No King in Israel (39)

Judges were not kings. We have seen that they performed some functions we expect of royalty: leading the army, delivering the nation from oppression, and rendering decisions in disagreements between Israelites. Some functions, but not all.

When God appointed Saul Israel’s first king, he had something more in mind for him than waving a sword, calling out the troops or sitting under a tree passing judgment. “Here is the man of whom I spoke to you,” God said. “He it is who shall restrain my people.”

Restrain. Hmm.

A Little Restraint, Please!

Restraining people is not something with think of as part of a king’s job description, but God understood that during the period of the Judges, restraint was sadly lacking. Every man was doing what was right in his own eyes. We call that anarchy. This is what these last few chapters of Judges are all about: they document the nation’s desperate need to be brought back into line with the revealed will of God. They show us what doing right in our own eyes looks like, and it ain’t pretty.

God had given Israel his law through Moses, but that law was a long way from being enforced across the country. It’s probable the law was not even well understood, let alone practiced. Our last judge behaved more like a guerrilla operating behind enemy lines than a leader who understood his people’s need to follow a consistent God-given standard. Factions within Israel (usually but not always Ephraimites) rebelled and had to be subdued, disrespecting their leadership and getting thousands of their own kindred killed in civil disputes. Whole cities did whatever they felt like. Other judges like Samson appeared to have operated locally rather than nationally, so that some tribes derived fewer benefits from their leadership.

When a king is doing his job right, he sets an exemplary standard of behavior based on the law of God, and demands the same from his ministers and citizens. This aspect of the job was beyond the scope of the judge.

III. Two Historical Vignettes from the Period

a. Micah and the Danites

Judges 17:1-6 — Right in His Own Eyes

“There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said to his mother, ‘The 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it in my ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it.’ And his mother said, ‘Blessed be my son by the Lord.’ And he restored the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother. And his mother said, ‘I dedicate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son, to make a carved image and a metal image. Now therefore I will restore it to you.’ So when he restored the money to his mother, his mother took 200 pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith, who made it into a carved image and a metal image. And it was in the house of Micah. And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household gods, and ordained one of his sons, who became his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

An Early Inheritance

Micah helped himself to an early inheritance, stealing from his mother the not-insubstantial amount of 1,100 pieces of silver. But when he heard mom cursing the thief, he had second thoughts and apologetically returned what he had stolen.

Micah’s sudden change of heart may have had something to do with his mother’s curse. In those days a curse was not merely the usage of profanity or a common expression of annoyance. Rather, a curse had the potential to put the individual against whom it was directed under the judgment of God and at serious risk. After all, it was just possible God might grant the curser’s desire, as he did in the case of Gideon’s son Jotham.

So Micah returned the stolen silver and his grateful mother dedicated it to God. She paid a silversmith to fashion some of the silver into an idol for their household.

Name-Checking YHWH

The Micah incident starts with thievery and ends in idol worship ... yet, mysteriously, YHWH gets name-checked three times in the process. How about that? That sort of thing happens a lot in the book of Judges. God gets mentioned a whole lot more than he gets obeyed.

Before we start associating God with our plans, invoking his name and his priorities, it would seem sensible to inquire whether we are dedicating to him things God actually wants. Otherwise, our “dedication” is mockery or virtue signaling: we are really only pleasing ourselves, appending God’s name to our own desires as an afterthought.

Sure, it may not be that we are engaged in outright idolatry, like Micah’s mom with her silver image. Then again ...

An Editorial Statement

It seems impossible to take verse 6 as anything other than an editorial statement about the events the writer has just described. The Law of Moses strictly forbade the making of carved images. Likewise, priests were only to come from the tribe of Levi, and specifically from the family of Aaron, not from Ephraim or anywhere else. God settled that matter once for all in the wilderness during Korah’s rebellion. On top of that, what gave Micah the idea that he had the right to ordain anyone? Exodus 29 describes the ordination instructions for priests, and Micah’s casual appropriation of the right to ordain summarily ignored it.

Truly, everyone in those days seemed to be doing exactly as he pleased, without reference to the law, Moses, or even local practice. Micah was just one sad example.

Judges 17:7-13 — A Levite as Priest

“Now there was a young man of Bethlehem in Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite, and he sojourned there. And the man departed from the town of Bethlehem in Judah to sojourn where he could find a place. And as he journeyed, he came to the hill country of Ephraim to the house of Micah. And Micah said to him, ‘Where do you come from?’ And he said to him, ‘I am a Levite of Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to sojourn where I may find a place.’ And Micah said to him, ‘Stay with me, and be to me a father and a priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year and a suit of clothes and your living.’ And the Levite went in. And the Levite was content to dwell with the man, and the young man became to him like one of his sons. And Micah ordained the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of Micah. Then Micah said, ‘Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest.’ ”

Hey Mister, Can You Tell Me Where a Man Might Find a Bed?

Now into this Ephraimite mess comes an actual Levite, not from the line of Aaron, but at least better qualified for priestly service than Micah’s son. Why was he not serving at the tabernacle in Shiloh? A very good question. It appears that the priesthood was not making use of its full complement of God-given servants, so that some Levites had to find other ways to make their living. Seeing an opportunity, Micah bumped his son out of his gig as personal priest, and procured the services of the Levite instead for the princely annual cost of ten pieces of silver (less than 1% of what he’d earlier stolen from his mother), a suit of clothes and room and board.

Again, confusion: Levitical priesthood, great. Retaining a personal priest, not so great. The sort of spectacularly muddled thinking that extracts a principle selectively from God’s law and stirs it into one’s religious stewpot — along with sinful traditions, outside influences, skewed motivations and outright disobedience — is truly impressive. Sadly, it is not unique to Micah or to Israel.

Idolatry, Nepotism, Superstition and Peer Pressure

Most obviously, in the silver image we have idolatry. In the ordination of Micah’s son we have nepotism. In his confidence that hiring an actual Levite would lead to prosperity, we have superstition. In the building of shrines and the acceptance of household gods like the surrounding nations, we see Micah succumbing to peer pressure.

Worst of all, there was one house of God in Israel, not many, where at least three times a year every Israelite male was commanded to appear before the Lord. In the time of the judges, that house was located in Shiloh in the hill country of Ephraim, not far from where Micah lived. It was there the priests were to serve, not in the back yards of rich Ephraimites. Whatever motivated Micah to set up his own place of worship, it had nothing to do with living an onerous distance from the true house of God. Was it laziness, or ignorance, or perhaps a desire for fame and prominence? We don’t know, but whatever the motive, he was setting an awful precedent and disobeying the direct command of God.

Maybe he was just confused.

Seeking God?

It is ironic that in all of his profound confusion, amidst pagan influences and bad practice, Micah appears to have been genuinely motivated to seek God, or at least to seek his blessing. Like Micah, many believers today wander far from the faith and practices of the early churches, having uncritically absorbed influences, traditions, tropes and methodologies from both the world and other, false religions. They look for and expect God’s favor while practicing their faith in ways foreign to his word, extra-biblically and even anti-biblically.

My question: If they actually found the Lord amidst two millennia’s worth of religious clutter, would they even recognize him?