Judges 18 Study Notes

18:22-26 When Micah mustered (lit “cried out to”) his neighbors and pursued the Danites, the Danites asked him why he had done this. “Mustered” is the same verb used to describe Israel’s cry to the Lord when harassed by enemies. Here the Israelites had become their own oppressors. Micah had made his own gods and appointed his own priest, concluding that “Now I know that the Lord will be good to me” (17:13). In fact, his gods could be carried off by a passing band of brigands, and the priest he had appointed for money could be lured away by a higher salary. He was left with nothing except his own life, and the Danites were quick to threaten that as well as the lives of his family. The silver he stole at the outset was now stolen from him; his mother’s curse in 17:2 was fulfilled.

18:27-29 Laish was in a valley that belonged to Beth-rehob, a name that links this conquest by the Danites once again with the spying mission of Nm 13-14, where Rehob was the northern limit of the land (Nm 13:21). They renamed Laish Dan, after their ancestor, and established it as the primary center for their idolatrous cult. Later, Jeroboam would locate one of his two golden calves in Dan, continuing the city’s tradition of idolatry (1Kg 12:29).

18:30-31 The idol set up by the Danites served as a rival for the true worship of God, which was conducted where the ark was, in Shiloh. The Levite, introduced in 17:7, is finally named and is revealed to have an illustrious ancestry. He is Jonathan, the grandson of Moses. Later scribes who wrote out copies of the book of Judges naturally disdained the corrupt “Jonathan” and wished to show that he had greater affinity with the later idolatrous King Manasseh than he did with Moses. Thus they placed the Hebrew letter nun in the middle of the name “Moses,” making it read “Manasseh” instead. In this way they passed judgment on the false priest, linking him to evil Manasseh rather than righteous Moses. Since the scribes were careful to superscript the letter nun above the rest of the text, making it clear that it was not original to the text, we are not left in doubt that the original reading is “Moses.”

Such an idolatrous cult as the Danites, even when served by a priesthood that enjoyed an exalted ancestry, could only have a negative outcome, as the reference to an exile makes clear. The mention of the exile suggests that the final editing of Judges occurred some time after the exile of the northern kingdom in 722 BC.