Judges 17 -- THINKING It's Right Doesn't MAKE It Right

As my commentary noted, this was one messed-up family!  The grandmother of the bunch suddenly misses 28 pounds of silver.  She must have been doing well.  She starts calling down curses on whoever took it.  Those curses finally scare her son Micah enough that he admits that he’s the culprit.

 

Now grandmother is in a quandary.  She has called down curses on her own son, and she needs a way to undo them.  So she starts by saying, “God bless you, my son!”  She’s asking God to bless an unrepentant liar and thief!

 

Now she needs to handle the material side of it.  So she decides to “give the silver to the Lord” as an offering to make up for her son’s sin.  But since that will be quite costly and more than she probably ever intended to give, she needs to game the system.  So she turns over five of those 28 pounds (less than 1/5^th) to a silversmith who molded it into an idol.  She then gave this idol to her son!

 

Now, the liar and thief has his ill-gotten gains back in his house (she’s probably okay with that – he’d have inherited it later anyway).  Surely in the process, she figures, God will be happy about the offering, even though it’s really cost her nothing.

 

My commentary figured that the son broke 7 of the 10 commandments and the mother broke at least two!  And God was supposed to be honored in all this??  They didn’t even feel the least bit guilty!

 

This all happened at a time when “people were doing what seemed right in their own lives, and it’s certainly apparent!

 

The son didn’t stop there.  He hired a young Levite to come live with him and be his priest.  He’d earlier appointed his own son for the duties.  Neither were from the family of Aaron, so neither could be a priest!  This would surely impress God – having his own priest living with him!  But this Levite hadn’t been living in one of the Levitical cities.  My commentary supposed that the people had stopped many of their offerings to the Tabernacle and the Levite therefore didn’t make enough to survive.  He sought his own well-being rather than the mind of God.  By working for Micah and presiding over the idol in the private shrine, he was in fact assisting his new employer in stealing from his former employer,” my commentary discovered.

 

Father, it’s a scary thing to see how far we can move away from You and still attempt to justify what we’re doing!  Help me to examine my own life, piece by piece, and hold it up to Your Word.  Show me any areas where the two don’t match up and help me to change to match You, for only You are correct.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford