Judges18chapter 18

Judges 18:11-13

Six hundred armed men is the number the book gives again at 20:47, where six hundred Benjamites survive the war on their tribe. They camp west of Kiriath-jearim, and the place keeps the name Mahaneh-dan, the camp of Dan, “to this day”. Judges 13:25 sets a Mahaneh-dan between Zorah and Eshtaol, and Clarke reads this verse as proof that the migration came before Samson.

Kiriath-jearim means city of forests, and Barnes gives its other name as Kiriath-baal, on the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem. Henry takes the name Mahaneh-dan, the camp of Dan, as a sign that armed camps had grown rare in Israel. No other tribe marched with Dan.

The route runs north through Judah and then into the Ephraim hills, the way the five spies had gone before. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown have the column skirting the base of those hills. The road leads the army back to Micah's door.

Judges 18:14-17

The four objects are the ones made at 17:3-5, a graven image and a molten idol from the mother's silver, with an ephod and household idols. The Hebrew word for these idols names the ones Rachel stole at Genesis 31:19, where the King James renders it images. The scouts carry them out while “six hundred Danites stood at the entrance of the gate”, one walled compound in Barnes's reading.

The lodging of the Levite is called both his home and the house of Micah, and Barnes explains the double name as one court holding several houses behind a single gate. The five greet the priest first. Verse 17 shows why.

Gill places the gate at the entrance of the town around the house of Micah, and Barnes at the single gate of Micah's own court. Either way the armed men held the one way out. Matthew Henry asks how gods that could be carried off were ever to protect the men who stole them.

The list of four objects is given three times, at verses 14, 17 and 18, and verse 20 names only three of them as the priest takes them. Barnes has the priest talking with the six hundred at the gate while the five work inside. The shrine emptied without a fight.

Judges 18:18-20

The priest asks what they are doing as his shrine goes out the door, and the answer is an offer. Micah had hired him at 17:10 in the same words, and Dan repeats them, “be a father and a priest to us”, counting a tribe instead of coin. The priest was glad and went in the middle of the company, which Clarke reads as hiding from his old master.

Putting a hand over the mouth was the sign for silence, and Clarke compares statues of Harpocrates, god of silence, with a finger on his lips. Henry spells out the offer, a priest for a tribe with more worshippers and more sacrifices. The priest needed little persuading.

Matthew Henry notes that the Levite had no complaint against Micah, who had kept his word and his wage. Shiloh stood open to him under Deuteronomy 18, where a Levite could serve the priests and be welcome. Wesley names the motive as self-interest.

Judges 18:21-24

they turned and departed: The small children, the livestock and the possessions go in front, which Barnes reads as an order of march against the pursuit they expected. Micah's neighbours are called out of the houses near his, so the shrine had a settlement around it. His cry states the difficulty in his own words, “You took the gods I had made”, and Isaiah 44:14-17 and 46:1-2 later argue from that order.

Matthew Henry notes how the pursuers caught up with a column slowed by children and cattle. Micah's men came to argue their case, too few to fight six hundred. Barnes renders the Hebrew as men called together.

The Danites turn and ask Micah what is the matter, as if he had no cause to call out a company after them. Henry sets out the two sides, Micah pleading his right and the Danites their might. Might won.

Adam Clarke holds that Micah worshipped Israel's God and meant by his gods the symbols of that presence, the ephod and the household idols. John Wesley reads the same words as lesser gods, mediators through which Micah sent his worship upward. Both readings leave him with nothing.

Judges 18:25-26

The threat is put as advice, and “angry men” renders a Hebrew phrase meaning bitter of soul, the 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”.

Micah goes home without his priest, the gods he made or the blessing he counted on at 17:13. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown picture him leading a sizeable band, still too small for six hundred. The chapter leaves him there.

Judges 18:27-28

The acts are the conquest's own, striking with the sword and burning the city, as Joshua 6:24 and 11:11 tell of Jericho and Hazor. Those accounts carry a command, and this chapter records no word from God, no priest of Aaron's line and no prophet. The two things that kept Laish safe, distance from Sidon and “no alliance with anyone”, leave it with “no one to deliver them”.

Barnes notes that Rehob marks the northern limit of the land the spies walked at Numbers 13:21, near the entrance to Hamath. Dan rebuilt the city it had burned. Charles Spurgeon preached this verse as a warning against careless security, the ease that left Laish without help.

Joshua 19:47 tells this conquest in a single verse and calls the town Leshem rather than Laish, and neither account corrects the other. The new name fixes the northern end of the map, and from Dan to Beersheba becomes the measure of the land, first at 20:1 and then through Samuel and Kings. Dan is the tribe missing from the twelve at Revelation 7:5-8, and Scripture gives no reason.

Gershom is the son of Moses at Exodus 2:22, so this priest is the grandson of Moses. The Hebrew writes Manasseh here with the letter nun raised above the line, and without it the name reads Moses, which Clarke takes as genuine and Henry records. The phrase “the captivity of the land” means either the Assyrian deportation of 2 Kings 15:29 or, with verse 31, the fall of Shiloh.

the house of God was in Shiloh: Two houses of God stand in Israel at once, the tabernacle at Shiloh and Micah's image at Dan, which stood “the whole time the house of God was in Shiloh”. Psalm 78:60 and Jeremiah 7:12-14 look back at the fall of Shiloh as a warning. Jeroboam sets a calf at Dan at 1 Kings 12:29.