Bible Commentaries
Judges 18

Verses 1-31

The account of the backsliding of individuals is followed by an illustration of its widespread existence among the people. While seeking new territory the Danites found Micah and the condition of things established in his house.

When presently they moved forward to success, they did not hesitate to size Micah's images and capture his priest. The terrible decadence of the religious ideal is startlingly revealed in this whole story.

Deeply embedded in the character of the people was the consciousness of the importance of religion. Micah must worship and the Danites felt the necessity of their enterprise for maintaining some kind of relationship with God. Yet in each case there was the most violent prostitution of religion to purposes of personal prosperity.

Micah hoped by the maintenance of some form of worship and the presence of a Levite that Jehovah would be his God, by which he evidently meant that material prosperity would come to him. The Danites, searching for new territory, were anxious to maintain religion.

Wherever religion is acknowledged and adopted merely in order to ensure material prosperity, it suffers degradation. In these stories we have a revelation of the beginnings of those terrible conditions which eventually issued in the ruin of the people.