Judges 17:9, commentary and pictures

Judges 17-21 stand last in the book but record events from the early part of the judges period, while the main narrative ends with chapter 16, and those final chapters come earlier in time than chapters 11-16 and show the low state into which Israel had fallen before Samuel was called as a prophet. The chronology around them is hard to fix because it is difficult to decide whether the judges ruled consecutively or contemporaneously, since a judge was often over only one locality or tribe in Israel. They belong to the sad record in Judges 3 to 21 of backsliding and lapsing into idolatry followed by disgrace, suffering, oppression, captivity, servitude and punishment, and of returning to God followed by forgiveness and deliverance, exhibiting the perversity and unbelief of the people amid awful moral surroundings and the demoralizing influences of the tribes Israel permitted to remain, set against the long-suffering and goodness of God toward them and His effort to restore them. In that backsliding conventional hospitality was placed higher than female virtue and clannish loyalty to a tribe was placed above rendering justice, a condition still seen today, yet giving never any excuse for sin, and warning that no one can backslide with impunity.

The verse records a young Levite of Bethlehem-judah leaving for an unknown reason to sojourn wherever he might find a place, and arriving at Micah's house in Mount Ephraim. Micah hires him as priest to his household and shrine of graven image, ephod, teraphim and molten image, offering food, clothing and ten shekels a year, an irregular appointment made by someone outside the tribe of Levi. In obtaining a Levite as priest for his molten images, Micah wrongly supposes that idolatry would be acceptable to God when accompanied by religious ordinances. The shrine he serves is Satan's rival sanctuary in the days of the Judges and Samuel.

The Levite's search for a place leads him to serve Micah's idols as part of Dan's early departure from God. Six hundred armed Danites on their way to take Laish find priest and idols at Micah's house, carry priest, idols and all to Laish, destroy Laish, build the city of Dan there, and establish idolatrous worship there lasting till the captivity of the ten tribes, so that Jeroboam could easily set up his golden calf at Dan and turn a people already practicing idolatry to worship it. This apparently minor event is the beginning of the scattering of Levi foretold by Jacob, and the account is associated with Ephraim's apostasy, offered as a possible reason Ephraim is omitted from the tribes numbered among the sealed and Joseph is named instead.