The Judges · c. 1380 BC
Chapter 9
Micah’s Idol
Then Micah said, “Now I know that Yahweh will do good to me, since I have a Levite as my priest.”
For parents
The Danites warn Micah that angry men might attack him, and that he and his household could lose their lives (Judges 18:25). Then they come to Laish, whose people were quiet and suspected nothing, kill them with the sword and burn the city (18:27). It is told plainly, without detail; the chapter also tells of a son who took his mother’s silver, and of idols made and set up in a family shrine (17:1–5).
In the hill country of there was a man named . He said to his mother, “You know the eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you? You spoke a over it, and I heard you say it. Well, the silver is here with me. I took it.”
His mother said, “May the Lord bless my son!”
He gave the eleven hundred pieces of silver back to his mother. Then she said, “I truly give this silver to the Lord myself, for my son. It’s to make a carved and an image of cast metal. So now I will give it back to you.”
When he gave the money back to his mother, she took two hundred pieces of silver and gave them to a silversmith. He made a carved image and an image of cast metal out of the silver. It was kept in Micah’s house.
Micah had a house of gods, a shrine of his own. He made an and , and he set apart one of his sons, who became his .
In those days there was no king in . Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.
There was a young man from in , of the family of Judah. He was a , and he had been living there. He left Bethlehem to live wherever he could find a place, and on his travels he reached Micah’s house in the hill country of Ephraim.
“Where have you come from?” Micah asked him.
“I’m a Levite, from Bethlehem in Judah,” he said. “I’m looking for somewhere to live.”
Micah said to him, “Stay here with me. Be a and a priest to me, and I’ll pay you ten pieces of silver a year, and give you a set of clothes and your food.” So the Levite went in.
The Levite was content to live with the man, and to Micah the young man was like one of his sons. Micah set him apart, and he became Micah’s priest and lived in his house.
Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will do good to me, since I have a Levite as my priest.”
In those days there was no king in Israel. In those days the tribe of was searching for land of its own to settle in. Up to that day, they had not received their share of land among the .
So the Danites picked five brave men from all their clan, from and , and sent them to spy out the land and explore it. “Go and explore the land,” they told them. The five came into the hill country of Ephraim, to Micah’s house, and stayed the night there.
When they were by Micah’s house, they recognized the young Levite’s voice, so they went over and said to him, “Who brought you here? What do you do in this place? What do you have here?”
He told them how Micah had treated him. “He hired me,” he said, “and I have become his priest.”
They said to him, “Please ask God for us, so we can know whether this journey we’re on will go well.”
The priest said to them, “Go in peace. The way you are going is in the Lord’s sight.”
So the five men went on and came to . They saw how the people there lived in safety, the way the lived, quiet and secure. No one in the land had power over them or could bring them shame in any way. They were a long way from the Sidonians, and they had nothing to do with anyone else.
The five men came back to their own people at Zorah and Eshtaol, and their people asked them, “What’s your report?”
“Come on, let’s go and attack them!” they said. “We’ve seen the land, and look, it’s very good. Why are you standing still? Don’t be slow to go in and take the land. When you go, you’ll come to a people who suspect nothing, and the land is wide. God has handed it over to you. There’s nothing in the world it doesn’t have.”
The clan of the Danites set out from Zorah and Eshtaol, with six hundred men carrying weapons of war. They went up and made camp at in Judah. That’s why the place is still called today. It’s behind Kiriath Jearim.
From there they crossed into the hill country of Ephraim, and they reached Micah’s house. The five who had spied out the country of Laish spoke up and said to their people, “Did you know that in these houses there is an ephod, and household idols, and a carved image and an image of cast metal? Now think about what you should do.”
So they went over to the young Levite’s house, which was Micah’s, and asked how he was. The six hundred men of Dan, armed for war, stood at the entrance of the gate.
The five spies went up into the house and took the carved image and the ephod, the household idols and the image of cast metal. The priest was standing at the entrance of the gate with the six hundred armed men.
When the men went into Micah’s house and took these things, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?”
“Hush! Not a sound,” they told him. “Come with us. Be a father and a priest to us. Which is better for you, to be priest to one man’s household, or to be priest to a tribe and a clan in Israel?”
The priest was glad at heart. He took the ephod, the household idols and the carved image, and he went with the people. They turned and set off, putting their little ones, their livestock and their goods in front of them.
The Danites had gone a good way from Micah’s house when the men from the houses near Micah’s gathered together and caught up with them. The men shouted after the Danites, who turned around and said to Micah, “What’s wrong with you? Why have you come out with such a crowd?”
Micah said, “You’ve taken my gods, the ones I made, and the priest, and gone off! What more do I have? How can you ask me, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”
The Danites said to him, “Don’t let us hear any more from you, or some angry men might attack you, and you and your household would lose your lives.”
The Danites went on their way. Micah saw they were too strong for him, and he turned back and went home.
The Danites took what Micah had made, and the priest he had, and came to Laish, to a people who were quiet and suspected nothing. They killed them with the sword, and they burned the city.
There was no one to save them, because the city was far from Sidon, and its people had nothing to do with anyone else. It lay in the valley by . The Danites built the city up again and lived in it.
They called the city , after their ancestor Dan, one of Israel’s sons. But it used to be called Laish.
The Danites set the carved image up for themselves. , the son of , the son of , was priest to the tribe of Dan, and so were his sons, until the day the land’s people were carried off as captives.
So Micah’s carved image, the one he had made, stayed set up for them the whole time God’s house was at .