Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 17-19.

These two stories come at the end of the Book of Judges, but it is clear that they did not occur at the end of the time period that the book covers.  The first story about Micah and the tribe of Dan would have taken place shortly after the death of Joshua.  All of the characters in the story seem  to have questionable morals (except possibly Micah’s mother).  Micah stole a sizable amount of money from his mother and only returned it when he heard her declare a curse on the thief.  Then when she gave him an image, he made it into an idol which he worshiped.  Initially, he had one of his sons act as priest to this idol, but when opportunity arose, he hired a Levite to be his family priest.  Neither he nor the Levite he hired recognized the need to be held accountable by the larger body of the people of God.  Later, when the Danites offered him a better position, the Levite left Micah and blessed the Danites theft from him.  The Danites thought they gained God’s favor by stealing Micah’s idol and acquiring his priest to serve them.  Again, they failed to see the benefit that came from being held accountable to the larger body of God’s people.  If we look closely at the story of settlement by the Israelites, the Danites were travelling through the area where Micah lived because they had been unable to conquer the area Joshua had chosen for them by lot, and the larger body of Israel failed to come to their aid.  In the same way, the larger body of Israel had ignored the misbehavior of the men of Gibeah from the second story in today’s passage, until an incident which was over the top came to their attention.  These two stories relay how we need to place ourselves in fellowship with our fellow members of the Body of Christ and how we need to both offer support for our fellows struggles and hold them accountable for misbehavior.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.