{"id":331,"date":"2012-02-13T09:19:11","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T17:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/?p=331"},"modified":"2012-02-14T06:41:46","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T14:41:46","slug":"judges-171-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/?p=331","title":{"rendered":"Judges 17:1-13"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judges 17:1-13. \u00a0Wow. \u00a0The cycle of sin, servitude, supplication, salvation, and silence (See “Intro to Judges”<\/a>) has been slowly falling apart. \u00a0Now we have reached a point in the book where it stops appearing all together. \u00a0The judges or governors have been becoming more and more local until the last judge, Samson, was pretty much about himself. \u00a0Now we start a section which is about life on the streets. \u00a0How the people were living during this period of the Judges. \u00a0In 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. \u00a0I said it is sort of an envelope with a message inside. \u00a0Usually the phrase tells us something about the contents. \u00a0In this case the phrase is, “in those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” \u00a0(Judges 17:6; 21:25).<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Scholars are divided about what king is being referred to. \u00a0Some think the who book was written to defend the appearance of human kings in Israel. \u00a0Some think it may refer to God. \u00a0In 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. \u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n

In todays story we meet a man named Micah living in the hill country of Ephraim. \u00a0He has stolen 1100 pieces of silver from his mother (1\/5 the amount mentioned in the post two days ago about Delilah \u00a0(I have added some more info to that post about the value of the silver). \u00a0Mom curses the thief, who ever it may be, and her son immediately returns the money. \u00a0Mom then tries to reverse the curse by blessing her son (For more about curses see the post on 2\/2\/12<\/a>). \u00a0She then dedicates the whole amount of the stolen money to God, almost like she is trying to bribe God to reverse the curse. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0The Idols are then given to the son to put up in his house. \u00a0He sets up a shrine in his house and gives one of his sons the job of being the priest.<\/p>\n

The name Micah means “who is like Yahweh?”. \u00a0In Hebrew writing in Bible times vowels were not written down only consonants. \u00a0Also there were not spaces between the letters. \u00a0Here is an example from english: \u00a0thdgjmpdnthchr. \u00a0Can you figure it out? “The dog jumped on the chair.” \u00a0When God talked to Moses and told him to go lead the Israelites out of Egypt (See “The Old Testament Connection”<\/a>) Moses wanted to know God’s name. \u00a0He wanted to tell the Israelites where the orders were coming from. \u00a0God’s answer was four Hebrew letters represented by the english letters YHWH or JHWH. \u00a0To Jewish people this name is very special and they will not say it. \u00a0Because it is never spoken we can only guess at what vowels fit into it. \u00a0Early attempts to translate this word resulted in Jehovah and more modern attempts Yahweh. \u00a0Many English translations do not attempt to translate the word any more and used the word LORD in all capitals instead. \u00a0A shortened form of the name is added to many Hebrew words in the form of a “Je” or “Jo”. \u00a0Joshua is one example. \u00a0That name means “Jehovah saves”. \u00a0Jesus is a Greek form of Joshua’s Hebrew name. \u00a0In Micah’s name God’s name come at the end of the contraction.<\/p>\n

Now here is the interesting part. \u00a0In Judges 17:3-4 Micah’s name is actually Micahyaho but in the rest of the verses is is just Micah. \u00a0God’s name is dropped. \u00a0The first verse this happens in is verse 5 and notice what is happening in verse 5 and the comment in verse 6.<\/p>\n

Micahyeho stole money. \u00a0God told the Israelites not to steal. \u00a0He stole from his mother. \u00a0God told the Israelites to honor their father and mother. \u00a0God told the Israelites not to have any graven (carved) images. \u00a0Micahyeho and his mother made graven images. \u00a0God made a specific place where the Israelites were to worship Him together. \u00a0Micah had a private shrine in his own home. \u00a0God gave the job of Priest to the tribe of Levi. \u00a0Micah had one of his sons be the priest at his shrine. \u00a0“There was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes”. \u00a0God had dropped from Micahyeho’s name and his life. \u00a0His life was no longer “Who is like Yahweh?” it became “Who is like……?”<\/p>\n

It’s funny though that the mom dedicated the money to the LORD. \u00a0The rest of today’s reading has Micah meeting a young Levite and hiring him to be his personal priest in place of his son. \u00a0He obviously though the Levite would be a better choice. \u00a0He recognized that Levites were God’s choice to act as priests. \u00a0He felt that with a Levite would come greater blessing from the LORD (Judges 17:13). \u00a0We will see tomorrow that that is not quite what happened.<\/p>\n

I wonder if we are like Micah. \u00a0Has God’s name dropped from our lives? \u00a0Do we look like some name brand but are really a cheap knockoff? \u00a0Are we missing the quality of God’s true ingredients in our lives? \u00a0God wants to make our lives genuine. \u00a0He’s put the true ingredients for a relationship with Him in the Bible. \u00a0He’s provided what was necessary to clean up our lives in Jesus. \u00a0And 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) \u00a0But we need to let God in, all the way in, we cannot just say His name now and then. \u00a0Jesus said that many people would claim to know him at the time of judgement but he would tell them he never knew them. \u00a0As 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.\u00a0 The people that really know Jesus do what God the Father asks them to do. \u00a0They do what is right in God’s eyes. \u00a0God help me be real. \u00a0Help me dig into your word and see what you want. \u00a0When I want something different encourage me to go your way instead. \u00a0Thank you for your mercy when I don’t follow you. \u00a0Help loving you be a habit in my life. \u00a0Be my king.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judges 17:1-13. \u00a0Wow. \u00a0The cycle of sin, servitude, supplication, salvation, and silence (See “Intro to Judges”) has been slowly falling apart. \u00a0Now we have reached a point in the book where it stops appearing all together. \u00a0The judges or governors have been becoming more and more local until the last judge, Samson, was pretty much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}