The Levite

Judges 17-18
The five last chapters of the book of Judges form a sort of appendix thereto, relating incidents
which, in their chronological place, would come nearer to the commencement than to the close
of the book. The incidents are of a very different complexion; but they are very important, from
the distinct impression they enable us to realize of the loose condition of society during the
anarchical period which intervened between the death of the elders who outlived Joshua, and
the government of Othniel. To that period it is generally conceived that these events should both
be referred; and we acquiesce in the conclusion, without feeling it necessary here to state the
grounds on which it seems to us probable. We turn rather to note the information which may be
gleaned from these transactions.
There was an old woman dwelling with her married or widowed son, Note: He had grown-up
sons, and must therefore have been the one or the other. That the woman was advanced in years
is proved by her grandsons being of adult age. Micah, in Mount Ephraim, who one day missed a
treasure of eleven hundred pieces of silver, probably the savings of her life, which she had
carefully laid up. Her imprecations upon the thief were so awful, that her son, who had really
taken the money, fearing lest some of that dreadful thinga mothers curse, might unknowingly
alight on his head, informed her that it was he who had removed her silver. In him this, under
the circumstances, was a comparatively light offence, the money being what he supposed must
soon come to him by inheritance. His mother did not therefore reproach him, but rather blessed
him; and proceeded to explain, that her anxiety in the matter had proceeded from the special
destination which she had made of the money, and which, she supposed, would not be less
advantageous to him than the inheritance of it. She had wholly dedicated it to Jehovah; and
she now invited him to take the money and give effect to her intention. He, however, preferred
to leave the money in her hands, while he wrought with her in carrying out the design. This was
no less than to set up a small establishment like that at the tabernacle, the service of which
seems to have been at this time much neglected, and the access to it, from the troubled state of
the country, difficult. Micah and his mother seem to have thought, that the restriction to one
place of ceremonial worship, respected only sacrifice: and that, while he abstained from setting
up an altar for offerings of blood, he should not only be committing no offence, but doing a
laudable action acceptable to God, by setting up a place for his service by prayer, and perhaps by
bloodless offerings.
So he soon had what he conceived to be a house of God. Note: A house of gods, in the
authorized versionbut it is more agreeable to the circumstances that the plural form should
here, as usual, be understood in the singular sense. He had a chamber, it would seem, set apart
for this service; and in it was a priests dress (an ephod), and a graven image and a molten
image. For image, some read indefinitely thing, which the original will admit; and suppose
that imitations of the sacred utensils, or of some of them, are intended, such as the candlestick,
etc. Whether so or not, there were certainly images, for teraphim are presently mentioned. As
these teraphim occur in Scripture in somewhat diversified applications, some of which indicate a
resemblance to the human figure, Note: As in respect to the image or teraph which Michal put in
Davids bed, and passed off for himself, sick. we incline to the supposition, that they were
designed to represent the cherubim of the tabernacle.
Micah was now a happy man. His chapel was intended not only for the advantage of his
household, but to form a center of worship and prayer to the neighborhood. There was nothing
idolatrous in it, as regarded the intention of Micah, who deemed that he was doing God service,
being unable to discover the idolatrous tendencies which placed it among forbidden things. One
feels a kind of sympathy for this obviously sincere man, while deploring his grievous and
dangerous error of judgment.
There was one want. There was the framework of a little ecclesiastical settlement; but the
animating spirit, in an officiating minister, was wanting. A patriarch would have been content to
suppose that he might becomingly had the devotions of his household; but the idea of a distinct
priesthood being by this time established, nothing would satisfy Micah but the presence of some
one specially set apart for the service of his house of prayer. Not being able, however, to get a
priest or even a Levite, he remembered that the Levitical tribe were taken into the Lords service
in lieu of the first-born of all the tribes, and therefore he set apart his own son probably his first-
born, for this duty.
Though he adopted this resource, Micah was aware that this was not altogether correct, and
desired to have a Levite for his officiating minister. He was not long unsatisfied. One day a
wandering Levite called at his house, either from having heard, as he passed, of the
establishment there, or to claim the hospitality usually shown to strangers, and which the law
particularly enjoined to be shown to the Levites. His name was Jonathan, and he belonged to
Bethlehem in Judah. This at the outset seems an irregularity; for the Levites had cities of their
own among the different tribes, and Bethlehem was not a Levitical city. But it would seem that,
in times of confession like this, the regulation was not much heeded, and the Levites, or a
considerable proportion of them, were dispersed over the land, as necessity, convenience, or
private connections suggested. Indeed, seeing that in their towns they derived their subsistence
from the provision made for them by the law, and that they were not, like the men of other
tribes, landowners, they would be obliged, in unsettled times, when the payment of the dues on
which they depended was neglected, or became insufficient for the whole body, to leave their
towns and go to other places in search of a maintenance. This would be especially the case with
the younger Levites; and, indeed, the Jewish writers intimate, with sufficient probability, that
even in good timesand perhaps as a characteristic of good timesthe Levites went much about
the country as teachers of the law and educatorswhich were, indeed, the same function: for
education among the Hebrews consisted, primarily, of instruction in the law and the capacity of
reading it. The function of the priesthood was to offer sacrifices, not to teach; the function of the
Levites, besides assisting the priests in the lower departments of their duty, was to teach, and
not to sacrifice. They were the teachers of the law; and, although not stated in Scripture, there is
reason, from the more probability of the case, to believe that the Jewish writers are not wrong in
affirming that zealous Levites dispersed themselves about the country, and went from place to
place, tarrying wherever their services seemed to be required, in discharge of this important
branch of their functions. The subject is interesting , but is too large for incidental discussion
here; and therefore we pass it, with the remark that, seeing the function of a Levite was to
teachseeing that he exercised no trade or profession, it must have been only as a teacher, an
educator of the people, a guide in religious matters, that a Levite could seek employment; and
when, therefore, we find one traveling in search of an opening for his services, this implies that
such openings were to be found, and that in various localities a demand for such services
existed.
This was the case with our Levite. He told Micah that he was in search of a place where he might
settleI go to sojourn where I may find a place. On hearing this, Micah gladly seized the
opportunity of completing, as he conceived, his establishment, by engaging this Levite for his
minister. This person seems to have been no more conscious of the gross irregularity of the
proceeding than Micah himself, who, in the joy of his heart, exclaimed, Now I know that
Jehovah will bless me, seeing that I have a Levite to be my priest. Alas for him, if he had no
other hope of a blessing than this!
The terms on which Micah engaged the services of this young Levite are remarkable. I will give
thee ten shekels of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel, and thy victuals. We are startled at
the smallness of the sum, which does not exceed five-and-twenty shillings at the present value of
silver. But the worth of the money with regard to the cost of commodities, by which the real
value is determined, must have been much greater, relatively, in that age and country. Even at
the present day, money is, in that relation, of three or four times the value in Syria that it bears
with usthat is, it will go three or four times as far in the purchase of necessaries; and
Burckhardt informs us, that thirty years ago, about six pounds by the year was all the income
which the bishop of Kerak Note: Mentioned before at page 344. derived from his seeit is
probably not so much at present, as his see is certainly in a less flourishing condition. We are
also to consider, that in a simple age, and in a country then without commerce, a young man was
held to have little occasion for expense when provided with clothing and food. Micah evidently
made what he conceived to be a liberal offerand as the Levite himself received it its such, we
have no reason to consider that it was otherwise. The suit of apparel does not, as our use of the
word implies, consist of a single dress, but a complete set-out of apparel, meaning probably an
ordinary dress, and another to use in the services of the office he had undertaken.
The engagement, however, was not so splendid, but that the Levite, somewhat too eagerly for
any strong sense of gratitude to his patron, accepted an offer to exercise the same functions for
that division of the tribe of Dan which passed this way, in going to find a new settlement in the
northat Laish, afterwards called Dan; and there is reason to apprehend that he did not very
eagerly protest against the abstraction, by the strong-handed Danites, of the whole
paraphernalia of Micahs establishment, on which a little fortune had been expended. Micah was
absent at the time; but he soon discovered his loss, and pursued the party with the people of the
neighborhood, who were equally interested in the support of his establishment. They found,
however, that the Danites were too strong for them, and reluctantly returned, after Micah had
received a rough hint as to the danger he incurred by, not putting up quietly with his loss. It may
be hoped that the loss was his eventual gain. But the original of this remarkable establishment,
as well as the eagerness of the Danites to appropriate it to themselves, is very painfully
demonstrative of the loose notions of the age; and it is of importance as supplying the link in the
downward progress to that direct idolatry into which the nation not long after generally fell. In
the leading narrative the transition seems very abrupt. There were intermediate corruptions and
ignorance, and here their nature is indicated, and the connection is in this and the following
narration supplied.