Judges18chapter 18

Judges 18:1-2

This is the second of four times the book says there was no king in Israel, at 17:6, 18:1, 19:1 and 21:25, and this verse and 19:1 carry only the first half, without the clause about every man doing what was right in his own eyes. Dan already had an allotment, given at Joshua 19:40-46, and Judges 1:34 records what became of it, since the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountain and would not suffer them to come down to the valley. The five men go out from Zorah and Eshtaol, which is Samson's country at 13:2 and 16:31, so the tribe's two stories in this book start from the same two towns.

Judges 18:3-6

They pick the Levite out by his speech, and Gill takes it for an accent they knew from his time in their country, while Barnes reads the Hebrew as their hearing a voice and turning in toward it. What they ask for is counsel of God, and that asking runs through this book at 1:1 and at 20:18, 20:23 and 20:27, where Israel enquires at the house of God and the answer comes from the LORD, the appointed way being Eleazar and the Urim at Numbers 27:21. Here the enquiry is made at a private shrine before an ephod and teraphim a man had made for himself. The priest answers Go in peace, before the Lord is your way, and the chapter records no word from God standing behind it.

Judges 18:7

Laish is described by what it lacks, since there is no magistrate in the land, no dealings with any man, and distance from Zidon that leaves nobody near enough to come. Henry gives the literal sense of the word behind magistrate as heir of restraint, so the verse reports a town with no one holding power to check anything. Barnes places the site at the northern head of the Jordan near the springs, at the mound now called Tell el-Qadi, and the Arabic name carries the same sense of judge that the name Dan does.

Judges 18:8-10

The report runs the opposite way to the one brought back at Numbers 13:31-33, where the land was granted to be good and the men who had seen it said it could not be taken. Five men here say the land is very good and press their brethren to move at once, and be not slothful carries the weight of the argument. Verse 10 turns the priest's Go in peace into a promise, God hath given it into your hands, which is the language God himself uses at Joshua 6:2 and 8:1, spoken this time by men with no recorded word behind it.

Judges 18:11-13

Six hundred armed men is the number the book gives again at 20:47, where six hundred Benjamites are all that live through the war on their own tribe. They pitch behind Kirjath-jearim and the spot keeps the name Mahaneh-dan, the camp of Dan, unto this day. Judges 13:25 names a camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol as the place where the Spirit began to move Samson, and the two notices set that camp in different country without the text reconciling them. Clarke reads this verse as evidence that the Danite migration happened before Samson's lifetime, the last five chapters being an appendix to the book rather than a sequel to chapter 16.

Judges 18:14-17

The four objects are the ones made at 17:3-5, a graven image and a molten image cast from two hundred shekels of the silver Micah's mother dedicated, with an ephod and teraphim added. The teraphim are the household gods Rachel stole from her father at Genesis 31:19, where the King James renders the same Hebrew word as images, so what is done here to a shrine has an older instance behind it. The five who scouted the land go up and carry the images out while six hundred armed men stand in the gate and the priest stands there with them, and Barnes reads the layout as one walled compound with the house of God set apart from the dwelling.

Judges 18:18-20

The priest sees his shrine going out of the door and asks What do ye, and what comes back is an offer rather than an answer. Micah had hired him at 17:10 with the same words, be unto me a father and a priest, for ten shekels of silver by the year, and Dan repeats the offer and raises it by counting the congregation instead of the coin. His heart was glad, and he takes the ephod and the teraphim and the graven image himself and walks in the midst of the people, which is where Numbers 2:17 sets the tabernacle in the order of march, while Clarke reads the position more plainly as a man keeping out of sight of the master he has left.

Judges 18:21-24

The little ones and the cattle and the carriage go in front, which Barnes reads as an order of march set against the pursuit they expected, and the word carriage means the valuables rather than a vehicle. Micah's neighbours are called out of the houses near his, so the shrine had a settlement around it and hired men working the fields. His cry states the difficulty in his own words, ye have taken away my gods which I made, and the prophets later argue from that exact order, since Isaiah 44:14-17 has a man carve a god out of the wood he cooked his dinner with, and Isaiah 46:1-2 has the gods themselves carried off into captivity.

Judges 18:25-26

The threat is put as advice, and angry fellows renders a Hebrew phrase meaning bitter of soul, the same description given of the men who gathered to David at 1 Samuel 22:2. Clarke sets the exchange beside a highwayman's demand, since Micah is offered a choice between his goods and the lives of his household. Verse 26 closes it without comment, because Micah saw that they were too strong for him, and he turned and went back to his house.

Judges 18:27-28

The wording is the conquest's own, smote them with the edge of the sword and burnt the city with fire, which is what Joshua 6:24 and 11:11 say of Jericho and Hazor. What those accounts carry and this one does not is a command, since no word from God, no priest of Aaron's line and no prophet is recorded anywhere in the chapter. There was no deliverer is the sharper sentence, because deliverer is this book's own word for the man God raises up at 3:9 and 3:15, and the two things that kept Laish safe, distance from Zidon and having no business with any man, are what leave it with nobody to call.

Judges 18:29

Joshua 19:47 tells this same conquest in a single verse and calls the town Leshem rather than Laish, and both names stand in the canon without either account correcting the other. The new name fixes the northern end of the map, and from Dan even to Beersheba becomes the standard measure of the land, first at 20:1 and then through Samuel and Kings. Dan is the tribe missing from the twelve named at Revelation 7:5-8, where Manasseh is counted beside Joseph in its place, and Scripture gives no reason for the omission.

Judges 18:30

Gershom is named as the son of Moses at Exodus 2:22 and 1 Chronicles 23:15, so on the plain reading of the descent this priest is the grandson of Moses. The Hebrew writes Manasseh here with the letter nun raised above the line, and lifting that letter out leaves Moses, which is the reading the Latin Vulgate gives and which the Talmud discusses at Bava Batra 109b as a covering laid over the name. Clarke says of the received spelling that the reading does not appear to be genuine, and Henry records the Vulgate reading and what it would mean for the posterity of a great and good man. The captivity of the land is read either as the Assyrian deportation that took this region at 2 Kings 15:29 or, taken with verse 31, as the day the ark was captured and Shiloh fell at 1 Samuel 4:11, and serious readers hold each.

Judges 18:31

the house of God was in Shiloh: Two houses of God stand in Israel at the same time through this stretch, the tabernacle at Shiloh pitched at Joshua 18:1 and Micah's graven image at Dan, and the verse dates the second by the first. Psalm 78:60 and Jeremiah 7:12-14 both look back at what became of Shiloh, and Jeremiah makes it the warning laid against Jerusalem. Dan is where Jeroboam sets one of the two calves at 1 Kings 12:29, and the people go as far as Dan to worship before it, so the place keeps this function for centuries after the six hundred men arrive.