Idolatry Takes Root

Having dashed Micah’s hopes of putting his shrine back in business, the Danites press on toward Laish. They find the city going about its day-to-day affairs calmly and quietly, with no fears of attack. But this complacency puts the people of Laish in grave danger, for they live far from Sidon, the nearest military power, and they have no other allies. The Danites, therefore, are able to come upon them in a surprise attack, killing every last resident of the city and burning it to the ground. Afterward, they begin the long, arduous process of rebuilding. They also give it a new name—Dan, after their forefather. “They … called the name of it Dan, to be a witness for them that, though separated so far off from their brethren, they were nevertheless Danites by birth, which might hereafter, by reason of their distance, be called in question,” Matthew Henry writes.

They may want to be known as Israelites, but they almost immediately begin acting like no Israelite should. They formally establish idolatry in their midst by setting up Micah’s image in a shrine of their own. There, the Levite who abandoned Micah ministers as a priest until his death, and his sons follow in his footsteps for hundreds of years, until the day of Israel’s “captivity.” This apparently is not a reference to the the Assyrian exile that came upon Israel in 722 b.c., for we are told that the Danites’ shrine stands as a rival to the true house of God all the time that the tabernacle remains in Shiloh. That period ends when the ark of the covenant is captured by the Philistines in the time of Samuel (1 Sam. 4:4–11), beginning a period of Philistine influence over the Israelites.

In what almost seems to be an afterthought, the author of Judges here reveals the name of the Levite—Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh. However, as Henry notes, some manuscripts give the name of Jonathan’s grandfather not as Manasseh but as Moses! Can it be possible that the children of Israel have slipped into organized idolatry in so short a time as two generations—and that a grandson of their great deliverer, Moses, is improperly serving as priest before a carved and molded image? Whether true or not, it is possible because of the wickedness of human hearts, and the possibility should serve as a warning to us all.