Perspective is a nice thing. When you are on a long hike, like in my Boy Scout days, it was always great to come up on the top of a ridge so you could have a look around and get your bearings and chart the course ahead, knowing that once you plunged down into the forest it’d be hard to get the big picture again till you came up on top of the next ridge.
That’s why maps and reckoning points are so important. We were taught in orienteering to look at the map, set the compass on top of it to "orient" ourselves, and then look out and see a landmark in the direction we were supposed to go. Hopefully as we went down back into the trees we could keep that landmark in view and follow the compass heading until we reached it, where we would once again do a reckoning.
It’d be nice if we could do that in life as well. Sadly, often times we just plunge into the forest where all the trees look the same. We have neither map, nor compass, nor landmark and we end up either going in circles or heading off in some direction that is not where we want to go but have no way to tell that we’ve gone way off course until we are completely lost or fall off of a cliff.
By this time in the book of Judges, Israel has been traveling for so long without a map, compass, or landmark in their relationship with Yahweh that they think they are somehow serving the LORD but are completely off course and lost spiritually.
This portion of the book, and all of Judges for that matter, can be summed up in chapter 17, verse 6: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."
Navigating life by your own eyes is a sure way to wind up lost. We need a map: God’s Word, which shows us where we’ve been and where are going. We need a compass: the conviction of the Holy Spirit that keeps us tuned to God’s Word. And we need a landmark: a Savior, Jesus Christ, who is our head, and the person we are to strive, through the Spirit, to follow.
In Chapters 17 and 18 we see a people so lost on the trail that they serve other gods and think they are serving Yahweh. It’s is a danger sign for us on the trail of life. By the way, the events from here to the end of the book are not in chronological order. In fact, they happened well before Samson in chapters 14-16. Each of the characters in this story lost direction, pulled off the path by a powerful magnet - the only thing that can affect a compass. At the end we’ll look at what did it to each of them.
Chapter 17 Verses 1 - 6 A mother’s broken compass
Moral compass broken: the woman’s money is stolen, but somehow she doesn’t get mad at her son when he tells her. A normal yearly wage was 10 shekels so this is a fortune. It’s possible that mom’s curse of the thief was the motivator for Micah to confess his crime. Perhaps she uttered the blessing to undo the curse or something.
Spiritual compass broken: makes an idol, in direct violation of God’s Law, and claims to be following Yahweh with it. Oddly, she dedicates only 200 of the 1,100 pieces of silver to the making of the idol so both why she is doing this (was the money really dedicated to God?) and how (making an idol to worship God) are in question.
The idol (possibly in the shape of a calf), the ephod, and the teraphim (household gods) were all used for divination. Further, Micah sets up a shrine and ordains one of his own sons as a "priest." This is just so wrong in absolutely every way. But Micah and his mom either no longer know or just don’t care about following God; they just use His name and go on about their business. How many people like that live in our world today?
Verses 7 - 13
Jonathan was a Levite - living in Bethlehem, not one of the cities given to the Levites, probably because the people no longer supported the Tabernacle or the priesthood. Not only did he abandon his calling as a priest of Yahweh, but he became nothing more than a priest for hire - kind of like "have gun will travel." Wherever the money was, that was the place he’d serve and whatever gods they worshipped, those were the gods (or idols) he’d use. We’ll see that come to play in chapter 18.
Micah is so deluded that he actually thought he was blessed of Yahweh by having a "real" Levite serving the idols he himself had created. We cannot put the "stamp" of God on something and think God will bless it. By that, many have called sin "God’s will."
Matthew 7:21-23 "Not everyone who says to me, ’Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ’Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ’I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ ESV
Chapter 18, Verse 1 - 6
"No king in Israel" (also not Yahweh as king) meant everyone got to decide everything for themselves. What a dangerous thing! When we rely on our own hearts to guide us we rely on a fool (the heart is, after all, deceptively wicked).
Dan walked away from God in two ways here. First they could not disposes the enemies of the allotment they were given by Joshua (Judges 1:34) so they decided to take someone else’s land by force and move north. Second, they did not seek the will of the Lord, also stole a priest, and sought the advice of a man also not following Yahweh for their battle (vs 6).
It’s sad but true that once we refuse to accept God’s will for our lives in one area, it becomes more and more easy to reject His presence and His will in all areas. We end up looking for those who agree with us, instead of looking to God to guide us because that would mean we would have to admit we were wrong and repent and we just don’t like to do that. The results here are pretty tragic.
Verses 7 - 13
Dan was given land south of Judah. But because they didn’t trust God and take possession of what Yahweh had given them, they sent these five spies way up north to the very edge of Naphtali’s territory at the foot of Mt Herman and found Laish.
Abraham visited Laish after rescuing Lot in Genesis 14:14. The people hadn’t attacked anyone, had no treaties with anyone, and lived in peace. So without any word from God the people just decided "we can take them." Just because they said "God has given it into your hands" doesn’t make it so.
Verses 14 - 20
So 600 soldiers and their families set out from Dan, went north to the hill country of Ephraim, and went to Kireath-Jearim, which is on the southwestern edge of Judah, next to Dan. From there they went up into Ephraim to Micah’s house.
I guess they just weren’t satisfied that they had heard from God and needed some help in the form of the ephod and household gods to win the battle they planned. Maybe they felt guilty and thought that if they hid behind "religion" they might not feel as bad. Even when we go our own way there is often the conviction of the Holy Spirit nudging at us. Instead of heeding that, they bulk up on false religion to drown out the Spirit’s voice.
This is just further showing us how far from serving God these people were. Mr Priest for Hire is more than glad to go with them - he’s just gotten a raise and a bigger congregation!
Micah, however, is none too happy about this.
Verses 21 - 26
I guess Micah must have started a little church there in his house because the neighbors get pretty upset that "god" has been stolen from Micah’s house. The people of Dan threaten to kill him, and I guess Micah’s god wasn’t strong enough to defend himself so away he goes.
Verses 27 - 31
This is the real tragic part of this story. After the blood bath, Dan destroys Laish and rebuilds it as Dan, setting up Micah’s god and worshiping it until they were taken away into captivity. It’s probably not the Assyrian captivity in 722BC or that of Tiglath Pileser in 733BC but since Judges was probably written early in the monarchal period of Israel’s history, it is probably some other unknown captivity. Jacob foretold Dan’s character in Genesis 49:
:17 Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bite’s the horse’s heels so that his rider falls backward."
Dan snuck in like a snake and struck when no one suspected-stealing what didn’t belong to them in the process.
Dan is actually one of the most important archeological sites in Israel. I’ve seen the city gate that has been unearthed. Archeologists have uncovered the pre-Israelite city of Laish, a different architecture as Dan, and even have uncovered the high place mentioned in verse 30. It’s an area of about 60x45 meters with an altar in the middle. A fragment of basalt stele was found there that is the only extra-Biblical mention of the House of David. It was probably erected by Hazael, King of Damascus when he captured Dan in 2 Kings 13:25)
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/dan.html
Like I mentioned at the beginning, the only thing that can pull us off course is a powerful magnet. It can make you think you are following the compass direction but in reality you are going off course. So how far off course were the four major players in this story?
Mom - was about 20 degrees off, pulled by love of family more than love of God. She didn’t address moral failure, then encouraging idolatry.
Micah was about 45 degrees off, loved self lordship over God Lordship. He stole, organized idolatry, and then focused on power and position.
The Priest was more like 90 degrees off, pulled by love of money and prestige instead of serving God. He had no loyalty to Yahweh, was ruled by fame, fortune, and false ideas about direction from God.
Dan was a full 180 degrees off, loving self determination over God determination. They literally got pulled off course, going up north where they didn’t belong. They didn’t want what God wanted for them, even though it was hard, but wanted what was easy, though it ran counter to everything God stands for: violence, no moral compass, rampant idolatry. They destroyed two cultures: the Laish by massacre and Dan by institutional idolatry.
So what do we have in these two chapters? We have a false religion set up through the theft of money, and a priest who gives up on Yahweh to provide religious legitimacy to the false religion. Then you have a people who aren’t following God who decide they are just going to grab whatever they can get their hands on, steal the false gods and the false priest, destroy a peaceful city, make it their own and then set up an altar to the false god that leads the people astray for generations. Wow, what a blessing!
How far away from God can you get while still wearing the uniform? Pretty far it seems.
For us it can happen too. I had a conversation the other day with some people who came to the door and said "we’re students of the Bible and are just talking to our neighbors and asking them what they think about it." I said "what version are you reading?" The man said "The New World Translation, but they are all pretty much the same." So then I said "not in some very key areas like John 1:1" where the New World translates it: "And the Word was a god." I told him that they translated the Bible in order to put credence to their false theology. That’s pretty close to what happened here in Judges: slapping the name Yahweh on something that wasn’t. You can’t call Jesus a god, He is God. In fact in the Greek the sentence reads "And God was the Word."
So lesson one: you can’t just create your own idea about God and call it good. You must rely on God’s revelation to us, His Word, and when we run counter to that we are wrong.
So to finish up I’d like to return to the analogy of finding your way.
The Bible is the map, giving us the overall perspective and the path from beginning to end
The conviction of the Holy Spirit is the compass that that keeps us tuned to God’s Word and tells us when we are going the wrong direction.
The landmark is our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is our head, and the person we are to strive, through the Spirit, to look to and aspire to. A danger we can encounter are landmarks that look like Jesus, but aren’t. That’s why the map is so important.
We can also look for trail markers along the way. That’s the saints who’ve come before us who have set example and left their lives as little reminders of where we are going and who we are serving.
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