What Seems Right To A Man Series

November 29, 2025

At the beginning of the wilderness journey, God had declared that He would be Israel’s God and they would be His people:

Exodus 6:7 - I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

For their part, the Children of Israel promised to obey:

Exodus 24:7 - Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, "We will do everything the LORD has said; we will obey."

As we know, God’s people struggled to keep up their side of the covenant. They were drawn to idolatry. They were drawn to the “green grass” on the other side of the fence.

They wanted all the blessings of the covenant with none of the responsibility.

By the time we arrived at the book of Judges, they were hanging on by a thread.

Judges 2:10 - After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither Yahweh nor what he had done for Israel.

And not long after they were deep in the spin.

With the death of Samson, the record of Israelite Judges comes to an end. There is no further talk of foreign oppressors or heroic liberators. Instead, the final chapters tell 2 stories:

• The 1st - a Levite from Bethlehem, in Judah, who went into the hill country of Ephraim in search of a new place to live.

• The 2nd - a Levite from the hill country of Ephraim who went to Bethlehem, in Judah, to retrieve his concubine.

Both stories shed a light on the religious and moral standards of the time – revealing that God’s people were hardly better than the nations they had dispossessed.

What is interesting is that these stories appear to have happened during the time of Joshua.

The 1st story takes us back to Joshua 15-19 and the division of the land. According to Joshua 16, Ephraim was one of the 1st tribes to receive their inheritance.

Joshua 18:1-2 tells us that the people gathered at Shiloah and set up the Tabernacle there…… but that there were still 7 tribes who had not yet received their inheritance.

Joshua 19:40-48 reveals that Dan was the last tribe to receive their inheritance, which included the towns of Zorah and Eshtaol. The Danites had difficulty taking possession of their territory, (described in Judges 1:34) because the Amorites did not allow them to occupy the fertile plains. So, looking for land, the Danites headed north. They came to a town called Leshem (Laish), attacked it, put the people to the sword and occupied it – renaming the town Dan.

It seems a straight forward story. Just more conquest. Just more bloodshed. Just more doing what Yahweh told them to do…..

Judges 17 and 18 fills in the gaps of the Joshua account – which will lead us to a completely different conclusion.

I couldn’t find a commentary that shares the following opinion, but never-the-less, I would argue that the reason these stories are so far out of chronological order is because whoever wrote Judges (Jewish tradition says Samuel) was making a direct link between the state of Israel without a king

Judges 17:6 - In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did as he saw fit.

Judges 18:1 - In those days Israel had no king….

Judges 19:1 - In those days Israel had no king….

Judges 21:25 - In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

and the eventual establishment of the Monarchy in 1st Samuel 9.

Story 1 -

There was a man named Micah “Who is like Yahweh” who lived in the hill country of Ephraim. His mother thought someone had taken her 1100 shekels of silver and she cursed them.

It turned out Micah had taken the silver and when he confessed, his mother said, “May Yahweh bless you, my son!" and she swore that she would consecrate the money to Yahweh……. By having idols made from the silver.

She took 200 of the 1100 shekels and went to the local silversmith. He cast the image and the idol and they were put into Micah’s home shrine along with the rest of his idol collection – then he consecrated one of his sons as his priest.

Micah clearly had a dim understanding of the covenant because he was mixing the worship of Yahweh with the worship of local gods – thinking nothing of the obvious contradictions.

***Judges 17:6 - “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did as he saw fit.”***