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

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

    The stories in today’s passage can be summed up by what was written in chapter 17 verse 6 “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” We have the story of Micah, who stole money from his own mother and only gave it back because he heard her curse whoever had stolen it. She then made an idol out of some of the silver and gave it to Micah, who set it up as his god. Micah recruited a Levite to be his priest. Micah apparently believed that making the Levite his priest to this idol would make worshiping the idol the same as worshiping God. The thing is this is what seemed right in Micah’s eyes and there was no one to tell him he was wrong.

    Once Micah’s Levite was well established as his priest, the tribe of Dan passed through the area seeking to conquer an area as their own land (there is some question in my mind if this was the entire tribe of Dan, or just a subset…not that it matters for the point of the story). They decided to take Micah’s idol and his priest as their own. Micah gathered some of his neighbors and pursued them. However, the war band from the tribe of Dan was too powerful for him to confront. There are two aspects of this that reflect on the point of this passage. Micah’s neighbors saw nothing wrong with what he had been doing in worshiping his idol and supported him in his attempt to get it back. The second aspect is that the tribe of Dan saw nothing wrong with stealing his idol and worship implements for their own use and nothing wrong with threatening him for making a fuss about the fact that they had done so. Not only was there no one to tell the members of the tribe of Dan that they were wrong but they were willing to commit violence against those who tried to do so.

    Next we have the story of the Levite and his concubine, which is only connected to the first two stories by the theme of each man doing what he thought was right in his own eyes. First we have the setup which explains why the Levite stayed in a town with which he was unfamiliar. Next, we learn that the man chose to push on past a town of Gentiles because he thought it would be safer to stay in a town of Israelites. Then we learn that the townsfolk have developed a pattern of abusing travelers passing through the town.

SIDENOTE: The old man from Ephraim who was working in the town insists that the travelers, under no circumstances, stay in the town square. The old man’s words to the Levite bear a remarkable resemblance to what Lat said to the angels when they came to Sodom. I believe that the writer intended this resemblance.

Finally, even though the traveler has been invited into the home of someone living among them, some of the men of the town insisted that their host turn him out for them to abuse (again the resemblance to the story of Lot and the angels).
    Now, related to the theme of this passage, we note that, unlike the story of Lat and the angels, this was not all of the men of the town, merely “a crowd of troublemakers.” However, as I noted earlier, this was clearly not the first time these troublemakers had done something like this, yet none of the other men of the town had done anything to make them stop, not even appealing to upright men from other towns to help them. one gets the feeling that they had an attitude of “Well, who am I to tell them that what they are doing is wrong?” Today’s passage ends with the Levite sending word out to all of the tribes of Israel which was essentially, “OK, THIS is going too far. We need to do something.” This story is a start in showing what eventually happens when “Every man does what is right in his own eyes.” But tomorrow’s passage shows us that it gets even worse when people finally start to try to turn things around.