Judges 17:3

3 He returned the money to her, and she said, “I now dedicate these silver coins to the LORD . In honor of my son, I will have an image carved and an idol cast.”

Judges 17:3 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 17:3

And when he had restored the eleven hundred shekels of silver
to his mother
The whole sum, having embezzled none of it:

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;
this she had done either before it was stolen, and it troubled her the more, and caused her the rather to curse the man that had taken it; or after it was stolen, that if it should be recovered again she would appropriate it to such an use; so Abarbinel; and by the Lord, or Jehovah, she doubtless meant the true God; for she had no intention to forsake him, but to worship him in and by these images, and which she designed for the use of her son and his family, that they might not go so far as Shiloh to worship at the tabernacle there:

therefore I will restore it unto thee;
for that use, and so gave him the money again, to be laid out in images, or to make images of it.

Judges 17:3 In-Context

1 There was a man named Micah, who lived in the hill country of Ephraim.

2 One day he said to his mother, “I heard you place a curse on the person who stole 1,100 pieces of silver from you. Well, I have the money. I was the one who took it.” “The LORD bless you for admitting it,” his mother replied.

3 He returned the money to her, and she said, “I now dedicate these silver coins to the LORD . In honor of my son, I will have an image carved and an idol cast.”

4 So when he returned the money to his mother, she took 200 silver coins and gave them to a silversmith, who made them into an image and an idol. And these were placed in Micah’s house.

5 Micah set up a shrine for the idol, and he made a sacred ephod and some household idols. Then he installed one of his sons as his personal priest.