chapter and extends to the close is not in immediate connection with
that which has gone before. We read (ch. xviii. 30) that "Jonathan, the
son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the
tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land." But the proper
reading is, "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses." It would
seem that the renegade Levite of the narrative was a near descendant of
the great law-giver. So rapidly did the zeal of the priestly house
decline that in the third or fourth generation after Moses one of his
own line became minister of an idol temple for the sake of a living. It
is evident, then, that in the opening of the seventeenth chapter we are
carried back to the time immediately following the conquest of Canaan by
Joshua, when Othniel was settling in the south and the tribes were
endeavouring to establish themselves in the districts allotted to them.
The note of time is of course far from precise, but the incidents are
certainly to be placed early in the period.
We are introduced first to a family living in Mount Ephraim consisting
of a widow and her son Micah who is married and has sons of his own. It
appears that on the death of the father of Micah a sum of eleven hundred
shekels of silver, about a hundred and twenty pounds of our money--a
large amount for the time--was missed by the widow, who after vain
search for it spoke in strong terms about the matter to her son. He had
taken the money to use in stocking his farm or in trade and at once
acknowledged that he had done so and restored it to his mother, who
hastened to undo any evil her words had caused by invoking upon him the
blessing of God. Further she dedicated two hundred of her shekels to
make graven and molten images in token of piety and gratitude.
We have here a very significant revelation of the state of religion. The
indignation of Moses had burned against the people when at Sinai they
made a rude image of gold, sacrificed to it and danced about it in
heathen revel. We are reading of what took place say a century after
that scene at the foot of Sinai, and already those who desire to show
their devotion to the Eternal, very imperfectly known as Jehovah, make
teraphim and molten images to represent Him. Micah has a sort of private
chapel or temple among the buildings in his courtyard. He consecrates
one of his sons to be priest of this little sanctuary. And the historian
adds in explanation of this, as one keenly aware of the benefits of good
government under a God-fearing monarch--"In those days there was no king
in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
We need not take for granted that the worship in this hill-chapel was of
the heathen sort. There was probably no Baal, no Astarte among the
images; or, if there was, it may have been merely as representing a
Syrian power prudently recognised but not adored. No hint occurs in the
whole story of a licentious or a cruel cult, although there must have
been something dangerously like the superstitious practices of Canaan.
Micah's chapel, whatever the observances were, gave direct introduction
to the pagan forms and notions which prevailed among the people of the
land. There already Jehovah was degraded to the rank of a
nature-divinity, and represented by figures.
In one of the highland valleys towards the north of Ephraim's territory
Micah had his castle and his ecclesiastical establishment--state and
church in germ. The Israelites of the neighbourhood, who looked up to
the well-to-do farmer for protection, regarded him all the more that he
showed respect for religion, that he had this house of gods and a
private priest. They came to worship in his sanctuary and to inquire of
the ecclesiastic, who in some way endeavoured to discover the will of
God by means of the teraphim and ephod. The ark of the covenant was not
far away for Bethel and Gilgal were both within a day's journey. But the
people did not care to be at the trouble of going so far. They liked
better their own local shrine and its homelier ways; and when at length
Micah secured the services of a Levite the worship seemed to have all
the sanction that could possibly be desired.
It need hardly be said that God is not confined to a locality, that in
those days as in our own the true worshipper could find the Almighty on
any hill-top, in any dwelling or private place, as well as at the
accredited shrine. It is quite true, also, that God makes large
allowance for the ignorance of men and their need of visible signs and
symbols of what is unseen and eternal. We must not therefore assume at
once that in Micah's house of idols, before the widow's graven and
molten figures there could be no acceptable worship, no prayers that
reached the ear of the Lord of Hosts. And one might even go the length
of saying that, perhaps, in this schismatic sanctuary, this chapel of
images, devotion could be quite as sincere as before the ark itself.
Little good came of the religious ordinances maintained there during the
whole period of the judges, and even in Eli's latter days the vileness
and covetousness practised at Shiloh more than countervailed any pious
influence. Local and family altars therefore must have been of real use.
But this was the danger, that leaving the appointed centre of
Jehovah-worship, where symbolism was confined within safe limits, the
people should in ignorant piety multiply objects of adoration and run
into polytheism. Hence the importance of the decree, afterwards
recognised, that one place of sacrifice should gather to it all the
tribes and that there the ark of the covenant with its altar should
alone speak of the will and holiness of God. And the story of the Danite
migration connected with this of Micah and his Levite well illustrates
the wisdom of such a law, for it shows how, in the far north, a
sanctuary and a worship were set up which, existing long for tribal
devotion, became a national centre of impure worship.
The wandering Levite from Bethlehem-judah is one, we must believe, of
many Levites, who having found no inheritance because the cities
allotted to them were as yet unconquered spread themselves over the land
seeking a livelihood, ready to fall in with any local customs of
religion that offered them position and employment. The Levites were
esteemed as men acquainted with the way of Jehovah, able to maintain
that communication with Him without which no business could be
hopefully undertaken. Something of the dignity that was attached to the
names of Moses and Aaron ensured them honourable treatment everywhere
unless among the lowest of the people; and when this Levite reached the
dwelling of Micah, beside which there seems to have been a khan or
lodging-place for travellers, the chance of securing him was at once
seized. For ten pieces of silver, say twenty-five shillings a year, with
a suit of clothes and his food, he agreed to become Micah's private
chaplain. At this very cheap rate the whole household expected a time of
prosperity and divine favour. "Now know I," said the head of the family,
"that the Lord will do me good seeing I have a Levite to my priest." We
must fear that he took some advantage of the man's need, that he did not
much consider the honour of Jehovah yet reckoned on getting a blessing
all the same. It was a case of seeking the best religious privileges as
cheaply as possible, a very common thing in all ages.
But the coming of the Levite was to have results Micah did not foresee.
Jonathan had lived in Bethlehem, and some ten or twelve miles westward
down the valley one came to Zorah and Eshtaol, two little towns of the
tribe of Dan of which we have heard. The Levite had apparently become
pretty well known in the district and especially in those villages to
which he went to offer sacrifice or perform some other religious rite.
And now a series of incidents brought certain old acquaintances to his
new place of abode.
Even in Samson's time the tribe of Dan, whose territory was to be along
the coast west from Judah, was still obliged to content itself with the
slopes of the hills, not having got possession of the plain. In the
earlier period with which we are now dealing the Danites were in yet
greater difficulty, for not only had they Philistines on the one side
but Amorites on the other. The Amorites "would dwell," we are told, "in
Mount Heres, in Aijalon and in Shaalbim." It was this pressure which
determined the people about Zorah and Eshtaol to find if possible
another place of settlement, and five men were sent out in search.
Travelling north they took the same way as the Levite had taken, heard
of the same khan in the hill-country of Ephraim and made it their
resting-place for a night. The discovery of the Levite Jonathan followed
and of the chapel in which he ministered with its wonderful array of
images. We can suppose the deputation had thoughts they did not express,
but for the present they merely sought the help of the priest, begging
him to consult the oracle on their behalf and learn whether their
mission would be successful. The five went on their journey with the
encouragement, "Go in peace; before the Lord is your way wherein ye go."
Months pass without any more tidings of the Danites until one day a
great company is seen following the hill-road near Micah's farm. There
are six hundred men girt with weapons of war with their wives and
children and cattle, a whole clan on the march, filling the road for
miles and moving slowly northward. The five men have indeed succeeded
after a fashion. Away between Lebanon and Hermon in the region of the
sources of Jordan they have found the sort of district they went to
seek. Its chief town Laish stood in the midst of fertile fields with
plenty of wood and water. It was a place, according to their large
report, where was "no want of anything that is in the earth." Moreover
the inhabitants, who seem to have been a Phoenician colony, dwelt by
themselves quiet and secure having no dealings or treaty with the
powerful Zidonians. They were the very kind of people whom a sudden
attack would be likely to subdue. There was an immediate migration of
Danites to this fresh field, and in prospect of bloody work the men of
Zorah and Eshtaol seem to have had no doubt as to the rightness of their
expedition; it was enough that they had felt themselves straitened. The
same reason appears to suffice many in modern times. Were the aboriginal
inhabitants of America and Australia considered by those who coveted
their land? Even the pretence of buying has not always been maintained.
Murder and rapine have been the methods used by men of our own blood,
our own name, and no nation under the sun has a record darker than the
tale of British conquest.
Men who go forth to steal land are quite fit to attempt the strange
business of stealing gods--that is appropriating to themselves the
favour of divine powers and leaving other men destitute. The Danites as
they pass Micah's house hear from their spies of the priest and the
images that are in his charge. "Do you know that there is in these
houses an ephod and teraphim and a graven image and a molten image? Now
therefore consider what ye have to do." The hint is enough. Soon the
court of the farmstead is invaded, the images are brought out and the
Levite Jonathan, tempted by the offer of being made priest to a clan, is
fain to accompany the marauders. Here is confusion on confusion. The
Danites are thieves, brigands, and yet they are pious; so pious that
they steal images to assist them in worship. The Levite agrees to the
theft and accepts the offer of priesthood under them. He will be the
minister of a set of thieves to forward their evil designs, and they
knowing him to be no better than themselves expect that his sacrifices
and prayers will do them good. It is surely a capital instance of
perverted religious ideas.
As we have said, these circumstances are no doubt recounted in order to
show how dangerous it was to separate from the pure order of worship at
the sanctuary. In after times this lesson was needed, especially when
the first king of the northern tribes set his golden calves the one at
Bethel, the other at Dan. Was Israel to separate from Judah in religion
as well as in government? Let there be a backward look to the beginning
of schism in those extraordinary doings of the Danites. It was in the
city founded by the six hundred that one of Jeroboam's temples was
built. Could any blessing rest upon a shrine and upon devotions which
had such an origin, such an history?
May we find a parallel now? Is there a constituted religious authority
with which soundness of belief and acceptable worship are so bound up
that to renounce the authority is to be in the way of confusion and
error, schism and eternal loss? The Romanist says so. Those who speak
for the Papal church never cease to cry to the world that within their
communion alone are truth and safety to be found. Renounce, they say,
the apostolic and divine authority which we conserve and all is gone. Is
there anarchy in a country? Are the forces that make for political
disruption and national decay showing themselves in many lands? Are
monarchies overthrown? Are the people lawless and wretched? It all comes
of giving up the Catholic order and creed. Return to the one fold under
the one Shepherd if you would find prosperity. And there are others who
repeat the same injunction, not indeed denying that there may be saving
faith apart from their ritual, but insisting still that it is an error
and a sin to seek God elsewhere than at the accredited shrine.
With Jewish ordinances we Christians have nothing to do when we are
judging as to religious order and worship now. There is no central
shrine, no exclusive human authority. Where Christ is, there is the
temple; where He speaks, the individual conscience must respond. The
work of salvation is His alone, and the humblest believer is His
consecrated priest. When our Lord said, "The hour cometh and now is when
the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth";
and again, "Where two or three are gathered together in My name there am
I in the midst of them"; when He as the Son of God held out His hands
directly to every sinner needing pardon and every seeker after truth,
when He offered the one sacrifice upon the cross by which a living way
is opened into the holiest place, He broke down the walls of partition
and with the responsibility declared the freedom of the soul.
And here we reach the point to which our narrative applies as an
illustration. Micah and his household worshipping the images of silver,
the Levite officiating at the altar, seeking counsel of Jehovah by ephod
and teraphim, the Danites who steal the gods, carry off the priest and
set up a new worship in the city they build--all these represent to us
types and stages of what is really schism pitiful and disastrous--that
is, separation from the truth of things and from the sacred realities of
divine faith. Selfish untruth and infidelity are schism, the wilderness
and outlawry of the soul.
1. Micah and his household, with their chapel of images, their ephod and
teraphim represent those who fall into the superstition that religion is
good as insuring temporal success and prosperity, that God will see to
the worldly comfort of those who pay respect to Him. Even among
Christians this is a very common and very debasing superstition. The
sacraments are often observed as signs of a covenant which secures for
men divine favour through social arrangements and human law. The
spiritual nature and power of religion are not denied, but they are
uncomprehended. The national custom and the worldly hope have to do with
the observance of devout forms rather than any movement of the soul
heavenward. A church may in this way become like Micah's household, and
prayer may mean seeking good terms with Him who can fill the land with
plenty or send famine and cleanness of teeth. Unhappily many worthy and
most devout persons still hold the creed of an early and ignorant time.
The secret of nature and providence is hid from them. The severities of
life seem to them to be charged with anger, and the valleys of human
reprobation appear darkened by the curse of God. Instead of finding in
pain and loss a marvellous divine discipline they perceive only the
penalty of sin, a sign of God's aversion not of His Fatherly grace. It
is a sad, a terrible blindness of soul. We can but note it here and pass
on, for there are other applications of the old story.
2. The Levite represents an unworthy worldly ministry. With sadness must
confession be made that there are in every church pastors unspiritual,
worldlings in heart whose desire is mainly for superiority of rank or of
wealth, who have no vision of Christ's cross and battle except as
objective and historical. Here, most happily, the cases of complete
worldliness are rare. It is rather a tendency we observe than a
developed and acknowledged state of things. Very few of those in the
ranks of the Christian ministry are entirely concerned with the respect
paid to them in society and the number of shekels to be got in a year.
That he keeps pace with the crowd instead of going before it is perhaps
the hardest thing that can be said of the worldly pastor. He is humane,
active, intelligent; but it is for the church as a great institution, or
the church as his temporal hope and stay. So his ministry becomes at the
best a matter of serving tables and providing alms--we shall not say
amusement. Here indeed is schism; for what is farther from the truth of
things, what is farther from Christ?
3. Once more we have with us to-day, very much with us, certain Danites
of science, politics and the press who, if they could, would take away
our God and our Bible, our Eternal Father and spiritual hope, not from a
desire to possess but because they hate to see us believing, hate to see
any weight of silver given to religious uses. Not a few of these are
marching as they think triumphantly to commanding and opulent positions
whence they will rule the thought of the world. And on the way, even
while they deride and detest the supernatural, they will have the priest
go with them. They care nothing for what he says; to listen to the voice
of a spiritual teacher is an absurdity of which they would not be
guilty; for to their own vague prophesying all mankind is to give heed,
and their interpretations of human life are to be received as the bible
of the age. Of the same order is the socialist who would make use of a
faith he intends to destroy and a priesthood whose claim is offensive to
him on his way to what he calls the organization of society. In his view
the uses of Christianity and the Bible are temporal and earthly. He will
not have Christ the Redeemer of the soul, yet he attempts to conjure
with Christ's words and appropriate the power of His name. The audacity
of these would-be robbers is matched only by their ignorance of the
needs and ends of human life.
We might here refer to the injustice practised by one and another band
of our modern Israel who do not scruple to take from obscure and weak
households of faith the sacraments and Christian ministry, the marks and
rights of brotherhood. We can well believe that those who do this have
never looked at their action from the other side, and may not have the
least idea of the soreness they leave in the hearts of humble and
sincere believers.
In fine, the Danites with the images of Micah went their way and he and
his neighbours had to suffer the loss and make the best of their empty
chapel where no oracle thenceforth spoke to them. It is no parable, but
a very real example of the loss that comes to all who have trusted in
forms and symbols, the outward signs instead of the living power of
religion. While we repel the arrogance that takes from faith its
symbolic props and stays we must not let ourselves deny that the very
rudeness of an enemy may be an excellent discipline for the Christian.
Agnosticism and science and other Danite companies sweep with them a
good deal that is dear to the religious mind and may leave it very
distressed and anxious--the chapel empty, the oracle as it may appear
lost for ever. With the symbol the authority, the hope, the power seem
to be lost irrecoverably. What now has faith to rest upon? But the
modern spirit with its resolution to sweep away every unfact and mere
form is no destroyer. Rather does it drive the Christian to a science, a
virtue far beyond its own. It forces we may say on faith that severe
truthfulness and intellectual courage which are the proper qualities of
Christianity, the necessary counterpart of its trust and love and grace.
In short, when enemies have carried on the poor teraphim and fetishes
which are their proper capture they have but compelled religion to be
itself, compelled it to find its spiritual God, its eternal creed and to
understand its Bible. This, though done with evil intent, is surely no
cruelty, no outrage. Shall a man or a church that has been so roused and
thrown back on reality sit wailing in the empty chapel for the images of
silver and the deliverances of the hollow ephod? Everything remains, the
soul and the spiritual world, the law of God, the redemption of Christ,
the Spirit of eternal life.
XXV.
_FROM JUSTICE TO WILD REVENGE._
JUDGES xix.-xxi.
These last chapters describe a general and vehement outburst of moral
indignation throughout Israel, recorded for various reasons. A vile
thing is done in one of the towns of Benjamin and the fact is published
in all the tribes. The doers of it are defended by their clan and
fearful punishment is wrought upon them, not without suffering to the
entire people. Like the incidents narrated in the chapters immediately
preceding, these must have occurred at an early stage in the period of
the judges, and they afford another illustration of the peril of
imperfect government, the need for a vigorous administration of justice
over the land. The crime and the volcanic vengeance belong to a time
when there was "no king in Israel" and, despite occasional appeals to
the oracle, "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." In
this we have one clue to the purpose of the history.
The crime of Gibeah brought under our notice here connects itself with
that of Sodom and represents a phase of immorality which, indigenous to
Canaan, mixed its putrid current with Hebrew life. There are traces of
the same horrible impurity in the Judah of Rehoboam and Asa; and in the
story of Josiah's reign we are horrified to read of "houses of
Sodomites that were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove
hangings for the Asherah." With such lurid historical light on the
subject we can easily understand the revival of this warning lesson from
the past of Israel and the fulness of detail with which the incidents
are recorded. A crime originally that of the off-scourings of Gibeah
became practically the sin of a whole tribe, and the war that ensued
sets in a clear light the zeal for domestic purity which was a feature
in every religious revival and, at length, in the life of the Hebrew
people.