Judges17chapter 17

Judges 17:1-2

Micah's name is built on the divine name and means who is like the LORD, which is the first thing the chapter puts in front of a reader, before a word about his shrine. Eleven hundred occurs three times in Scripture and the other is Judges 16:5, where each lord of the Philistines promises Delilah eleven hundred pieces of silver, so the sum that bought Samson is the sum lying in this house. The mother had cursed whoever took her silver and the man who took it was her son, and when he confesses she answers the confession with a blessing.

Judges 17:3-4

She dedicates the money unto the LORD and names in the same breath what it is for, a graven image and a molten image. Deuteronomy 27:15 lays a curse on that exact pair of words, Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, and a curse is what set this story going at verse 2. Two hundred of the eleven hundred shekels reach the founder and the text says nothing about where the other nine hundred went. Founder occurs five times in Scripture and the other four are in Jeremiah, where 10:14 reads that every founder is confounded by the graven image.

Judges 17:5

House of gods occurs once in the whole Bible and this verse is it. The ephod repeats Gideon at 8:27, where the ephod became a snare unto Gideon and to his house, and teraphim enters the English Bible here, with five of its six occurrences falling in this chapter and the next. He then consecrates one of his sons, which Numbers 3:10 and 18:7 both shut against any man outside Aaron's line in the same six words, the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.

Judges 17:6

was no king in Israel: In those days there was no king in Israel falls four times, at 17:6, 18:1, 19:1 and 21:25, and it brackets the last five chapters of the book. King in Israel occurs here for the first time in the whole Bible, inside the book that says there was none. The second clause falls twice only, here and at 21:25, which are the first and last verses of that block. Right in his own eyes is the wording of Deuteronomy 12:8, where Moses forbids that way of living in the land they were about to enter, so the verse reports the law broken in the law's own words.

Judges 17:7-9

Levites held no tribal land. Numbers 35 and Joshua 21 gave them cities among the other tribes, and Deuteronomy 18:6 to 18:8 gave any Levite the right to come to the place God chose and to eat like portions with his brethren there. This one looks for a place of his own instead, and the text says three times in three verses that he sojourns. Judges 18:30 gives his name as Jonathan the son of Gershom and the King James reads the son of Manasseh, where the Hebrew carries a raised letter that later scribes marked, and readers have differed since antiquity over whether the name behind it is Manasseh or Moses.

Judges 17:10-12

The wage is priced out to the shekel, ten a year with clothing and food, which is what a priest cost in this house. Micah's two words, a father and a priest, stand together twice in Scripture, here and at Judges 18:19, where the Danites use his own offer against him and add a tribe to it. Consecrated at verse 12 renders a Hebrew phrase meaning filled his hand, the wording Exodus 28:41 and Leviticus 8 use of Aaron's ordination, and here a householder performs it on a man he took in at his door.

Judges 17:13

Micah reads the arrival of a hired man as the sign that God is now on his side, and he says so aloud. His shrine stands in mount Ephraim, and Joshua 18:1 had set the tabernacle at Shiloh in that same hill country, near enough that Judges 18:31 can measure the one against the other: Micah's image stood all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh. The chapter records the sentence and stops, with no answer from God written into it, and chapter 18 replies by carrying off the images and the priest together.