Judges 18
The tribe of Dan, unable to secure their territory in the lowlands, sends spies north, steals Micah's idols and Levite, and takes the city of Laish by force.
Summary
In those days there was no king in Israel. The tribe of Dan is seeking an inheritance to live in, for until that day no inheritance had fallen to them among the tribes of Israel. The Danites send five valiant men from their clans to spy out the land and explore it. They pass through the hill country of Ephraim to the house of Micah and stay there. They recognize the voice of the young Levite. They ask him: who brought you here? And is your being here good for us? He tells them about his arrangement with Micah. They ask him to inquire of God whether their journey will succeed. The priest says: go in peace; the journey you are on is before the Lord. The five spies go on to Laish, which is a city whose people live in security, after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and unsuspecting, with no one in the land to abase them or to dispossess them. They return and report: arise, and let us go up against them. For we have seen the land, and it is very good. And will you do nothing?
Six hundred men armed for war set out from the clans of Dan. They camp at Kiriath-jearim and go up into the hill country of Ephraim, coming to the house of Micah. The five spies tell their companions about the shrine. They turn aside, enter the house of the young Levite, and take the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the metal image. The Levite says: what are you doing? They say: come with us and be our father and priest. Is it better for you to be priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and clan in Israel? The Levite's heart is glad; he takes the ephod, the household gods, and the carved image and goes with them. When Micah and his neighbours pursue and complain, the Danites say: do not let your voice be heard among us, or else angry fellows will attack you. Micah turns and goes home. The Danites take Laish, strike it with the sword, and burn it. They rebuild it and call it Dan, after the name of their ancestor. They set up Micah's carved image; Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons are priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.
- Judges 1Chapter 1 functions as a historiographical preface to the whole book, cataloguing the success or failure of each tribe to dispossess the Canaanites after Joshua's death.
- Judges 2Chapter 2 is the hermeneutical key to Judges.
- Judges 3Chapter 3 introduces the judge cycle in action for the first time.
- Judges 4Chapter 4 is the prose account of the same events that chapter 5 will sing.
- Judges 5The Song of Deborah in chapter 5 is widely considered one of the oldest pieces of Hebrew poetry in the entire Bible, possibly dating to the twelfth century BCE, nearly contemporaneous with the events it describes.
- Judges 6Chapter 6 is the opening of the Gideon narrative, which runs through chapter 8 and is the longest major-judge story in the book.
- Judges 7Chapter 7 is the central action of the Gideon narrative and one of the most memorable military scenes in the book.
- Judges 8Chapter 8 is the darkest portion of the Gideon narrative.
- Judges 9Chapter 9 is the longest chapter in Judges and the only episode in the book devoted to an anti-judge — a man who makes himself king by violence and holds it for exactly three years.
- Judges 10Chapter 10 performs two functions.
- Judges 11Chapter 11 is one of the most morally complex chapters in the Hebrew Bible.
- Judges 12Chapter 12 begins with a conflict that is structurally parallel to the Ephraimite quarrel after Gideon's battle in chapter 8, but this time Jephthah's response is not diplomacy — it is war.
- Judges 13Chapter 13 is the birth narrative of Samson, and it is the most elaborate annunciation scene in Judges.
- Judges 14Chapter 14 introduces the adult Samson and establishes the pattern that will govern the rest of his narrative: a desire for a Philistine woman, a display of supernatural strength, a riddle or trap, betrayal by intimacy.
- Judges 15Chapter 15 escalates the private vendetta between Samson and the Philistines into a series of increasingly spectacular acts of violence.
- Judges 16Chapter 16 is the climax and conclusion of the Samson narrative.
- Judges 17Chapter 17 begins the two-part appendix with which Judges closes, and the shift in tone is immediate.
- Judges 18Chapter 18 is the first of the book's two closing appendices.
- Judges 19Chapter 19 is one of the most disturbing chapters in the Hebrew Bible, and the text makes no attempt to soften it.
- Judges 20Chapter 20 is the longest military account in Judges and is remarkable for what it shows about what has gone wrong with Israel as a political and moral community.
- Judges 21Chapter 21 closes the book and extends the moral horror of chapter 19-20 in a different register: the horror of improvised solutions to self-inflicted catastrophe.