Micah’s Idol and Priest

7There was a young man out of Bethlehem Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite; and he lived there. 8The man departed out of the city, out of Bethlehem Judah, to live where he could find a place, and he came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, as he traveled. 9Micah said to him, “Where did you come from?” He said to him, “I am a Levite of Bethlehem Judah, and I am looking for a place to live.” 10Micah said to him, “Dwell with me, and be to me a father and a priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver per year, a suit of clothing, and your food.” So the Levite went in. 11The Levite was content to dwell with the man; and the young man was to him as one of his sons. 12Micah consecrated the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of Micah. 13Then Micah said, “Now know I that Yahweh will do good to me, since I have a Levite as my priest.”

The Idol and the Priest

It is not easy for parents to judge their children’s conduct dispassionately. Whatever the situation, they hear their own child out first and lean toward whatever favors that child, because that is simply a parent’s heart. Yet if children never learn to judge for themselves, parents may find themselves in trouble even after raising them to adulthood. We must not neglect the training of character and the discipline that children need to take their place in the world. When there is a quarrel, if we listen only to our own child and take their side for fear of crushing their spirit, the child never learns the measure of what is good. If we are always taken in by a child who lies to get out of the moment, that child will keep on lying and, grown up, will be unable to adapt to life in society. Because parents so easily cover over their children’s serious wrongs, children lose their fear of sin.

Micah’s mother in today’s passage likewise made the problem worse: instead of judging her son’s wrong coolly and disciplining him, she covered over his sin. Afraid that her son, who had stolen her money, would come under a curse, she not only hid his sin but went on to sin herself by making an image for his sake. This event is thought to have taken place in the days of the judge Othniel, so it happened early in the period of the judges, in Ephraim.

When Micah’s mother discovered that eleven hundred pieces of silver were missing, she poured out a terrible curse on whoever had taken them. A curse carried the sense of petitioning or pleading with a god, and people believed that appealing to a god in itself held a kind of magical power. So although Micah had kept quiet at first after stealing so large a sum, when he heard his mother’s curse he feared it would fall on him from God, and he confessed that he was the thief. How a mother responds at that moment, when her son admits his wrong, shapes his character. That is why, even if she means to forgive him later, she must first weigh what was right and what was wrong.

But once she learned that the thief was her son, she did the opposite: she made an image, and even an ephod, the garment of a priest, and teraphim. Micah’s mother speaks of dedicating the image to Yahweh, and from this we can tell that the faith of the Israelites had already been corrupted.

Romans 1:23 calls it sin to exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for images made like corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things. A faith that exchanges the truth of God for a lie and worships and serves the creature, as Israel’s did, breaks God’s commandments. This way of thinking, that a curse may fall on anyone else so long as it does not fall on my son, is nothing less than serving one’s son as an idol.

Micah had broken the commandment against stealing; yet his mother, afraid he would be cursed, went so far as to sin by making an image. Setting her son’s wrong behavior right should have come first, but because his mother craved God’s blessing, Micah never even had the chance to repent. Parents today, too, think it hardly matters that their children do wrong, so long as they succeed and live better than others. They should be raising their children to live upright lives and to be blessed by God because of that faith; instead they hope only for success, whether or not the children live rightly. Even if the children succeed as their parents wish, they will live unhappy lives, unable to keep hold of their blessings, having never developed good character.

Proverbs sets out precisely how children can be blessed without their parents grasping after it.

Proverbs 3:1-10

1My son, don’t forget my teaching; but let your heart keep my commandments: 2for length of days, and years of life, and peace, will they add to you. 3Don’t let kindness and truth forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. 4So you will find favor, and good understanding in the sight of God and man. 5Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding. 6In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. 7Don’t be wise in your own eyes. Fear Yahweh, and depart from evil. 8It will be health to your body, and nourishment to your bones. 9Honor Yahweh with your substance, with the first fruits of all your increase: 10so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine.

When children keep God’s law, they can enjoy peace and long life. Children who love Jesus Christ and meditate on the word always find favor and are held in honor in the sight of God and man, and their lives can therefore prosper. Suppose parents let go of two foolish notions: that their children can only do well with their help, and that it is thanks to them that their children have done well. If they then teach the word without ceasing and raise their children wisely to live it out for themselves, those children will lead blessed lives. If parents keep their children shut up in their arms and make them live only as the parents see fit, the children will never gain the wisdom to judge and decide for themselves.

If parents teach a faith that gives honestly to God what belongs to God, and teach that God is the master of their lives, their children’s lives will flourish. If they covet nothing but worldly success, that greed will make them cover their children’s sins, rob them of the chance to meet God fully, and shut off their chance to choose the good for themselves.

To leave unchecked a child who does not live by faith is to be guilty of making an image. Micah’s mother could be a picture of us. We interpret God’s blessing however we see fit and use it to measure our children’s success, so that even our joy in them becomes a boast about ourselves.

Micah’s mother sinned by making an image and still meant to offer it to Yahweh. That is no different from Christians today who make choices for their own sake and then say they are giving glory to God. The saints of the early church gladly laid down their lives to keep the word; but now that persecution for the faith has passed, the church has turned, as a matter of course, to serving the idols of the world.

Like Micah and his mother, people decide as they please whenever something seems right to them, even when the Bible says otherwise. Anyone who lacks the discernment that comes from the word cannot help living as Micah’s mother did.

Judges 17:9-10

9Micah said to him, “Where did you come from?” He said to him, “I am a Levite of Bethlehem Judah, and I am looking for a place to live.” 10Micah said to him, “Dwell with me, and be to me a father and a priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver per year, a suit of clothing, and your food.” So the Levite went in.

In giving the law, Moses told the tribes to set apart for the Levites six cities of refuge and some forty towns. But the period of the judges was an age of religious disorder, and such a rule was hardly going to be kept.

The Levite should have stayed in the territory of Judah and served in the sanctuary; instead he was going from place to place looking for somewhere to live, to earn his bread. Along the way he happened to come to Micah’s house, and Micah was delighted to meet a Levite from Bethlehem. Perhaps Micah and his mother thought this great blessing, the arrival of a Levite, had come to them because they had offered the image to Yahweh.

People are like them. They do wrong, and then, if things in the world seem to be going well, they foolishly conclude that God has blessed them because of something they did. God does not wait to receive offerings or prayers before he acts, nor does he bless people as a reward for their service. When we bring our offerings and prayers with true faith and integrity, God puts the faith of the faithful to use where it is needed and makes it bear fruit.

When Micah offered the Levite ten pieces of silver a year, a suit of clothing, and his food, the Levite, who had nowhere else to go, would also have taken his meeting with Micah as God’s blessing. Having installed the Levite as his priest, Micah now thought that God would surely pour out great blessing on his house.

Do you see their meeting as God’s blessing? The two of them would call it God’s answer, but it is nothing more than the greed of people who have nothing to do with God. We need to ask whether it is right for a Levite, who ought to serve, minister, and sacrifice for God, to become a priest who prays blessing on one household to secure his own livelihood. He had forgotten what the office of priest is for and how a priest ought to live; for the sake of food and a living he abandoned a holy office. The office God gives is not something to be bargained away for worldly success or for one’s bread. It is because people share this Levite’s mistaken view that they treat church office like a promotion at work and think of a pastor as little more than someone who prays for their family’s good fortune. Micah offered the Levite ten pieces of silver a year, a suit of clothing, and food, so long as he prayed for Micah and his house; it is like telling a pastor that, since the stipend has been paid, they should pray for the household’s prosperity.

The Levites were the ones who carried out holy work in God’s sanctuary. But the people did not support them so that they could do God’s work, and so this Levite had no choice but to leave God’s work and take to the road to make a living. Pastors, too, do God’s work. Since God has made them responsible for the community called the church, they watch over the saints and pray for them. If pastors forget this calling, they will try to solve the problem of making a living by currying favor with people, and they will abandon the word for the sake of worldly success. You who make up the church must do your utmost to help your pastor give full attention to God’s work, and you must help with the gifts, the means, and the abilities you have received. When you use what you own to serve the church, the Kingdom of God can grow, and God, seeing that faith, will entrust you with still more.

If pastors preach the word honestly, they may well consider their calling fulfilled. But because the word is preached for the saving of souls, they go further and help their people to love God more.

When this is so, God blesses the members who labor alongside their pastor and give themselves to the work, and through that blessing they come to enjoy peace and rest. If this order is reversed, the pastor becomes a priest hired in Micah’s house, and the congregation becomes Micah, paying the priest his keep.

If church members care, as Micah did, only about the blessings that come to them, they will become corrupt and materialistic believers who hire pastors with money. The Levite was content with Micah’s generous treatment of him as a son, and he lived a comfortable life praying for Micah’s house. Then Micah told the Levite that, now that he had become his priest, he expected Yahweh to bless him. Micah assumed that a priest’s prayer made his blessing certain; but a priest’s prayer does not bring blessing apart from Micah’s own faith. Such words come from not knowing God.

Micah had never rightly met God, and that is why he rejoices, saying that his mother’s curse will not come upon him. To receive God’s blessing, we must live by God’s law.

Judges 18:24

24He said, “You have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and have gone away! What more do I have? How can you ask me, ‘What ails you?’”

Micah’s corrupted faith reveals that all of Israel held a false faith, one that did not walk in the way God had commanded. Since the faith of the whole people must have been like theirs, they did not risk their lives in the battles needed to take the land allotted to them.

Joshua 19:40 and the verses that follow tell us that the tribe of Dan could not drive out the Amorites living in their allotted land, and so, like the Levite, they wandered about looking for land to settle. Had they relied on God and fought in faith as Caleb did, God would have helped them take the land allotted to them; but they did not rely on God, and they ended up as wanderers. This is what our faith looks like when it has not stood on the rock. Only by standing firm on Christ, the rock, can we have a faith that puts down roots; it is our refusal to fight Satan that leaves us wandering this way and that.

As it happened, the spies who were scouting through Ephraim came to lodge at Micah’s house. They recognized the voice of the Levite and asked him what he was doing there. The men of Dan knew his voice, which suggests that they must have met the wandering Levite while they were searching for a place to settle. The Levite told them how he had come to stay in Micah’s house. When they asked him, as he was performing the rites, to inquire of God whether their way would prosper, he told them that it would.

Listen to their conversation. They know nothing of who God is, and they use him the way one consults a fortune-teller, solely for their own prosperity. In the same way, Christians today think of God as one who works for their future. But not everything people call blessing is good, and not every hardship is bad, because even what we think of as bad may be the road to a good outcome.

God blesses those who believe that Christ came to this earth in the flesh. If worldly success were God’s will, then those who chose suffering for the sake of the gospel, and people like Barnabas, who gave everything he owned and was faithful even to death, would be people God had cast off. I hope you will not forget that God’s will is for you to set your faith on a firm footing, so that your faith in Christ does not waver. Knowing that in the course of God’s establishing his Kingdom on this earth the Gentiles have been saved, we must give ourselves to him all the more.

The five men of Dan who had gone out as spies returned and reported that Micah’s house held an ephod, teraphim, a carved image, and a molten image. When they added that the Levite had said God would make their future prosper, the Danites had nothing left to fear. Before going to attack Laish, they descended on Micah’s house to seize his images, his ephod, and his priest. Six hundred armed men of Dan camped around the house and carried off the image, the ephod, and the teraphim. For a tribe of Israel to act like this is no different from Micah making an image and installing a priest for himself alone. When God’s people likewise practice their faith only for their own sake, and when the church lives for outward growth rather than for spreading the gospel, it shows that they have not rightly met God.

Seeing them carry off Micah’s images, the Levite asked why they were taking them. They answered by asking whether it would not be better for him to be priest to a tribe than to one man, and invited him to come with them. One wrong choice goes on giving birth to sin. Once again the Levite judged wrongly, supposing that as priest to the tribe of Dan rather than to one man, he could hold greater power and authority. This is the world’s way of thinking through and through, since its arithmetic holds that two are better than one and ten stronger than two. Of course, that arithmetic is indispensable for getting by in the world.

But these men were not people of the world; they were God’s people. Those who belong to God should not reckon that a hundred is better than ten; they should ask how many among the ten, or among the hundred, have true faith. Pastors who look to a hundred heads rather than to ten members of sincere faith will be kept by greed from preaching the word rightly.

I am not saying that it is wrong for a church to have many members. But in the end it is those who have faith who sacrifice themselves and give themselves for the saving of souls; my point is that we must build them up well, so that they can work with a faith that is full.

Having forsaken God’s sanctuary and lived only for himself, the Levite now has no idea, as he abandons Micah and moves on to a whole tribe, what sin he is committing. When the tribe of Dan moved to take the image and the priest, Micah began to insist that the god and the priest were his property. He had made the god and brought in the priest himself, so they belonged to him.

If God belonged to the one who made the image, Micah would be right, because it was a god he had made for himself, for his children, for his house, and the priest prayed for no one but him.

But what do you think, hearing this? Do you agree with Micah that God is not one whom I must serve, but one who is there for my future, for my children, for my household? And do you think of your pastor, as Micah thought of the Levite, as someone you have paid, who must therefore pray for you, for your children, and for your household?

This kind of thinking leads people to ask why their circumstances do not improve though they go to church, and why their illness is not healed. In the end this reveals that they have not met Christ and have not come to salvation. God does not exist for the blessing of one individual. And if the pastor has preached the word honestly, the right response of faith is for those who heard it to give themselves to God’s Kingdom and grow of their own accord. Just as the body grows when it is fed, those who eat spiritual food should learn to discern for themselves and to be faithful.

The men of Dan threatened Micah when he demanded his god and his priest back. Watching the Levite, who had received such kindness from Micah, discard him without a second thought to become priest of the tribe of Dan, we see how wicked the human heart is. Carrying off an image does not mean God goes along with it, and taking a Levite does not mean God will bless them.

Yet with an idol and a priest in hand, the tribe of Dan feared nothing; emboldened, they cruelly slaughtered the people of Laish, who were living in peace, and seized their land. They went into land that had never been allotted to them and attacked it without mercy; they fully deserved to be forsaken by God.

Through Micah and his mother, the tribe of Dan, and the Levite, we have seen how precious a faith firmly grounded on the word is. Had Micah’s mother rebuked him sharply from the start for stealing, his life would have been different: he would not have installed the Levite, and he would not have been attacked by the tribe of Dan. Had his mother taught him rightly the difference between good and evil, and taught him the law so that he knew the whole will of God, his life would have taken another course. His mother’s greed and her false teaching raised her son to live a life that had no part in God.

Let us never forget that they forgot they were God’s people, lived only for themselves, and in the end were forsaken by God and lost everything. It is by living with an honest faith in Christ that we become faithful servants and are blessed; may you always live a holy life.