Micah and His Priest

Dei Break

Judges 17:1 - 18:31

One commentator titles these chapters "Religious Chaos" and the description fits well. These events concern people who had drifted away from the laws of God and perhaps didn't even remember a time when the worship of God had been properly understood in Israel. That isn't hard to believe when you consider that hundreds of years passed between the time of Joshua and the end of the time of the judges. Our own country's history covers less time than the days of the judges in Israel, and how much knowledge of life at its beginning have we lost? That does not excuse the idolatry that dominates the story. Moses and Joshua warned the people not to turn to idols. The Old Testament deals with the nation and the nation failed miserably at being faithful to God and His covenant with them.

You can sense the sarcasm in the account of Micah (not the prophet Micah) and the Danites (a tribe of Israel). A son who confesses robbing his mother; A mother who dedicates her returned silver to the Lord to be turned into an idol or two for her son; A man who welcomes a priest who cannot be a priest because he is not a direct descendant of Aaron; the Danites who seek a blessing from an ineligible priest and then offer him a job as a priest; and in the process become idol worshipers themselves; but none of the participants in the account seem to understand that something is wrong!

"In those days … every man did what was right in his own eyes." (17:6) That is the core tragedy in these chapters, and our nation can identify with that sin. Our culture has pronounced that everyone has the right to do whatever they believe is right, and whatever they believe is right is right, because there is no absolute right. Whatever is perceived as true is true "from a certain point of view" (if you remember your Obi-Wan-Kenobi quotations from Return of the Jedi).

Next time: How Far Can Sin Go?