Judges 17 Study Notes

17:1-21:25 This last section of the book of Judges stands outside the downward cycles of the middle portion of the book, yet it brings to conclusion two of its central threads: idolatrous worship, which comes to a head at Dan (chaps. 17-18), and sexual immorality, which comes to a head with Israel’s reenactment of the sin (and fall) of Sodom and Gomorrah (chaps. 19-21).

17:1-4 This section begins with Micah (“Who Is Like Yahweh?”) confessing to his mother that he had stolen from her 1,100 pieces of silver (a fortune in that time). Fear of the curse she had uttered against the thief drove Micah to return it. His mother responded in orthodox fashion: My son, may you be blessed by the Lord. By this she sought to cancel out the earlier curse. Yet she then consecrated this same silver to the Lord to be made into a carved image. In addition, having vowed to dedicate all the silver to the Lord, she only gave five pounds, or two hundred shekels, of the silver to the silversmith for the idol.

17:5-6 Centers of personal devotion like Micah’s shrine were outlawed in Dt 12. The ephod is reminiscent of the idol that Gideon constructed at Ophrah (Jdg 8:27). The household idols, or “teraphim,” were often associated with divination (Zch 10:2) and were portable objects of veneration throughout the ancient Near East, although their exact form is unknown. Micah also installed one of his sons to be his priest, in opposition to the officially authorized Levitical priesthood. In those days everyone did whatever seemed right to him (a lifestyle exemplified by Samson). The author may have been saying the lawlessness was because there was no king in Israel. Alternatively the author—who was writing this much later, and had seen how immorally Israel could function under a wicked king—may have been saying that even without a king to lead them astray, the people behaved atrociously all on their own.

17:7-8 At this point, a Levite arrived, a member of the priestly tribe. He was a young man, and therefore he would not have been qualified to serve as a priest in the orthodox worship of the Lord, which began at age thirty (Nm 4:3). He was also from Bethlehem in Judah, at the opposite end of Israel from Ephraim. The author does not name the young Levite until 18:30 (see note at 18:30-31). According to Dt 18:6-8, Levites who were residing in any of the clans of Israel were allowed to leave their homes and go to the place the Lord had chosen to join in his service there. This Levite, however, was seeking any place that he could find. His behavior is symptomatic of the general tendency in Israel at this time for each man to do “whatever seemed right” (Jdg 17:6).

17:9-13 Seizing the opportunity to have a priest with a legitimate genealogy, Micah engaged this Levite to be his father and priest. “Father” is a title of honor that reflects the role of the priest in communicating God’s law to Israel (Dt 33:10) and thus shaping their behavior. Instead of the priestly terms of employment prescribed in Nm 18, Micah promised him his clothing and lodging and four ounces of silver a year, a miserly sum in comparison to the amount of silver that was at his family’s disposal (Jdg 18:2). Micah also personally consecrated the “priest” to his office (v. 12), emphasizing the Levite’s subordinate nature in Micah’s household. From Micah’s statement in v. 13, it is clear that he viewed this Levite essentially as another idol, an attempted means of ensuring the Lord’s blessing upon himself.