Old Dog V
No King
Bob Neumann
Judges 17:6 In those days, there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.
Judges 18:1 In those days there was no king in Israel…
Judges 19:1 Now it came about that in those days there was no king in Israel…
Judges 12:25 In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.
Prov. 21:2 Every man’s way is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the hearts.
Prov. 16:2 All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the LORD weighs the motives.
16:25 There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.
Rom 99 the wages of sin are death.
Prov. 29:18 Where there is no vision the people are unrestrained…
Hos. 4:6 My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.
Four times in the end of Judges after the death of Samson, the statement of the nation having no king and the righteousness of individual men in their own “eyes” is made. The point is emphasized by the goings on in these chapters. Yet, there is a question to be asked first. How is it that there would have been a king in Israel in the first place? Israel was a theocracy, which means they had no king but the LORD or YHVH. Once we answer that question we see that after the judges cease that Israel has no “king” no “vision” no ” standard of rule” no “knowledge” and as is listed in the above scriptures anything goes.
What goes in this nation which is covenanted to a righteous and pristinely pure (Holy) God is sheer mayhem and lunacy. Chapter 17 of Judges opens after the final hurrah of Samson in the Philistine Temple to Dagon. This judge by the way defiled himself with a foreign woman and lost his “sight”. The only reason he had the victory he had in the end was because it pleased the Father to bring down a house dedicated to another god than Himself and His enemies in one fell swoop! But once he is gone there is absolute chaos.
17 opens and we meet Micah. Micah is an Ephraimite in the hills of Ephraim. Micah is also a thief. Verse 2 records a conversation between son and mother without explaining the situation. “and he said to his mother. ” the eleven hundred pieces of silver which were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse in my hearing, behold, the silver is with me; I took it.” She replies after uttering a curse presumably on the thief by the name of the LORD, “blessed be my son by the LORD.” HUH? Worse is the next thing she does. She hands the son back the silver and commissions him to get her a graven and a molten image. “You shall make for yourselves any graven images of things in the air the earth or under it in the sea.” Commandment number two, Torah. Somebody obviously forgot to mention that fine point of law to her and so her son is a thief. But wait it gets better. Micah knows something of the Hebrew ways for he makes this shrine and an Ephod and consecrates one of his own sons to become his priest. Again, huh?
Our Micah is an Ephraimite not of Aaron or Melchizadek. But there is a Levite en route to our Micah. This is a Judean Levite in Judah of a Judean family who for whatever reasons up and leaves everything and goes on this journey to “find a place”. He comes to where Micah lives and incredibly when Micah invites him to be a priest in the house and to be as a father to Micah, he goes along with the flow! At least now, we know part of Micah’s problem. No father, no torah for it is to the men of the house that Torah is taught by men. For ten pieces of silver per year a suit of clothes and keep. That’s the contract. Now the priest was an older man than Micah for it says that Micah became like one of his sons. Just what did the Levite leave back in Judah? The chapter closes with Micah saying, “Now I know the LORD will prosper me, seeing as I have a Levite as priest.” Micah is what we would call a religious or spiritual man.
Chapter 18 opens with repeated statement that there is no king. Now we come across a new greater scale of foolishness. Danites with no inheritance but according to the 19th chapter of Joshua there is an allotment of land in the territories of the inheritance lands. So why are they seeking and inheritance? The tribe sends its best warriors to spy out the land. These men come across our Micah. They recognize the Levite priest and inquire as to his presence and receive a “word” from him. Now after Balaam there is a principle about God’s dealings at times and at times any “donkey” will do. This priest would be considered one such animal, of course, I use the polite term for the animal as you all know what is said of the donkey in scripture. Often worthy men have been paid the same name as a compliment especially after the bars close.
I have to wonder however that the priest blesses the people and they lay to the sword the intended target. Then again the target is a city called Laish. It means “crushing: a lion as from its destructive blows (Strongs # 3918). Here is a people secure peaceful living like the Sidonians. They have no dealings with anyone else and being in a valley, these are an easy prey for the Danites. No real victory here.
The Danites then coming on the way to their target area pass by Micah’s house. There 600 armed men gather. The original spies go in and they ransack the house taking the idols. When the priest inquires of them, they tell him to put his hand on his mouth and be happy for he will be a priest over a whole tribe not just one man. The priests hearts was glad. Guess he found his place. So much for loyalty as he leaves with all the owners religious stuff. At least the neighbors tried to help. They assemble and overtake the Danites and cry out. The Danites turn around and ask “what is the matter with you that you assemble together?” Micah replies,basically, “You took my stuff and my priest and left and you have to ask what is the matter with me?” But these are an army on march and at least Micah has enough sense to drop the issue and cut his loses and leave. So now, a whole tribe is in idolatry. To underscore the sin God adds in the last verse of 18. …all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh. So the tent had not been destroyed or the ark lost and there were real priests still doing the right thing in God’s eyes, hopefully, at Shiloh? I thought from this text that perhaps all that was lost. Chapters 19-21 record the most bizarre heinous disgusting and notable down turning of Israel altogether. It begins with a man a Levite who takes a unclean woman to wife.
It opens however with the statement that there is no king in Israel. This Levite may not have been able to be a Levite for tabernacle. Yet any self respecting Levite knew that they took noone but the tribal women and preferably a Levitical tribal woman as a wife. But he goes and gets a concubine, which may indicate a wife too. This is not a very faithful concubine. She runs off to Daddy in Bethlehem for four months and he has to go after her. The father prolongs for some reason the stay and when determined to leave the man takes his concubine and heads home in the late afternoon. Night hits them at Gibeah of Benjamite territory, though he might have faired better with the Jebusites. If I were to title this story into a message for a sermon it would be called the cutting off of the right hand. Benjamin means Son of the right hand. In fact it is Yeshua who fills this prophetic title in his reply to certain Pharisees in Sanhedrin when he says “you will see the son of man at the right hand of Power”.
But this right hand is better cut off. The man enters the city and noone opens the door for a wayfarer. Right there we know something is wrong. For the Jew was to be hospitable and this was a fellow Jew and anyone looking at him would have known by his clothing. But a farmer coming in from the field does open his house and care for the traveler. There they are drinking and eating and then Gibeah takes on a Sodom-ish nighttime flavor. The worthless men of the city, the criminal element come along to this farmer’s house and want the traveler for ” relations”. The last time anyone wanted relations was in Lots day and those relations were sexual. So the sin of Sodom is a criminal problem here among Benjamin? The farmer has the answer. Send out his virgin and the traveler’s concubine. The men get the concubine. Guess the farmer chickened put at the thought of his little girl in those hands. But justice will be served. The criminal element raped and sodomised her and molested her and defiled her and beat her just as a gang bang might today. Men are men organs are organs and in all this time natural tendencies have not changed. What we have here might just as well be on the 6 o’clock news! Gang tortures rapes and kills prostitute, Country goes to war, news story at eleven.
The man takes his dead concubine home cuts her into 12 pieces and sends them to the tribes. Now that is and attention getting ploy if ever there was one! The tribes sickened by the missive assemble at the meeting place called Mizpah. This is where the national judgement and meetings take place. It is decided to go out after Benjamin at Gibeah and make them pay the price unless they turn over the criminals. Now the intent is noble and scripturally right for the criminals must be punished for the sin and the sin must be taken “out of the camp”. Yet Benjamin had only to turn over the criminal element and they as a tribe would still be around. That the tribe refused to listen to their tribal bretheren and that they harbored the criminal element and that the farmer knew what to do, says volumes. This was a sin problem in the entire tribe and it was allowed to go on for some reason that is never recorded. It is also a shame to the tribe and to save face they turn away from the nation. What follows is reminiscent of the civil war. Ten tribes versus one or north versus south, take your pick. Yet it is God who gives into the hands this tribe, but not before a curious number of other tribesmen are defeated.
In a classic pincer movement the defending tribe comes out of the city and starts to slaughter yet again the offenders and the ambushers rise and enter the city behind them,. A citywide slaughter ensure and the smoke of the cities burning rises up. Benjamin is undone demoralized and defeated except for 600 men who take to the rock at Rimmon. Rimmon is an interesting name for its is also the name of a Syrian god. Therefore the rock at Rimmon may well have been a temple fortress that was defensible. What we may have here is a stalemate and a set of offending tribes that are sore at the execution of the duty of the day. In fact they were very upset for they had just cut off a tribe. What was the remark Jesus made about the body part that offends? Better to enter into heaven without it than into hell with it? In fact it actually recorded in Matt 5:30 that it the right hand offends cut it off. Jesus is still the king of the one liners. The nation now assembles at Bethel and cries bitterly and asks Why?
The people arise, build and altar, and offer burnt offerings. But wait, isn’t there a place and priests for this at Shiloh? So how is it that they have done what is not according to Torah? Answer? No king in the land. Because they do not appear to be in the right place at the right time, the right counsel is not given and what they finally do is horrendous. First they take a lawful lot and select for any family group, village, or town that did not come to Mizpah at the summons and did not participate in the war. They found one. Jabesh-Gilead was not in attendance. Now the Jabesh-Gileadites are figured here then in Samuel when the Ark returns from the Philistines and they peer inside and are killed outright and then in Saul’s reign when attacked by outsiders and in need of help. Saul takes a page from the Levite in this story by the way, as he sends animal parts to the tribes as a summons.
Feeling that the remaining men need an inheritance the other tribes go slaughter the Jabesh-Gileadites and their wives but finding 400 virgins they give these to the Benjamites. Jabesh Gilead is Benjamite territory so this is not to bad. But there remains and additional 200 men un-spoused. Picking a feast possibly tabernacles or Sukkot where the dances would be common place, the men of the tribes gather the Benjamites and when the virgins come dancing along the men remaining would lay in at the vineyards and then rise up and catch up a girl and take her home to Benjamin. Now first off this is not romantic this is rape and kidnapping. Second off the tribes had agreed that any tribe giving a daughter to Benjamin would be cursed. Third off these virgins are named. The Daughters Of Shiloh. This is a significant title likened unto the Daughters of Zion. These are Levite women slated fro the priests to marry Only Levites are allow or allotted these women! Finally the circumvented reasoning for the resultant complaint is frightening and if not that then laughable. “Give them to us (us being the other tribes) because we never took wives for the Benjamites in battle, you didn’t give them to the Benjamites you gave them to us so the curse is not upon you” This unbalanced logic fails to take into consideration that theft of another mans children property chattel or spouse was prohibited in Torah law. However since noone cared for or knew Torah law what was difference? So now, the tribe will be rebuilt in Saul’s day with the sin of sodomy homosexuality and kidnapping possibly statutory rape within its morals and ethics. And Israel allowed a man of this tribe to be King?!!!
Someone might say that somewhere someone was napping mentally but this is what you get when you have no government in the land. No king, no God, no rightful rule, no judges, nothing. Here’s the punch line. Israel of old is as the church today, inextricably linked. Since God is One we must then see that the national Israel and the spiritual adopted Israel of the nations are both Israel, God’s chosen people for an inheritance, in the Earth or land. This is a frightening punch line for if we draw this conclusion then we clearly see the mess of the church where there is no “king”
Up Next: A Soldier Of The King