Judges 18 Bible study: My gods which I made

The chapter opens with the first half of the book's refrain: "In those days there was no king in Israel" (18:1). Chapter 17 gave it whole: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes" (17:6). Then: "In those days the tribe of the Danites sought an inheritance to dwell in; for to that day, their inheritance had not fallen to them among the tribes of Israel" (18:1) (tap inheritance). Judges 1 had said, "The Amorites forced the children of Dan into the hill country, for they would not allow them to come down to the valley" (1:34). Joshua 19 tells in one verse that "the children of Dan went up and fought against Leshem, and took it" (Joshua 19:47), and Brown-Driver-Briggs gives Leshem as a "variant of לַיִשׁ", Laish. This chapter tells how Laish was taken. The Bible sets these side by side and doesn't say how they fit in time; Joshua 19's honest question looks at them together. Judges doesn't say what a king would have changed.

Judges 18:4→leads toJohn 10:11-13

The young Levite says of Micah, "he has hired me, and I have become his priest" (18:4). Offered "a tribe and a family in Israel" instead of "the house of one man" (18:19), "The priest’s heart was glad" (18:20), and he took Micah's ephod, teraphim and engraved image and went with the Danites. Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11), and set beside himself the one "who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who doesn’t own the sheep" (John 10:12): "The hired hand flees because he is a hired hand and doesn’t care for the sheep" (John 10:13). Jesus doesn't cite Judges 18, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some set them together because both speak of one who serves for hire and leaves those he served. Others keep each in its setting: Jesus' hired hand runs from a wolf (John 10:12), while the Levite goes because he is offered more (18:19-20), and Jesus is speaking of himself and his own sheep (John 10:14-15); they don't look from one to the other.

פֶּסֶלpeselsay PE-sel

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "idol, image". Strong's: "an idol", "carved (graven) image". In chapter 17 and in 18:14 the WEB gives it as "carved image" (17:3-4, 18:14); in 18:18, 18:20, 18:30 and 18:31 it is "engraved image". The Danites took it (18:18), the priest took it and went with the people (18:20), "The children of Dan set up for themselves the engraved image" (18:30), and the chapter's last verse says whose it was: "So they set up for themselves Micah’s engraved image which he made" (18:31). The Law had said, "Cursed is the man who makes an engraved or molten image, an abomination to the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret" (Deuteronomy 27:15). Set up in 18:31 and sets it up there are the same Hebrew verb.