Chapter 18

1 The Danites send five men to seek out an inheritance. 3 At the house of Micah they consult with Jonathan, and are encouraged in their way. 7 They search Laish, and bring back news of good hope. 11 Six hundred men are sent to surprise it. 14 In the way they rob Micah of his priest and his consecrate things. 27 They win Laish, and call it Dan. 30 They set up idolatry, wherein Jonathan inherited the priesthood.

1. No king in Israel. The author probably wishes to explain that the following lawless action of the Danites could take place only because there was no sovereign king to keep law and order.

Unto that day. The allotted territory of Dan was on the lowland between the sea and the hills, but the Danites were unable to take it from the native inhabitants. They had been forced by the Canaanites to move back into the mountainous country (ch. 1:34).

2. Of their family. That is, of their clan, or tribe.

From their coasts. Better, “from their borders,” that is, from all parts of their territory or settlements. It seems to have been a delegation that represented all parts of the tribe.

From Zorah. See on ch. 13:2, 25.

To spy out. They saw no prospect of being able to conquer the territory allotted to them; therefore they sent some of their tribe out looking for a place where they might be able to establish themselves with less difficulty. In doing so they went contrary to the original plan of God who had given them their inheritance within the inheritance of Judah. Trust in God would have enabled them to drive out the inhabitants of the land. The migration northward was an open admission of their unwillingness to follow the plan of God.

Lodged there. Obtained a night’s lodging there.

3. Knew the voice. This may mean either that they had been acquainted with the Levite before he came to Micah and recognized his voice, or that they recognized he was a Levite by the way he spoke as he conducted a service in the private chapel. If he was the grandson of Moses (see on v. 30), the Levite may have been well known.

5. Ask counsel. Upon learning that the Levite had objects for consulting deity, an ephod and teraphim, the Danite spies requested that he inquire of the Lord whether their exploratory tour would turn out successfully.

6. Before the Lord. That is, your trip is under God’s observation and favor. The word for “Lord” used here is Yahweh (Jehovah). The Levite was practicing the worship of the true God under forms of worship forbidden in the Mosaic law.

7. Laish. Called Leshem in Joshua 19:47. After the Danites captured it, its name was changed to Dan (Judges 18:29). Under this name it was often mentioned in the OT in the expression “from Dan even to Beer-sheba.” It was Israel’s northernmost settlement (Judges 20:1; 1 Sam. 3:20; 2 Sam. 3:10; etc.). It was near the foot of Mt. Hermon in the vicinity of the headwaters of the Jordan River. It was 26.7 mi. (42.7 km.) east by south from Tyre and 42 mi. (67.2 km.) southwest of Damascus.

Careless. Heb. betach, “securely,” or “safely.” The inhabitants of Laish were so isolated from troublesome people that they had evidently not built large walls for protection, nor had they defended their city by setting guards.

Manner of the Zidonians. The Sidonians were not a warlike people, but devoted themselves to commerce.

Far from. In actual miles it was not so far, but a mountain range lay between them.

No business. They were content to live an aloof, isolated, independent life.

9. Very good. Compare Num. 14:7; Joshua 2:23, 24. The scouts bore a unanimous report concerning the feasibility of migrating to Laish, and urged immediate action.

11. Six hundred men. The whole clan did not migrate, but perhaps only the more enterprising members and those who did not have suitable land. Inasmuch as the 600 men took their families with them (v. 21), the whole group probably numbered from 1,500 to 2,000 people.

12. Kirjath-jearim. Signifying “city of forests.” From the days of Eusebius (4th century a.d.) it has been identified with Tell elРAzhar, near the modern Karyat elРФInab, and about 8 mi. (12.8 km.) from Jerusalem on the road to Jaffa. Kirjath-jearim was originally one of the cities of the Gibeonites (Joshua 9:17). In the time of Samuel it was inhabited mainly by tribesmen from Judah.

Mahaneh-dan. That is, “camp of Dan” (see on ch. 13:25).

13. House of Micah. Probably as a proper name Beth-micah. Perhaps a settlement had grown up around Micah’s home and sanctuary, and the village came to be known as Beth-micah. The migrating Danites camped in the vicinity on their way northward.

14. These houses. The term could be equivalent to “this village.”

Consider. That is, consider what to do in order to get the ephod, teraphim, and graven image into the possession of the Danites. From what follows, it was evidently decided that one group would engage the Levite in conversation, and meanwhile others would slip into the shrine and appropriate to their own use its religious objects.

15. Saluted. Literally, “asked him of his welfare.” A similar construction occurs in 2 Sam. 11:7 where David inquired as to how the war prospered.

16. Entering of the gate. Evidently there was a protecting wall around the small village, at least around Micah’s house and shrine. The main body of the Danites engaged the Levite in conversation at the gate (see v. 17).

17. The five men. Meanwhile, the five scouts who had been in the houses before and knew their way around slipped away unobserved and stole the religious objects from Micah’s shrine.

18. What do ye? When the five men returned to the gate with the cult objects, the startled priest cried out, “What are you doing?”

19. Upon thy mouth. The laying of the finger on the lips is one of the most universal of gestures (see Job 21:5; 29:9; Prov. 30:32).

20. Was glad. The perfidy of this Levite is noteworthy. He had first of all betrayed the pure worship specified by the law of Moses to minister before Micah’s idol for the sake of the money offered him. Now he abandoned his benefactor who had treated him as a son (ch. 17:11) and gladly accompanied those who were taking that which did not belong to them. We must notice that none of the characters of the narrative were at all exemplary. Micah himself was a thief. The Levite was mercenary. The Danites were lawless freebooters.

In the midst. Apparently for concealment and protection.

21. Little ones. That this was a regular migration involving women and children is brought out only in this incidental way.

Carriage. That is, baggage, household effects, etc.

Before them. The women, as well as the children, were evidently placed in front of the armed men, since the Danites were apparently expecting pursuit. The women are not mentioned, though most certainly present (see Gen. 34:29; 2 Chron. 20:13).

22. In the houses. The theft of the images was regarded as the loss of the entire village and not of Micah alone.

Gathered together. Literally, “called out,” that is, were called to arms.

23. Turned their faces. Probably without even stopping their march.

24. My gods. Micah does not scruple to call the images and teraphim his gods. Though a professed worshiper of Jehovah (see on ch. 17:2, 3), he held much of the pagan concept of deities.

Which I made. The expression is startling coming from the lips of an Israelite.

This that ye say. Micah was angry at their pretense of innocence and their attempt to throw the matter off as if it were a jest. Evidently the Danite force was far larger than Micah’s, or the Danites would not have acted with such impudence (see v. 26).

25. Angry fellows. Literally, “men bitter of soul,” that is, men of fierce dispositions and hot tempers. The Danites said in effect, “Do not bother us with your complaints lest you provoke hot-tempered men among us to attack you.” See 2 Sam. 17:8, where the temper of David and his companions was compared to a she-bear robbed of her cubs.

27. Quiet and secure. The report given by the spies was accurate. The heartless Danites surprised the people of Laish, who were unprepared for resistance. The city was captured and burned to the ground.

28. Far from Zidon. The unfortunate colony was too far from Sidon, which was probably the mother city, to obtain any help, and, inasmuch as the inhabitants of Laish apparently had not made a league with any of the neighboring Aramaic tribes or towns, there were no friendly forces to come to their rescue.

Valley. Probably the depression through which the headwaters of the Jordan flow at the foot of the lowest range of Lebanon, north of the now drained Lake Huleh.

Beth-rehob. Signifying “house of the street.” A small state of Aramaic-speaking people, according to 2 Sam. 10:6, 8.

Built a city. Upon the blackened ruins of Laish the Danites built a new city. This was the manner in ancient times. Cities were built near sources of water and on the highest point feasible for purposes of protection. Accordingly, the same sites were chosen for successive cities.

29. Dan. They named their new headquarters city after the name of their tribe, which in turn was named after Dan, whom Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, bore to Jacob.

Dan’s location in the north is mentioned in the song of Deborah (ch. 5:17). This clearly shows that the migration described in chs. 17 and 18 took place in the earliest part of the judges period. It probably occurred during the days of the elders who followed Joshua, prior to the judgeship of Othniel. This migration and the idolatry described in connection with it were depicted by the author of Judges as illustrative of the apostasy and lawlessness of the period which resulted in the successive invasions and oppressions.

30. Jonathan. This is the first time the name is given of the Levite who served first Micah and then the tribe of Dan.

Manasseh. Some of the LXX manuscripts and the Vulgate give “Moses” instead of “Manasseh.” It is true that Gershom, unless another is referred to, was the son of Moses, not of Manasseh (Ex. 2:22; 18:3). In the Hebrew (not taking into account the vowel points) the only difference between the words for Moses and Manasseh is that the word for Moses does not have the letter n. It is an interesting observation that in the Hebrew manuscripts and Bibles, edited by the Masoretic scholars, the letter n is inserted in the name in a very odd way, being “suspended” above the line, strongly indicating that it was probably added later. The Hebrew Bible shows other instances of the “suspended” letters (Ps. 80:14; Job 38:13, 15). Ancient Hebrew rabbis and scholars, as well as modern scholars, both Jewish and non-Jewish, assert that this letter was inserted into the name Moses by rabbis or scribes to change it to Manasseh and thus spare the reputation of Moses by covering up the fact that his grandson was a renegade priest of the famed idol in the sanctuary at Dan. The Talmud says that Jonathan was the grandson of Moses, but because he did the deeds of Manasseh, the later king of Judah, the Scripture assigns him to the family of Manasseh.

Incidentally, if, as seems obvious, Jonathan was the grandson of Moses, the great antiquity of the event of ch. 18 is borne out by the fact that the Levite who served Micah was separated from Moses by only one generation.

Captivity. This probably refers to an unrecorded carrying away of the northern tribes by some foreign power, such as the Aramaean states of adjoining Syria. It could hardly refer to the captivity of the northern tribes by Assyria in the days of Tiglath-pileser, for the following verse in describing the same period says that the period was “all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh” (see 1 Sam. 1:24).