Judges 17:3
And when he had restored the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, his mother said, I had wholly dedicated the silver unto the LORD from my hand for my son, to make a graven image and a molten image: now therefore I will restore it unto thee.
Judges 17-21 stand out of chronological order after the main story ending with chapter 16, recording events from the early part of the judges period that fall chronologically before Judges 11-16. They follow Joshua's closing rehearsal of God's dealings, his solemn call for Israel to choose whom they will serve, and his resolve that he and his house will serve the Lord whatever Israel does. The statement in Judges 17 that there was no king in Israel shows the book was written about the time there was a king in Israel, by Samuel or Nathan.
Micah had stolen eleven hundred shekels of silver from his mother and, becoming conscience-stricken, restored it to her. She said she had wholly dedicated the silver to the Lord from her hand for her son, yet used part of it to have a carved image and a cast image made for Micah's household shrine. The verse thus joins worship of the Lord to idolatrous objects and treats idolatry as acceptable when accompanied by religious forms, a pattern continued when Micah later obtained a Levite as priest for the images. It shows the evasive human heart using religious ordinances to excuse disobedience to God.
The act was ignorant, depraved, and wickedly absurd in supposing Jehovah would accept an idol as a dedicated gift to Him, yet it was done as a very religious act. Religious conduct in the episode does not excuse sin, and such backsliding gives no ground to think it can be done with impunity. The verse belongs to a record of Israel's backsliding, disgrace, and punishment, and to one of two stories of awful idolatry in the latter part of Judges giving the sad record of constant lapsing into idolatry. It belongs to the composite pattern of backsliding followed by suffering, oppression, captivity and servitude, then returning to God, forgiveness and deliverance, showing the perversity and unbelief of the people and the long-suffering and goodness of God and His effort to restore them. It must be read with regard to the awful moral surroundings of Israel and the demoralizing influences of the tribes they permitted to remain in the land of promise.
The verse belongs to the account of Dan's early departure from God into idolatry, illustrated by the making of graven and molten images and associated with the first apostasy of Dan. That first apostasy is suggested as a reason Dan was omitted from the tribes sealed in Revelation 7, while the chapter is also connected with Ephraim's omission and Joseph's inclusion. The verse exemplifies the same mixture as fearing the Lord while serving graven images, and the same mixture as professing to fear the Lord now while breaking the Sabbath on the supposition that the denunciations of the moral law are silenced and one or more of the ten commands are a dead letter.