A Grave and Graven Image
A Grave and Graven Image
Judges 17:1-2
There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said to his mother, “The 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it in my ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it.” And his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the LORD.”
Upon initially reading this bizarrely vague introduction, I figured Micah must’ve done something heroic behind the scenes that the writer doesn’t record. Maybe he’d come in from the stables one day while a band of raiders stormed off with his mother’s treasure, and he followed them stealthily all the way till nightfall, waiting till they fell asleep in their tents before retrieving the contraband and returning home. I read his statement, “I took it” to mean that he’d taken it back, especially because his mom showers him with praise rather than scolding. Yet, given what happens next in the story, I’m not so sure. I think Micah is actually confessing here, saying in effect, “Hey, remember that silver you lost? Well, I was the one who took it; but don’t fret—I’ve brought it back safe and sound—all of it.” And, if that’s the case, then what his mother means by her jubilant reply is something like this, “Oh, how wonderful of you to come clean, my boy! Praise God for your honesty and humility! Far better that you stole it than a band of raiders!”
But friend, I must warn you that the beguilement of this opening scene is only a molehill compared to the mountain of beguilement that follows from it. We are entering upon some of the bleakest days in Israel’s history, as Judges 17-21 relays unspeakably disgusting atrocities committed by God’s now leaderless people. Oh, how I wish I could just skip past these transitional chapters and jump immediately to Ruth 1; I wish I could pretend that this spiritually vacuous place never existed on the landscape of divine Providence, but it does, and there’s a reason God wants us to remember it and wrestle with it and mourn over it. Maybe then we’ll be sure to never repeat it.
Sin’s downward spiral always starts in precisely the manner described here in Judges 17:1-2: with the taking of something that isn’t ours, and the misinterpretation of that new acquisition as God’s blessing.