Judges 17:1-13.  Wow.  The cycle of sin, servitude, supplication, salvation, and silence (See “Intro to Judges”) has been slowly falling apart.  Now we have reached a point in the book where it stops appearing all together.  The judges or governors have been becoming more and more local until the last judge, Samson, was pretty much about himself.  Now we start a section which is about life on the streets.  How the people were living during this period of the Judges.  In yesterdays post I mentioned that Biblical authors will sometimes repeat a phrase at the beginning and end of a section to show us that what is in between goes together.  I said it is sort of an envelope with a message inside.  Usually the phrase tells us something about the contents.  In this case the phrase is, “in those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.”  (Judges 17:6; 21:25).

It is the fact that there is no real leader in Israel that leads to the situation in which every one is doing their own thing.  Scholars are divided about what king is being referred to.  Some think the who book was written to defend the appearance of human kings in Israel.  Some think it may refer to God.  In Exodus 19:5-6 God tells Moses to go down and tell the Israelites that they will be “His kingdom among the nations” if they honor the contract that He has made with them.  I think the book of Judges is about the Israelites not honoring that agreement that they made with God. God was not their king or at least they were not being very good subjects of His.

In todays story we meet a man named Micah living in the hill country of Ephraim.  He has stolen 1100 pieces of silver from his mother (1/5 the amount mentioned in the post two days ago about Delilah  (I have added some more info to that post about the value of the silver).  Mom curses the thief, who ever it may be, and her son immediately returns the money.  Mom then tries to reverse the curse by blessing her son (For more about curses see the post on 2/2/12).  She then dedicates the whole amount of the stolen money to God, almost like she is trying to bribe God to reverse the curse.  The story gets more bazar when she give the money back to her son to have idols made but then takes two hundred pieces of it and sends they out to the idol maker herself.  The Idols are then given to the son to put up in his house.  He sets up a shrine in his house and gives one of his sons the job of being the priest.

The name Micah means “who is like Yahweh?”.  In Hebrew writing in Bible times vowels were not written down only consonants.  Also there were not spaces between the letters.  Here is an example from english:  thdgjmpdnthchr.  Can you figure it out? “The dog jumped on the chair.”  When God talked to Moses and told him to go lead the Israelites out of Egypt (See “The Old Testament Connection”) Moses wanted to know God’s name.  He wanted to tell the Israelites where the orders were coming from.  God’s answer was four Hebrew letters represented by the english letters YHWH or JHWH.  To Jewish people this name is very special and they will not say it.  Because it is never spoken we can only guess at what vowels fit into it.  Early attempts to translate this word resulted in Jehovah and more modern attempts Yahweh.  Many English translations do not attempt to translate the word any more and used the word LORD in all capitals instead.  A shortened form of the name is added to many Hebrew words in the form of a “Je” or “Jo”.  Joshua is one example.  That name means “Jehovah saves”.  Jesus is a Greek form of Joshua’s Hebrew name.  In Micah’s name God’s name come at the end of the contraction.

Now here is the interesting part.  In Judges 17:3-4 Micah’s name is actually Micahyaho but in the rest of the verses is is just Micah.  God’s name is dropped.  The first verse this happens in is verse 5 and notice what is happening in verse 5 and the comment in verse 6.

Micahyeho stole money.  God told the Israelites not to steal.  He stole from his mother.  God told the Israelites to honor their father and mother.  God told the Israelites not to have any graven (carved) images.  Micahyeho and his mother made graven images.  God made a specific place where the Israelites were to worship Him together.  Micah had a private shrine in his own home.  God gave the job of Priest to the tribe of Levi.  Micah had one of his sons be the priest at his shrine.  “There was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes”.  God had dropped from Micahyeho’s name and his life.  His life was no longer “Who is like Yahweh?” it became “Who is like……?”

It’s funny though that the mom dedicated the money to the LORD.  The rest of today’s reading has Micah meeting a young Levite and hiring him to be his personal priest in place of his son.  He obviously though the Levite would be a better choice.  He recognized that Levites were God’s choice to act as priests.  He felt that with a Levite would come greater blessing from the LORD (Judges 17:13).  We will see tomorrow that that is not quite what happened.

I wonder if we are like Micah.  Has God’s name dropped from our lives?  Do we look like some name brand but are really a cheap knockoff?  Are we missing the quality of God’s true ingredients in our lives?  God wants to make our lives genuine.  He’s put the true ingredients for a relationship with Him in the Bible.  He’s provided what was necessary to clean up our lives in Jesus.  And He has a manager just waiting to come into our lives and start assembling the genuine article. (See 1 Peter 2:1-10; 2 Corinthians 5:17; John 14:16-17, 16:7-14)  But we need to let God in, all the way in, we cannot just say His name now and then.  Jesus said that many people would claim to know him at the time of judgement but he would tell them he never knew them.  As many as receive Jesus God gives the right to be a part of His family forever (John 1:12) but you cannot just say it, it mist be real.  The people that really know Jesus do what God the Father asks them to do.  They do what is right in God’s eyes.  God help me be real.  Help me dig into your word and see what you want.  When I want something different encourage me to go your way instead.  Thank you for your mercy when I don’t follow you.  Help loving you be a habit in my life.  Be my king.