JUDGES 17 AND 18
In the previous part of the book we found the people departing from Jehovah, forgetting Jehovah; but we come now to what is perhaps even more serious than that; what is idolatrous is definitely connected with the Name of Jehovah. It has application to idolatry in what might be called a Christian form.
Micah’s mother teaches her son what is idolatrous, but it is connected with the Name of Jehovah. She says she has dedicated the silver to Jehovah.
The Spirit of God has called attention to the blessedness of the presence of the Lord in the midst of His saints, and the holy conditions that must be connected with the place where [p. 183] the Lord is known in the midst of His people, and there is a great imitation which takes an idolatrous form, but God’s Name is connected with it. All the precious truths that are known at the present period are adopted, but cast into an idolatrous form. There is an imitation priesthood, the ephod, a son consecrated; it is the form, but it is imitation. It raises the question whether we are going on with spiritual reality, or with mere imitation.
This mother is an earth-dweller; a cursing mother, not a blessing mother like Jerusalem above. As we are true to heavenly light we are preserved from all forms which come in by something being substituted for heavenly light. I must have an image, a picture, or ritual, to make divine Persons more real to me. It is a turning aside from the spiritual.
It is easy for us to get on the line of graven and molten images. A molten image would be something that could be easily multiplied. It is cast in a certain form; it is like a fixed form of service. If we get into a fixed form, in our prayers and praises, we may be in danger of molten images, instead of what is living and suitable to the light of revelation. What is not in spirit and in truth tends to either a molten image or a graven image. A molten image is a thing that can be easily multiplied; you could print it in a book so that anybody could follow it. The graven image is a little more the product of the activity of the human mind — conceptions of God worked out in man’s mind, not according to the light of revelation, but worked out according to the mind of man. I think the graven image would suggest that. We must beware of human touch in connection with the holy things of God.
It is solemn to think of a Levite, Moses’ grandson, being mentioned in this way (chapter 17: 8 and chapter 18: 30); it is a terrible drop. He leaves Bethlehem-Judah to seek a place. His grandfather had said, “Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book”. The true tribe of Levi answered to the challenge, “Who is for Jehovah”. It is a terrible thing to drop down from that to sojourn and seek a place. This Levite was a kind of Diotrephes; he is not seeking a place for Jehovah, but seeking a place for himself. If we do that, the devil will be sure to have us identified with what is positively idolatrous.
In chapter 18 the Danites are looking for territory. They represent those who have been professedly and nominally on heavenly ground finding no satisfaction there and wanting [p. 184] another portion. It is a picture of the people of God seeking a place on earth, because heavenly territory makes too much demand on them. They speak of the land at Laish as being spacious in every direction and of there being no want of anything that is on the earth. There is a sphere of things that lies open to be seized on where people say, “We are rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing”. Micah’s religion just suits those conditions. The heavenly ground was not spacious enough for these Danites, and they reached a place where there was no one who possessed authority to put them to shame, where conscience was never exercised. We see in Samson the power of recovery, though he exposes great weakness. But there was no recovery in these Danites; there was a terrible kind of secession going on till the days of the captivity.
There is a beautiful touch in the last verses of chapter 18. The house of God is in Shiloh all the time. If idolatry goes on, yet all the time the house of God is in Shiloh. Shiloh was lost to the Danites altogether, but it was there for such as Boaz, Elkanah and Hannah; the house of God was there. The two systems are in contrast here. There is a system that professedly gives Jehovah a place, but is essentially idolatrous and is connected with a wholly false position for the people of God, where they have no enjoyment of the God-given inheritance, but are under the influence of things on earth. On the other hand there is another system here; the house of God is in Shiloh, the tabernacle is there, and the ark is there.
The preservative from idolatry is in John’s writings; they would preserve us from everything idolatrous, and that which has the character of imitation, what is not life. John would preserve us and keep us at Shiloh, the place where the rights of Christ are recognised.