Judgeschapter 18
31 verses · BSBJudges book hub →
Key verse
The Danites set up idols for themselves, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.
It stands in scene C of the chapter, verses 27 to 31.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Dan, still without a settled inheritance, sends five men to spy out the land. They lodge with Micah, recognize the Levite's voice, and ask counsel of God; he sends them off with a blessing. They find Laish quiet and secure, far from Sidon and with no dealings with any man, and return for six hundred armed men. On the way the company strips Micah's shrine and recruits the priest with a promotion, better to be priest to a tribe than to one man's house. Micah's protest is pitiful: ye have taken away my gods, and what have I more? Laish is put to the sword and rebuilt as Dan, and the idol stands there for generations.
Context
History · Samuel · Judges overview
Where the chapter sits
Judges 18 falls in Appendix: diagnosis of Israel (chapters 17–21). Micah's household idolatry and the Danite migration; the Levite's concubine and the near-extinction of Benjamin. Not chronological; thematic. ‘Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.’
Before it: The twelve judges, chapters 3–16.
The whole shape of Judges→The world behind this chapter
Judges 18The history
Dan's allotted land lay on the coastal plain near the Philistines, and the tribe never held it. So six hundred armed men go looking for somewhere easier. Sending five scouts first is standard practice; so is the report they bring back, the people live quietly and securely, far from Sidon, with no ally nearby. That is a target assessment.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
Laish sat at the northern springs where the Jordan rises, rich, isolated, and trading with Sidon on the coast eighty miles away over difficult country. Its very safety was its weakness: no defensive alliance, no reason to keep a garrison.
The scouts recognize the Levite by his voice, meaning his accent or the formula he used, and they ask him to inquire of God for them, the ephod and teraphim being tools of consultation. His answer, go in peace, your way is before the LORD, is the kind of blank endorsement a paid chaplain gives.
On the way back the six hundred simply take Micah's shrine and his priest, and the priest's heart was glad, because six hundred men is a bigger congregation than one household. When Micah protests, the answer is a threat: keep talking and angry men will fall on you and your family. The chapter ends with the tribe of Dan setting up the stolen image at their new city, and it stayed there, the text says, until the day of the captivity of the land. Centuries later Jeroboam put one of his golden calves at that same site, and excavation at Tel Dan has uncovered the large open-air platform of that later sanctuary.
What it meant to them
First hearers who knew Dan as a byword for northern idolatry now knew its origin: a stolen idol, a bought priest, and a tribe that took the easy land instead of the assigned one.
It is also a study in how theft looks when a crowd does it. Micah, who made his gods himself, has them stolen and cries, you have taken away my gods, and the reader is meant to hear how absurd that sentence is.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Eugene H. Merrill, Kingdom of Priests: A History of Old Testament Israel
A. Danite spies find quiet, careless Laish
1. (vv. 1-2)
a.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 18:1, 1 voiceWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Judges 18:1
“There was no king in Israel - See Jdg 17:6 (note). 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.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 18:2, 1 voice
Judges 18:2
“Five men - men of valor - The Hebrew word חיל chayil has been applied to personal prowess, to mental energy, and to earthly possessions. They sent those in whose courage, judgment, and prudence, they could safely confide.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2. (vv. 3-6)
a.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 18:3, 2 voices
Judges 18:3
“When they were by the house of Micah,.... At their inn, which might be next to it, or as they were passing by it: they knew the voice of the young man the Levite; who had been in their country, and they had been in his company and conversation, and they knew the tone of his voice when they heard it; a particular brogue he might have.”
Judges 18:3
“It does not follow that they had known him before, and recognized his voice, though it may be so. But the Hebrew equally bears the sense that they heard the voice of the Levite; and, attracted by it, went into the chapel Jdg 18:18 where Jonathan was. They were probably just starting on their journey, but were still within the court or precincts of Micah’s house. Micah had evidently not told them of his house of God, and his Levite. Their questions indicate surprise.”
Judges 18:5, 1 voice
Judges 18:5
“Ask counsel - of God - As the Danites use the word אלהים Elohim here for God, we are necessarily led to believe that they meant the true God; especially as the Levite answers, Jdg 18:6, Before the Lord (יהוה Yehovah) is your way. Though the former word may be sometimes applied to idols, whom their votaries clothed with the attributes of God; yet the latter is never applied but to the true God alone.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3. (v. 7)
a.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 18:7, 2 voices
Judges 18:7
“Laish - Afterward called “Dan” Jdg 18:29. The exact site has not been identified, but it was the northern extremity of Israel, near the sources of the Jordan, and about four miles from Panium, or Caesarea-Philippi. It is thought to have stood where the village Tell-el-Kadi now stands. After the manner of the Zidonians - The genius of the Zidonians being mechanical and commercial, not military, their colonists were apt to neglect fortifications and similar warlike precautions.”
Judges 18:7
“Put to shame - Or, that might rebuke or punish any thing, that is, any crime. Putting to shame seems to be used for inflicting civil punishment, because shame is generally the effect of it.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
4. (vv. 8-10)
a.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 18:10, 1 voice
Judges 18:10
“Given - This they gather partly from God's promise which they supposed they had from the Levite's mouth; and partly from his providence, which had so disposed them, that they would be an easy prey.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
B. Six hundred armed men take Micah's gods
1. (vv. 11-13)
a.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 18:11, 2 voices
Judges 18:11
“Six hundred men - These were not the whole, for we find they had children, etc., Jdg 18:21; but these appear to have been six hundred armed men.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 18:11
“Their journey led them through the territory of Judah, and their first halting place was "behind," that is, on the west of Kirjath-jearim, on a spot called afterwards "the camp of Dan." Prosecuting the northern route, they skirted the base of the Ephraimite hills.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Judges 18:12, 1 voice
Judges 18:12
“Mahaneh-dan - “The camp of Dan;” so called from the circumstance of this armament encamping there. See Jdg 13:25 (note), which affords some proof that this transaction was previous to the days of Samson.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 18:13, 1 voice
Judges 18:13
“And they passed thence unto Mount Ephraim,.... Steering their coast still northward; this, according to Bunting (b), was eight miles from Kirjathjearim, or Mahanehdan, in which Micah's house was, for as yet they were not come to it, see Jdg 18:15. (b) Ibid. (Travels of the Patriarchs, &c. p. 112.)”
2. (vv. 14-17)
a.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 18:14, 2 voices
Judges 18:14
“In these houses - This agrees with what we saw at Jdg 18:2-3 that the “house of God” and Jonathan’s house were detached from Micah’s. There were other houses besides Jdg 18:22. The whole settlement was probably called Beth-Micah, contained in one court, and entered by one gate Jdg 18:16.”
Judges 18:14
“Answered - That is, spake, the word answering being often used in scripture of the first speaker. These houses - That is, in one of these houses. What to do - Whether it be not expedient to take them for your farther use.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Judges 18:16, 1 voice
Judges 18:16
“And the six hundred men appointed with their weapons of war,.... Who were armed men, and marched with their armour about them: which were of the children of Dan; for no other were concerned in this expedition: stood by the entering of the gate; not of Micah's house, but of the city in which his house was; here they stood while the five men went up to the house.”
Judges 18:17, 1 voice
Judges 18:17
“The five went back to Micah’s chapel (Micah’s house, Jdg 18:18) and took the ephod, teraphim, etc., and brought them to the gate where the priest was talking to the 600 men.”
3. (vv. 18-20)
a.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 18:19, 1 voice
Judges 18:19
“Lay thine hand upon thy mouth - This was the token of silence. The god of silence, Harpocrates, is represented on ancient statues with his finger pressed on his lips.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 18:20, 1 voice
Judges 18:20
“Was glad - Being wholly governed by his own interest. The midst - Both for the greater security of such precious things, and that Micah might not be able to come at him, to injure or upbraid him; and, it may be, because that was the place where the ark used to be carried.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
4. (vv. 21-24)
a.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 18:21, 1 voice
Judges 18:21
And put the little ones, etc., before them - They expected a pursuit from Micah’s people, and arranged their order of march accordingly. The carriage - Rather, “the valuables.” Some interpret it “the heavy baggage.”
Judges 18:22, 1 voice
Judges 18:22
“Were gathered together - literally, “were called together.” The men, who were all Micah’s workmen, were probably in the fields with their master at the time of the robbery. When the women saw what was done they gave the alarm, and Micah called the men together as quickly as possible, and pursued the Danites and overtook them.”
Judges 18:24, 2 voices
Judges 18:24
“Ye have taken away my gods - As Micah was a worshipper of the true God, as we have seen, he cannot mean any kind of idols by the word אלהי elohai here used. He undoubtedly means those representations of Divine things, and symbols of the Divine presence such as the teraphim, ephod, etc.; for they are all evidently included under the word elohai, which we translate my gods.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 18:24
“I made - So far was he besotted with superstition and idolatry, that he esteemed those gods, which were man's work. But he could not be so stupid, as to think these were indeed the great Jehovah that made heaven and earth; but only a lower sort of gods, by whom, as mediators, he offered up his worship to the true God, as divers of the Heathen did.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
5. (vv. 25-26)
a.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 18:25, 1 voice
Judges 18:25
“Thy voice - Thy complaints and reproaches. Angry fellows - The soldiers, who are in themselves sharp and fierce, and will soon be enflamed by thy provoking words.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
C. Laish burned, renamed Dan, an idol enshrined
1. (vv. 27-28)
a.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 18:27, 1 voice
Judges 18:27
“The things which Micah had made - Rather, from Jdg 18:24, “the gods which Micah had made.” See Jdg 18:31; Deu 27:15; Exo 20:4.”
2. (v. 29)
a.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 18:29, 1 voice
Judges 18:29
“Called the name of the city Dan - This city was afterwards very remarkable as one of the extremities of the promised land. The extent of the Jewish territories was generally expressed by the phrase, From Dan to Beer-Sheba; that is, From the most northern to the southern extremity.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3. (v. 30)
a.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 18:30, 4 voices
Judges 18:30
“And the children of Dan set up the graven image,.... In their new city Dan, and very probably had a house built for it, peculiar to it, in the same place where Jeroboam, in later times, set up one of his golden calves.”
Judges 18:30
“The children of Dan set up the graven image - They erected a chapel, or temple, among themselves, as Micah had done before; having the same implements and the same priest. And Jonathan the son of Gershom - Either this was the name of the young Levite; or they had turned him off, and got this Jonathan in his place. The son Manasseh - Who this Manasseh was, none can tell; nor does the reading appear to be genuine.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Judges 18:30
“Image - Having succeeded in their expedition according to the prediction which, as they supposed, they had from this image, they had a great veneration for it. The captivity - When the whole land of the ten tribes, whereof Daniel was one, was conquered, and the people carried captive by the Assyrian, 2 Kings xvii, 6, 23, which is called by way of eminency, the captivity.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Judges 18:30
“The vulgar Latin reads it Moses. And if indeed Moses had a grandson that was rakish, and was picked up as a fit tool to be made use of in the setting up of idolatry, it is not the only instance (would to God it were!) of the unhappy degenerating of the posterity of great and good men.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (v. 31)
a.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.
Judges 18:31, 2 voices
Judges 18:31
“And they set them up Micah's graven image, which he made,.... Which is repeated for the sake of the time of its continuance next expressed: all the time the house of God was in Shiloh; which, according to some Jewish writers (g), was three hundred and sixty years; that is, so long as the tabernacle was there, which was afterwards removed to Nob. (g) Maimon. in Misn. Zebachim, c. 14. sect. 6. & Bartenora in ib. sect. 7.”
Judges 18:31
“That these images continued till Samuel's time, for so long the ark of God was at Shiloh; and it is probable that in him time effectual care was taken to suppress and abolish this idolatry.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Judges 18. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765); Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Joshua, Judges, Ruth and Matthew Henry.
Keep studying
On this page
Studies1