Judges 17 Bible study: A Levite as my priest

"There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah" (17:1) (tap Micah). He tells his mother, "The eleven hundred 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" (17:2) (tap uttered a curse). She answers with a blessing: "May the LORD bless my son!" (17:2). When he gives it back, she says, "I most certainly dedicate the silver to the LORD from my hand for my son, to make a carved image and a molten image" (17:3) (tap carved image and molten image). Then "his mother took two hundred pieces of silver, and gave them to a silversmith, who made a carved image and a molten image out of it. It was in the house of Micah" (17:4). The LORD had said at Sinai, "You shall not make for yourselves an idol" (Exodus 20:4), and "You shall most certainly not make gods of silver or gods of gold for yourselves to be alongside me" (Exodus 20:23). The chapter doesn't comment. It tells what was done, and that the silver was dedicated "to the LORD" (17:3).

Judges 17:13→leads toMatthew 7:21

Micah said, "Now I know that the LORD will do good to me, since I have a Levite as my priest" (17:13). Near the end of his teaching on the mountain Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21), and spoke of those who will say, "Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name…?" (Matthew 7:22). Jesus doesn't cite Judges 17, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some set them together because both speak of being sure of the Lord's favour on the strength of religious things, and Jesus names what counts instead: doing the will of his Father. Others read Jesus' words in their own setting, a warning about "false prophets" known "by their fruits" (Matthew 7:15-20), and Micah's words in the days when "there was no king in Israel" (17:6), and don't look from one to the other.

כֹּהֵןkohensay ko-HEN

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "priest". Strong's: "literally one officiating, a priest; also (by courtesy) an acting priest (although a layman)". The word comes four times in this chapter. First "one of his sons, who became his priest" (17:5); then the offer to the Levite, "be to me a father and a priest" (17:10); then "the young man became his priest" (17:12); and last, "since I have a Levite as my priest" (17:13). Judges uses the word fifteen times, all in chapters 17 and 18. The Law had said, "You shall appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall keep their priesthood" (Numbers 3:10).