had given an oracle at all, it had not been to rob Micah, and set up the calf in Dan.
Jdg 18:7. Laish, called Leshem. Jos 19:47. They afterwards called it Dan, after the name of their father. It was pleasantly situate at the foot of mount Lebanon, and near the springs which form the little Dan or weaker arm of the Jordan. Jeroboam afterwards built a temple in Dan for the golden calf, for Dan was a friendly soil for the growth of idolatry. This city was in the northern extremity of the promised land, as Beersheba was in the south. The inhabitants lived at ease, in luxury, idleness, and vice. They had no king, and refused all restraints from the civil power. But though they lived like the Zidonians; yet as they had no allies, it is supposed they were a branch of the seven devoted nations.
Jdg 18:17. Graven image, ephod, teraphim, in the plural number, molten image. This verse illustrates what is said above, that Micah had a house or temple of gods, which identifies him with idolaters. Laish, now Dan, being in the extremity of the land, it was not easy either for David or Solomon to put these idols down.
Jdg 18:30. Jonathan the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh. The Vulgate reads, the son of Moses. The apology for this variation is, that a letter is wanting in many Hebrew manuscripts. This family, it appears, kept their places as priests in the idol temple of Dan, until the day of the captivity of the land. Others read, as cited by Du Pin: until the day of their transmigration, after the ark was removed from Shiloh. It is evident enough, from Jdg 1:21, that the Benjamites could not drive out the Jebusites, which dwelt in Jerusalem. The book of Judges was therefore written before David took the fortress of Jebus, to which he gave the name of Zion.
What then is meant by the captivity of the land? Not the partial advantages of Philistia, west of the Jordan, nor the captivity of the remains of the ten tribes by Salmaneser; but the final captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. Now when Ezra and others transcribed the sacred books, it is probable, if they did not find the frequent phrase until this day, that merely for the sake of illustration, they transcribed into the text what at first had stood as a marginal note.
REFLECTIONS.
Much of Dans lot, through inaction and want of spirit, remained occupied by the Philistines; and being deficient of inheritance they sent out an armed colony towards Assyria. Before they left home they were prudent enough to send five men to explore a situation; and the inhabitants of Laish little thought, on seeing those men, that they were the harbingers of destruction. So it sometimes happens that vengeance bursts in a moment on those who are secure and rioting in sin.
Micah was the first to have his hopes blasted by this expedition. Happy if he had abode in the good old way, conformably to the covenant so often renewed. He discovered a sordid soul, and served God for the good things of this life; but the Lord, indignant at so mean a motive, requited him with shame and loss. Mark how the Danites deride his cries: What aileth thee, what aileth thee? Have thy gods forsaken thy temple? Were they so blind as not to apprize thee of danger: and so weak as not to protect thee when it came? So shall every man be derided who makes an idol of his gold, or places his hopes in an arm of flesh.
But the character of this young levite is most to be abhorred. He wandered in poverty to seek his bread; and had most need to adhere to his fathers God, that he might enjoy the supports of piety. When Micah made the daring overture to this stranger, instead of advocating the cause of true religion, he had the art to combine his interest with his profession, an art worthy of execration. This man, having once betrayed his conscience and his God, betrayed next his generous benefactor. The moment a proposal of preferment offered, he joined himself to the emigrants, and became a principal in the plot for the robbery of Micah. How detestable is the ministerial character when destitute of all those virtues which constitute its real glory, and command the veneration of men. If he preach against vice, the wicked will soon say, hold thy peace, and go with us. But did the levite prosper in his treason? Did the Danites keep faith with a man who had kept no faith with heaven? No: they placed Jonathan in the new pontificate, and degraded this man to humble servitude. When was any man happy, faithless to his God, and apostate from his profession.
Mark also the dreadful contagion of apostasy and vice. An old woman, affected probably with some roots of Egyptian superstition, hoarded up money for an ephod, a teraphim, and a couple of idols. She corrupted her son, and her neighbours. The Danites also who robbed this temple became corrupted with the sacrilege to future ages, and involved themselves in greater punishments than Micahs loss. How zealous then should magistrates and ministers be for the suppression of vice, and the preservation of religion. By the vigorous suppression of a single vice in the bud, they may prevent calamities for ages to come.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Judges 17-18. This section is the first of two supplements. It explains the origin of the famous shrine at Dan, and the navet of its moral and religious ideas proves how ancient it is. In not a few places the text has evidently been tampered with by scribes, who took offence at practices which were from a later point of view irregular. The events in question must have occurred before the time of Deborah (Jdg 5:17).
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
18:1 In those days [there was] no {a} king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day [all their] inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.
(a) Meaning, no ordinary magistrate to punish vice according to God’s word.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. The apostasy of the Danites ch. 18
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The messengers from Dan 18:1-6
This chapter begins with another reference to the fact that there was no king in Israel then (cf. Jdg 17:6). The writer reminded us again that the Israelites were living unrestrained lives. Abundant evidence of this follows in chapter 18.
"The nation needs no king to lead them in battle or into apostasy. They will do both on their own." [Note: Block, Judges . . ., p. 491.]
In Jdg 18:1 the NASB and NIV translators have implied that the following incident happened before the Danites had received their tribal inheritance (Jos 19:40-48). If true, this statement would date the incident that follows during the days of Joshua. The AV and NKJV versions imply that the Danites had not yet subdued and fully occupied their allotted tribal territory. In this case the incident probably happened after Joshua’s death. The Hebrew text reads literally, "there had not fallen to them by that day in the midst of the tribes of Israel an inheritance." Many of the commentators prefer the second view. [Note: E.g., Bush, p. 223; Cundall and Morris, p. 187; Wood, Distressing Days . . ., p. 148; Keil and Delitzsch, p. 434; Inrig, pp. 277-78; and Block, Judges . . ., pp. 493-94.] In either case the incident shows the Danites’ dissatisfaction with their condition. They either did not wait for God to give them what He had promised (cf. Jos 13:1-7), or they were unwilling to fight the Amorites so they could inhabit it (cf. Jdg 1:34). They felt that they did not have an adequate inheritance. They then sent a group of five men to investigate the possibilities of other land that might be available to them in other parts of Canaan.
"They clearly felt that the boundary lines had not fallen for them ’in pleasant places’ (Psa 16:6). Their desire to move revealed a lack of faith in the Lord who had allotted to them their original territory." [Note: Wolf, p. 483.]
The center of Danite activity was then between Zorah and Eshtaol, the area where Samson grew up. However, this incident seems to have antedated Samson’s judgeship. Previously Moses, and later Joshua, had sent spies before them (Numbers 13; Joshua 2). There are many parallels between chapter 18 and Num 12:16 to Num 14:45 and Deu 1:19-46 [Note: See A. Malamat, "The Danite Migration and the Pan-Israelite Exodus-Conquest: A Biblical Narrative Pattern," Biblica 51 (1970):1-16; and O’Connell, pp. 235-38.] There is no reference to God’s leading the Danites to send spies, however. In view of what follows, this decision seems to have lacked divine initiative or permission.
When these representatives happened to come to Micah’s house, they recognized the distinctive voice of his Levite (Jdg 18:3). After learning what he was doing there, the Danites explained their mission and asked the Levite to inquire from Yahweh whether their journey would be successful (Jdg 18:5). The tabernacle was just a few miles from Micah’s house, and the Danites should have gone there if they wanted to know God’s will. The Levite, perhaps using Micah’s ephod, announced God’s approval of their mission (Jdg 18:6). In view of his own relationship to God it is doubtful that he really received an answer from Yahweh. Moreover, in view of what the soldiers proceeded to do, their plan was definitely not in harmony with God’s will.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE STOLEN GODS
Jdg 17:1-13, Jdg 18:1-31
THE portion of the Book of Judges which begins with the seventeenth chapter and extends to the close is not in immediate connection with that which has gone before. We read {Jdg 18:30} that “Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.” But the proper reading is, “Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses.” It would seem that the renegade Levite of the narrative was a near descendant of the great lawgiver. So rapidly did the zeal of the priestly house decline that in the third or fourth generation after Moses one of his own line became minister of an idol temple for the sake of a living. It is evident, then, that in the opening of the seventeenth chapter, we are carried back to the time immediately following the conquest of Canaan by Joshua, when Othniel was settling in the south and the tribes were endeavouring to establish themselves in the districts allotted to them. The note of time is of course far from precise, but the incidents are certainly to be placed early in the period.
We are introduced first to a family living in Mount Ephraim consisting of a widow and: her son Micah, who is married and has sons of his own. It appears that on the death of the father of Micah a sum of eleven hundred shekels of silver, about a hundred and twenty pounds of our money-a large amount for the time-was missed by the widow, who after vain search for it spoke in strong terms about the matter to her son. He had taken the money to use in stocking his farm or in trade and at once acknowledged that he had done so and restored it to his mother, who hastened to undo any evil her words had caused by invoking upon him the blessing of God. Further she dedicated two hundred of her shekels to make graven and molten images in token of piety and gratitude.
We have here a very significant revelation of the state of religion. The indignation of Moses had burned against the people when at Sinai they made a rude image of gold, sacrificed to it and danced about it in heathen revel. We are reading of what took place say a century after that scene at the foot of Sinai, and already those who desire to show their devotion to the Eternal, very imperfectly known as Jehovah, make teraphim and molten images to represent Him. Micah has a sort of private chapel or temple among the buildings in his courtyard: He consecrates one of his sons to be priest of this little sanctuary. And the historian adds in explanation of this, as one keenly aware of the benefits of good government under a God-fearing monarch-“in those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
We need not take for granted that the worship in this hill chapel was of the heathen sort. There was probably no Baal, no Astarte among the images; or, if there was, it may have been merely as representing a Syrian power prudently recognised but not adored. No hint occurs in the whole story of a licentious or a cruel cult, although there must have been something dangerously like the superstitious practices of Canaan. Micahs chapel, whatever the observances were, gave direct introduction to the pagan forms and notions which prevailed among the people of the land. There already Jehovah was degraded to the rank of a nature divinity, and represented by figures.`
In one of the highland valleys towards the north of Ephraims territory Micah had his castle and his ecclesiastical establishment-state and church in germ. The Israelites of the neighbourhood, who looked up to the well to do farmer for protection, regarded him all the more that he showed respect for religion, that he had this house of gods and a private priest. They came to worship in his sanctuary and to inquire of the ecclesiastic, who in some way endeavoured to discover the will of God by means of the teraphim and ephod. The ark of the covenant was not far away, for Bethel and Gilgal were both within a days journey. But the people did not care to be at the trouble of going so far. They liked better their own local shrine and its homelier ways; and when at length Micah secured the services of a Levite the worship seemed to have all the sanction that could possibly be desired.
It need hardly be said that God is not confined to a locality, that in those days as in our own the true worshipper could find the Almighty on any hill top, in any dwelling or private place, as well as at the accredited shrine. It is quite true, also, that God makes large allowance for the ignorance of men and their need of visible signs and symbols of what is unseen and eternal. We must not therefore assume at once that in Micahs house of idols, before the widows graven and molten figures, there could be no acceptable worship, no prayers that reached the ear of the Lord of Hosts. And one might even go the length of saying that, perhaps, in this schismatic sanctuary, this chapel of images, devotion could be quite as sincere as before the ark itself. Little good came of the religious ordinances maintained there during the whole period of the judges, and even in Elis latter days the vileness and covetousness practised at Shiloh more than countervailed any pious influence. Local and family altars therefore must have been of real use. But this was the danger, that leaving the appointed centre of Jehovah worship, where symbolism was confined within safe limits, the people should in ignorant piety multiply objects of adoration and run into polytheism. Hence the importance of the decree, afterwards recognised, that one place of sacrifice should gather to it all the tribes and that there the ark of the covenant with its altar should alone speak of the will and holiness of God. And the story of the Danite migration connected with this of Micah and his Levite well illustrates the wisdom of such a law, for it shows how, in the far north, a sanctuary and a worship were set up which, existing long for tribal devotion, became a national centre of impure worship.
The wandering Levite from Bethlehem-Judah is one, we must believe, of many Levites, who having found no inheritance because the cities allotted to them were as yet unconquered spread themselves over the land seeking a livelihood, ready to fall in with any local customs of religion that offered them position and employment. The Levites were esteemed as men acquainted with the way of Jehovah, able to maintain that communication with Him without which no business could be hopefully undertaken. Something of the dignity that was attached to the names of Moses and Aaron ensured them honourable treatment everywhere unless among the lowest of the people; and when this Levite reached the dwelling of Micah beside which there seems to have been a khan or lodging place for travellers, the chance of securing him was at once seized. For ten pieces of silver, say twenty-five shillings a year, with a suit of clothes and his food, he agreed to become Micahs private chaplain. At this very cheap rate the whole household expected a time of prosperity and divine favour. “Now know I,” said the head of the family, “that the Lord will do me good seeing I have a Levite to my priest,” We must fear that, he took some advantage of the mans need, that he did not much consider the honour of Jehovah yet reckoned on getting a blessing all; the same. It was a case of seeking the best religious privileges as cheaply as possible, a very common thing in all ages.
But the coming of the Levite was to have results Micah did not foresee. Jonathan had lived in Bethlehem, and some ten or twelve miles westward down the valley one came to Zorah and Eshtaol, two little towns of the tribe of Dan of which we have heard. The Levite had apparently become pretty well known in the district: and especially in those villages to which he went to offer sacrifice or perform some other religious rite. And now a series of incidents brought certain old acquaintances to his new place of abode.
Even in Samsons time the tribe of Dan, whose territory was to be along the coast west from Judah, was still obliged to content itself with the slopes of the hills, not having got possession of the plain. In the earlier period with which we are now dealing the Danites were in yet greater difficulty, for not only had they Philistines on the one side but Amorites on the other. The Amorites “would dwell,” we are told, “in Mount Heres, in Aijalon and in Shaalbim.” It was this pressure which determined the people about Zorah and Eshtaol to find if possible another place of settlement, and five men were sent out in search. Travelling north they took the same way as the Levite had taken, heard of the same khan in the hill country of Ephraim, and made it their resting place for a night. The discovery of the Levite Jonathan followed and of the chapel in which he ministered with its wonderful array of images. We can suppose the deputation had thoughts they did not express, but for the present they merely sought the help of the priest, begging him to consult the oracle on their behalf and learn whether their mission would be successful. The five went on their journey with the encouragement, “Go in peace; before the Lord is your way wherein ye go.”
Months pass without any more tidings of the Danites until one day a great company is seen following the hill road near Micahs farm. “There are six hundred men girt with weapons of war with their wives and children and cattle, a whole clan on the march, filling the road for miles and moving slowly northward. The five men have indeed succeeded after a fashion. Away between Lebanon and Hermon, in the region of the sources of Jordan, they have found the sort of district they went to seek. Its chief town Laish stood in the midst of fertile fields with plenty of wood and water. It was a place, according to their large report, where was no want of anything that is in the earth.” Moreover the inhabitants, who seem to have been a Phoenician colony, dwelt by themselves quiet and secure, having no dealings or treaty with the powerful Zidonians. They were the very kind of people whom a sudden attack would be likely to subdue. There was an immediate migration of Danites to this fresh field, and in prospect of bloody work the men of Zorah and Eshtaoi seem to have had no doubt as to the rightness of their expedition; it was enough that they had felt themselves straitened. The same reason appears to suffice many in modern times. Were the aboriginal inhabitants of America and Australia considered by those who coveted their land? Even the pretence of buying has not always been maintained. Murder and rapine have been the methods used by men of our own blood, our own name, and no nation under the sun has a record darker than the tale of British conquest.
Men who go forth to steal land are quite fit to attempt the strange business of stealing gods that is appropriating to themselves the favour of divine powers and leaving other men destitute. The Danites as they pass Micahs house hear from their spies of the priest and the images that are in his charge. “Do you know that that there is in these houses an ephod and teraphim and a graven image and a molten image? Now therefore consider what ye have to do.” The hint is enough. Soon the court of the farmstead is invaded, the images are brought out and the Levite Jonathan, tempted by the offer of being made priest to a clan, is fain to accompany the marauders. Here is confusion on confusion. The Danites are thieves, brigands, and yet they are pious; so pious that they steal images to assist them in worship. The Levite agrees to the theft and accepts the offer of priesthood under them. He will be the minister of a set of thieves to forward their evil designs, and they, knowing him to be no better than themselves, expect that his sacrifices and prayers will do them good. It is surely a capital instance of perverted religious ideas.
As we have said, these circumstances are no doubt recounted in order to show how dangerous it was to separate from the pure order of worship at the sanctuary. In after times this lesson was needed, especially when the first king of the northern tribes set his golden calves the one at Bethel, the other at Dan. Was Israel to separate from Judah in religion as well as in government? Let there be a backward look to the beginning of schism in those extraordinary doings of the Danites. It was in the city founded by the six hundred that one of Jeroboams temples was built. Could any blessing rest upon a shrine and upon devotions which had such an origin, such a history?
May we find a parallel now? Is there a constituted religious authority with which soundness of belief and acceptable worship are so bound up that to renounce the authority is to be in the way of confusion and error, schism and eternal loss? The Romanist says so. Those who speak for the Papal church never cease to cry to the world that within their communion alone are truth and safety to be found. Renounce, they say, the apostolic and divine authority which we conserve and all is gone. Is there anarchy in a country? Are the forces that make for political disruption and national decay showing themselves in many lands? Are monarchies overthrown? Are the people lawless and wretched? It all comes of giving up the Catholic order and creed. Return to the one fold under the one Shepherd if you would find prosperity. And there are others who repeat the same injunction, not indeed denying that there may be saving faith apart from their ritual, but insisting still that it is an error and a sin to seek God elsewhere than at the accredited shrine.
With Jewish ordinances we Christians have nothing to do when we are judging as to religious order and worship now. There is no central shrine, no exclusive human authority. Where Christ is, there is the temple; where He speaks, the individual conscience must respond. The work of salvation is His alone, and the humblest believer is His consecrated priest. When our Lord said, “The hour cometh and now is-when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth”; and again, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name there am I in the midst of them”; when He as the Son of God held out His hands directly to every sinner needing pardon and every seeker after truth, when He offered the one sacrifice upon the cross by which a living way is opened into the holiest place, He broke down the walls of partition and with the responsibility declared the freedom of the soul.
And here we reach the point to which our narrative applies as an illustration. Micah and his household worshipping the images of silver, the Levite officiating at the altar, seeking counsel of Jehovah by ephod and teraphim, the Danites who steal the gods, carry off the priest and set up a new worship in the city they build-all these represent to us types and stages of what is really schism pitiful and disastrous-that is, separation from the truth of things and from the sacred realities of divine faith. Selfish untruth and infidelity are schism, the wilderness and outlawry of the soul.
1. Micah and his household, with their chapel of images, their ephod and teraphim, represent those who fall into the superstition that religion is good as insuring temporal success and prosperity, that God will see to the worldly comfort of those who pay respect to Him. Even among Christians this is a very common and very debasing superstition. The sacraments are often observed as signs of a covenant which secures for men divine favour through social arrangements and human law.
2. The spiritual nature and power of religion are not denied, but they are uncomprehended. The national custom and the worldly hope have to do with the observance of devout forms rather than any movement of the soul heavenward. A church may in this way become like Micahs household, and prayer may mean seeking good terms with Him who can fill the land with plenty or send famine and cleanness of teeth. Unhappily many worthy and most devout persons still hold the creed of an early and ignorant time. The secret of nature and providence is hid from them. The severities of life seem to them to be charged with anger, and the valleys of human reprobation appear darkened by the curse of God. Instead of finding in pain and loss a marvellous divine discipline they perceive only the penalty of sin, a sign of Gods aversion, not of His Fatherly grace. It is a sad, a terrible blindness of soul. We can but note it here and pass on, for there, are other applications of the old story.
3. The Levite represents an unworthy worldly ministry. With sadness must confession be made that there are in every church pastors unspiritual, worldlings in heart, whose desire is mainly for superiority of rank or of wealth, who have no vision of Christs cross and battle except as objective and historical. Here, most happily, the cases of complete worldliness are rare. It is rather a tendency we observe than a developed and acknowledged state of things. Very few of those in the ranks of the Christian ministry are entirely concerned with the respect paid to them in society and the number of shekels to be got in a year. That he keeps pace with the crowd instead of going before it is perhaps the hardest thing that can be said of the worldly pastor. He is humane, active, intelligent; but it is for the church as a great institution, or the church as his temporal hope and stay. So his ministry becomes at the best a matter of serving tables and providing alms-we shall not say amusement. Here indeed is schism; for what is farther from the truth of things, what is farther from Christ?
Once more we have with us today, very much with us, certain Danites of science, politics, and the press who, if they could, would take away our God and our Bible, our Eternal Father and spiritual hope, not from a desire to possess but because they hate to see us believing, hate to see any weight of silver given to religious uses. Not a few of these are marching, as they think triumphantly, to commanding and opulent positions whence they will rule the thought of the world. And on the way, even while they deride and detest the supernatural, they will have the priest go with them. They care nothing for what he says; to listen to the voice of a spiritual teacher is an absurdity of which they would not be guilty; for to their own vague prophesying all mankind is to give hoed, and their interpretations of human life are to be received as the bible of the age. Of the same order is the socialist who would make use of a faith he intends to destroy, and a priesthood whose claim is offensive to him, on his way to what he calls the organisation of society. In his view the uses of Christianity and the Bible are temporal and earthly. He will not have Christ the Redeemer of the soul, yet he attempts to conjure with Christs words and appropriate the power of His name. The audacity of these would be robbers is matched only by their ignorance of the needs and ends of human life.
We might here refer to the injustice practised by one and another band of our modem Israel who do not scruple to take from obscure and weak households of faith the sacraments and Christian ministry, the marks and rights of brotherhood. We can well believe that those who do this have never looked at their action from the other side, and may not have the least idea of the soreness they leave in the hearts of humble and sincere believers.
In fine, the Danites with the images of Micah went their way and he and his neighbours had to suffer the loss and make the best of their empty chapel, where no oracle thenceforth spoke to them. It is no parable, but a very real example of the loss that comes to all who have trusted in forms and symbols, the outward signs instead of the living power of religion. While we repel the arrogance that takes from faith its symbolic props and stays we must not let ourselves deny that the very rudeness of an enemy may be an excellent discipline for the Christian. Agnosticism and science and other Danite companies sweep with them a good deal that is dear to the religious mind and may leave it very distressed and anxious-the chapel empty, the oracle as it may appear lost forever. With the symbol the authority, the hope, the power seem to be lost irrecoverably. What now has faith to rest upon? But the modern spirit with its resolution to sweep away every unfact and mere form is no destroyer. Rather does it drive the Christian to a science, a virtue far beyond its own. It forces we may say on faith that severe truthfulness and intellectual courage which are the proper qualities of Christianity, the necessary counterpart of its trust and love and grace. In short, when enemies have carried off the poor teraphim and fetishes which are their proper capture they have but compelled religion to be itself, compelled it to find its spiritual God, its eternal creed and to understand its Bible. This, though done with evil intent, is surely no cruelty, no outrage. Shall a man or a church that has been so roused and thrown back on reality sit wailing in the empty chapel for the images of silver and the deliverances of the hollow ephod? Everything remains, the soul and the spiritual world, the law of God, the redemption of Christ, the Spirit of eternal life.