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

In today’s passage we have two accounts (the first one is a two part story) which provide us with almost no information about when they happened relative to the other events chronicled in this book.   Both of these accounts appear to be here in order to make the case for kingship.  First we have the account of the Levite who became Micah’s priest and then later the priest for the tribe of Dan.  There is a reference in Joshua which appears reference this event, but that doesn’t really narrow down when it happened by much.  This account suggests that the tribe of Dan set up a separate “cult” of worship of Jehovah from that which was centered around the Tabernacle, which would explain why King Jeroboam set up one of his idols in Dan after he rebelled from King Rehoboam.

The second account describes a Levite who was travelling.  He decided to not stop in Jerusalem for the night, but travelled on from there to Gibeah.  He chose to travel on to Gibeah because Jerusalem was inhabited by Jebusites at that time, while Gibeah was inhabited by Israelites of the tribe of Benjamin.  The implication being that he would be safer among his own people than among foreigners.  In fact, I believe that the offense which led to the war on Gibeah was exactly that, that the people of Gibeah treated their fellow Israelite worse than foreigners would have.  Another thing, before today I never made the connection that King Saul’s capital was the same Gibeah as related in this account.  Once I made that connection, I realized how close David grew up to where King Saul ruled from.  David’s family would have been known to Saul’s family, and vice versa.  Knowing that puts a whole new light on the relationships between those who served King Saul and those who served David.

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