10 Then Micah said to him, Make your living-place with me, and be a father and a priest to me, and I will give you ten shekels of silver a year and your clothing and food.
So now it was not you who sent me here, but God: and he has made me as a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
And the Levite said he would make his living-place with the man, and he became to him as one of his sons.
And they said to him, Be quiet; say nothing, and come with us and be our father and priest; is it better for you to be priest to one man's house or to be priest to a tribe and a family in Israel? Then the priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod and the family gods and the pictured image and went with the people.
Then it will be that the rest of your family, anyone who has not been cut off, will go down on his knees to him for a bit of silver or a bit of bread, and say, Be pleased to put me into one of the priest's places so that I may have a little food.
And the king of Israel, when he saw them, said to Elisha, My father, am I to put them to the sword?
Then the king said to Hazael, Take an offering with you, and go to see the man of God and get directions from the Lord by him, saying, Am I going to get better from my disease? So Hazael went to see him, taking with him forty camels with offerings on their backs of every sort of good thing from Damascus; and when he came before him, he said, Your son Ben-hadad, king of Aram, has sent me to you, saying, Will I get better from this disease?
Now Elisha became ill with the disease which was the cause of his death: and Joash, king of Israel, came down to him, and weeping over him said, My father, my father, the war-carriages of Israel and its horsemen!
I was a father to the poor, searching out the cause of him who was strange to me.
And you have put me to shame among my people for a little barley and some bits of bread, sending death on souls for whom there is no cause of death, and keeping those souls living who have no right to life, by the false words you say to my people who give ear to what is false.
What will you give me, if I give him up to you? And the price was fixed at thirty bits of silver.
For the love of money is a root of all evil: and some whose hearts were fixed on it have been turned away from the faith, and been wounded with unnumbered sorrows.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Judges 17
Commentary on Judges 17 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 17
All agree that what is related in this and the rest of the chapters to the end of this book was not done, as the narrative occurs, after Samson, but long before, even soon after the death of Joshua, in the days of Phinehas the son of Eleazar, ch. 20:28. But it is cast here into the latter part of the book that it might not interrupt the history of the Judges. That it might appear how happy the nation was in the judges it is here shown how unhappy they were when there was none.
Jdg 17:1-6
Here we have,
Jdg 17:7-13
We have here an account of Micah's furnishing himself with a Levite for his chaplain, either thinking his son, because the heir of his estate, too good to officiate, or rather, because not of God's tribe, not good enough. Observe,