Judges 17. The first appendix: Syncretism in Israel.

Title: Judges 17. The first appendix: Syncretism in Israel.

 

The Appendices - 17:1 - 21:25

First: Micah's Levite and the Migration of Dan

 

The appendices furnish valuable materials for forming a correct idea of the actual character of this portion of the Israeli history. The first appendix is about the migration of the tribe of Dan and the second is about Israel's war with the tribe of Benjamin. We cannot say for certain when these events occurred in the period of the Judges. Evidence points to the first appendix to have occurred after the time of Samson and the second, the war with Benjamin, occurred much earlier in the book.

 

JDG 17:1 Now there was a man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah.

 

JDG 17:2 And he said to his mother, "The eleven hundred pieces of silver which were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse in my hearing, behold, the silver is with me; I took it." And his mother said, "Blessed be my son by the Lord [Jehovah]."

 

JDG 17:3 He then returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, "I wholly dedicate the silver from my hand to the Lord [Jehovah] for my son to make a graven image and a molten image; now therefore, I will return them to you."

 

JDG 17:4 So when he returned the silver to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave them to the silversmith who made them into a graven image and a molten image, and they were in the house of Micah.

 

JDG 17:5 And the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household idols and consecrated one of his sons, that he might become his priest.

 

JDG 17:6 In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.

 

Micah is the main character is this section. His name means "Who is like God," but Micah does not worship God. He lives in Ephraim, where the Tabernacle is in Shiloh, but this does not influence him.

 

If the people in Ephraim do not worship Jehovah, when the ark and the Tabernacle that houses it is in their land, how much less do the other tribes worship God?

 

LUK 10:36 "Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands?" 

 

LUK 10:37 And he said, "The one who showed mercy toward him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same."

 

Go and do, but not discuss, evaluate, debate, think it over. One wonders why Christ doesn’t state faith in Him. This man likely would have intellectualized that as well. What can’t be intellectualized is doing.

 

MAT 7:24 "Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock.”

 

He did not allow anyone to leave the Sermon on the Mount debating the weight or efficacy of His words. They are either done or not.

 

According to rabbinic tradition, the mother is Delilah, since she received 1,100 pieces of silver from the Philistines, but there is no connection. Delilah did not live in Ephraim.

 

We find out that Micah stole from his mother, but in verse 2 he heard her utter a curse against the thief. Curses were taken very seriously in the ancient world, especially if they were declared by a parent.

 

Micah doesn't have remorse for stealing. He only fears the curse and so he returns the money for which his mother blesses him.

 

There are some issues in this family dynamic.

 

In verse 2 she blesses her son by Jehovah and then in verse 3 she states that she will dedicate the silver to Jehovah for the making of a graven image and a molten image. This should stand out to us as quite hypocritical, and it is for the 2nd of the Ten Commandments is to not make molten images. But this gives us insight in to the spiritual climate of the time.

 

The silversmith made two things: a graven image, and a molten image. The first is carved from wood or stone and the second is the melted down silver poured into a mold.

 

The smith could have made two images or that he carved the mold and then poured the liquid silver into it to form the idol. The second word, "molten image" (massechah) is exclusively used for the calf cast by Aaron and later by Jeroboam, both of which were golden calves. So then we assume that Micah's mother had a silver calf made in the name of  Jehovah and that she "blessed" her son with it by the name of Jehovah.

 

Massechah - "molten image" is only used of Aaron and Jeroboam who both made images of Jehovah as calves. Micah's mother had a calf made and they called it the image of Jehovah.

 

Out of the 1,100 she gives 200 to the silversmith. It is not said what she did with the rest. She may have used it for the maintenance of the idol worship by paying for sacrifices, incense, etc.

 

Micah puts the silver calf at the forefront of his household idols.

 

JDG 17:5 And the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household idols and consecrated one of his sons, that he might become his priest.

 

JDG 17:6 In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.

 

Four observations can be noted in verses 3-4 regarding the spiritual climate of the times.

 

First: several violations of the Law of Moses occurred: stealing, honor father and mother, no other god, and no images.

 

I think that we can confidently conclude that this is not an isolated case of a family breaking the Mosaic Law. This is a sickness in the whole community. And if Ephraim is like this, the tribe in whose possession is the Tabernacle at Shiloh, then how much worse are the tribes who are far away and who have likely forgotten all about the central worship of Jehovah?

 

Second: While the mother dedicated the money to Jehovah, she did not take it to Shiloh.

 

They did what was right in their own eyes and not in God’s way. The human race has always been full  of “ends justify the means” thinking. Cain also offered to God, but did so in his own way.

 

It is not uncommon for a Christian to say to himself that he is going to worship the Lord and then go about it in his own way or in a way that simply feels good to him. We are to do all things as Christ did them through the knowledge of the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. We are to love and serve as He did and not in some way that fits our liking at the time.

 

Third: Syncretism was practiced, which is mixing the worship of Jehovah with idols. Putting Jehovah's name on the idol is considered true religion.

 

We have seen this happen throughout the church age as well. Syncretism started in the church very early on.

 

The Roman Empire had brought to the Mediterranean basin an unprecedented political unity. Although each region kept some of its ancient laws and customs, the general policy of the empire was to encourage as much uniformity as possible without doing unnecessary violence to the uses of each area.

 

The political unity wrought by the Roman Empire allowed the early Christians to travel without having to fear bandits or local wars. When reading about Paul's journeys, we see that the great threat to shipping at that time was bad weather. A few decades earlier, an encounter with pirates was much more to be feared than any storm. In the first century, well-paved and well-guarded roads ran to the most distant provinces - even though most trade and travel took place by water. Since trade flourished, travel was constant; thus Christianity often reached a new region, not through the work of missionaries or preachers, but rather through traveling traders, slaves, and others. In that sense, the political circumstances favored the spread of Christianity.

 

But other aspects of those circumstances were a threat and a challenge to the early Christians. In order to achieve greater unity, imperial policy sought religious uniformity by following two routes: syncretism (the indiscriminate mixing of elements from various religions) and emperor worship.

 

Rome had a vested interest in having its subjects from different lands believe, although their gods had different names, that they were ultimately the same gods. To the Roman Pantheon (temple of all gods) were added numerous gods from different lands. The same roads and sea lanes that served Christian missionary expansion were also traveled by people of all sorts of traditions and beliefs. These traditions and beliefs mingled in the plazas and markets of the cities, to the point that their original form was barely recognizable. Syncretism became the fashion of the time. In that atmosphere, Jews and Christians were seen as unbending fanatics who insisted on the sole worship of their one God - an alien cyst that must be removed for the good of society. One of the greatest damaging forms of syncretism to Christianity was mixing Greek philosophy like Platonism and Stoicism with Christianity. At first, philosophy was likely used by Christians to help explain the main tenets of it and also to show that Christians weren't as far removed from mainstream as others thought. Such small compromises can lead to full scale invasions of the false into the true where soon enough, the truth cannot be recognized. This syncretism would influence Christianity so much that one of the main churches, Alexandria became a different denomination than the church at Antioch and Rome.

 

"I seek to know God, and not only the works of God. Who will aid me in my quest? … How then, oh, Plato, is one to seek after God?" [Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Pagans]

 

Clement's purpose in the passage is to show his pagan readers that a good part of Christian doctrine can be supported by Plato's philosophy. It wasn't just a hook for the pagans. Clement believed that Plato's truth would be the same as the Creator's truth. In order to do this, Clement had to interpret scripture allegorically. He was sure that he knew that the sacred scripture had more than one meaning.

 

A man can believe what he chooses, but the danger of this is that Clement influences thousands and thousands of Christians and what he expounds is labeled as Christianity or Christian doctrine.

 

Syncretism is one of the more dangerous schemes of the devil.

COL 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

 

COL 2:9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,

 

COL 2:10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;

 

COL 2:11 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;

 

COL 2:12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

 

Fourth, the making of the images shows that this event took place in the later days of the Judges, since in the early days the people were still somewhat obedient.

 

In every cycle except the last one, we have seen the people cry out to the Lord for help when their oppression grew burdensome for too long. It was only in the last cycle of Samson that Israel did not cry out to God, but rather choose to live as slaves to the Philistines. Micah's and his mother's actions, being right in the land of Ephraim, reveal a deep level of degradation and so this appendix likely takes place after Samson and in the beginning of Samuel's ministry.