The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Danites Take Micah’s Idols
Judges 18:14–31 — The Danites Take Micah’s Idols. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
14Then the five men who had gone to spy out the land of Laish said to their brothers, “Did you know that one of these houses has an ephod, household gods, a graven image, and a molten idol? Now think about what you should do.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·ya·‘ă·nū ḥă·mê·šeṯ hā·’ă·nā·šîm ha·hō·lə·ḵîm lə·rag·gêl ’eṯ- hā·’ā·reṣ la·yiš way·yō·mə·rū ’el- ’ă·ḥê·hem hay·ḏa‘·tem kî hā·’êl·leh bab·bāt·tîm yêš ’ê·p̄ō·wḏ ū·ṯə·rā·p̄îm ū·p̄e·sel ū·mas·sê·ḵāh wə·‘at·tāh də·‘ū mah- ta·‘ă·śū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-answered, the-five of-the-men, the-ones-walking to-spy-out the-land, Laish, and-they-said unto their-brothers: “Have-ye-known that there-is in-these the-houses an-ephod, and-teraphim, and-a-graven-image, and-a-poured-thing? And-now know ye what ye-shall-do.”
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We notice in these Danite freebooters the same strange mixture of superstition and lawlessness, robbery, and devotion which has often been observed in Greek and Italian brigands.Ellicott's comparison is a nineteenth-century commonplace about Mediterranean banditry; the observation about the mixture in the Danites is his exegetical point, the ethnography around it is not.
The meaning of these last words is very easily explained: do not lose this opportunity of obtaining a worship of our own for our new settlement.
To take them away for your further use, as you shall have occasion; for their action is the best comment upon their words.
The Danites recognize that the God of Micah is none other than their own God.Cambridge is stating what the Danites assumed, not endorsing it.
15So they turned aside there and went to the home of the young Levite, the house of Micah, and greeted him.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yā·sū·rū šām·māh way·yā·ḇō·’ū ’el- bêṯ- han·na·‘ar hal·lê·wî bêṯ mî·ḵāh way·yiš·’ă·lū- lōw lə·šā·lō·wm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-turned-aside thither and-they-came unto the-house-of the-lad, the-Levite, the-house-of Micah, and-they-asked of-him for-peace.
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The five spies, knowing Jonathan, salute him, and inveigle him to the entrance of the court to talk to their six hundred companions.Ellicott reconstructs the choreography (the salute as a decoy) from vv. 15-18 taken together; the text does not say the greeting was a ruse.
Heb. asked him of peace, i.e. if he were in peace, peace being commonly put for health and prosperity.
asked him of his welfare in a kind and obliging manner, the rather to ingratiate themselves unto him.
16The six hundred Danites stood at the entrance of the gate, armed with their weapons of war.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·šêš- mê·’ō·wṯ mib·bə·nê- ḏān ’îš niṣ·ṣā·ḇîm pe·ṯaḥ haš·šā·‘ar ’ă·šer ḥă·ḡū·rîm kə·lê mil·ḥam·tām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-six hundred man, from-the-sons-of Dan, posted at-the-opening-of the-gate, girded with-vessels-of their-war.
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While the armed men stood sentinels at the gates, the five spies broke into the chapel, pillaged the images and vestments, and succeeded in bribing the priest also by a tempting offer to transfer his services to their new colony.
stood by the entering of the gate; not of Micah's house, but of the city in which his house was; here they stood while the five men went up to the house.
The whole of this verse seems to be a mistaken repetition of Jdg 18:17 b; both the grammar and the construction of the sentence are faulty.A source-critical judgement, not a textual variant: Cambridge is arguing from style that v. 16 is a copyist's repetition of v. 17b. No manuscript is cited here for its omission.
17And the five men who had gone to spy out the land went inside and took the graven image, the ephod, the household idols, and the molten idol, while the priest stood at the entrance of the gate with the six hundred armed men.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·ya·‘ă·lū ḥă·mê·šeṯ hā·’ă·nā·šîm ha·hō·lə·ḵîm lə·rag·gêl ’eṯ- hā·’ā·reṣ bā·’ū šām·māh lā·qə·ḥū ’eṯ- hap·pe·sel wə·’eṯ- hā·’ê·p̄ō·wḏ wə·’eṯ- hat·tə·rā·p̄îm wə·’eṯ- ham·mas·sê·ḵāh wə·hak·kō·hên niṣ·ṣāḇ pe·ṯaḥ haš·ša·‘ar wə·šêš- mê·’ō·wṯ he·ḥā·ḡūr kə·lê ham·mil·ḥā·māh hā·’îš
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-went-up, the-five of-the-men, the-ones-walking to-spy-out the-land. They-came thither, they-took the-graven-image, and-the-ephod, and-the-teraphim, and-the-poured-thing; and-the-priest posted at-the-opening-of the-gate, and-the-six hundred, the-one-girded with-vessels-of the-war, the-man.
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Went up , viz., into the upper chamber, where it appears the chapel wan So we read in 2 Kings 23:12 that there were altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz
Then the five spies went up, sc., into Micah's house of God, which must therefore have been in an upper room of the building (see 2 Kings 23:12 ; Jeremiah 19:13 ), and took the image, ephod, etc., whilst the priest stood before the door with the 600 armed men.
The priest stood in the gate — Whither they had drawn him forth, that they might without noise or hinderance take the things away.
while the 600 warriors stood at the entrance of the village, the five spies went up to Micah’s house, were confronted by the priest, and, silencing his expostulations, plundered the sanctuary.Cambridge offers this as “the general sense intended,” having just said the original form of the text cannot be recovered. It is a reconstruction, honestly labelled as one.
18When they entered Micah’s house and took the graven image, the ephod, the household idols, and the molten idol, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·’êl·leh bā·’ū mî·ḵāh bêṯ way·yiq·ḥū ’eṯ- pe·sel hā·’ê·p̄ō·wḏ wə·’eṯ- hat·tə·rā·p̄îm wə·’eṯ- ham·mas·sê·ḵāh hak·kō·hên way·yō·mer ’ă·lê·hem māh ’at·tem ‘ō·śîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-these came-into the-house-of Micah and-they-took the-graven-image-of the-ephod, and-the-teraphim, and-the-poured-thing. And-the-priest said unto-them: “What are-ye doing?”
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In the Hebrew this is pesel ha-ephod — i.e., the “pesel-ephod.” Very possibly, however, the ephod may, as a rule, have hung on the carved image, so that to carry off the pesel was also to carry off the ephod, which ordinarily covered it.Ellicott's “very possibly” is a conjecture about how the objects were displayed; K&D rejects it. The construct chain in the Hebrew is the fact; the drapery is not.
The Hebr. has the graven image of the ephod ; probably a scribal error
is this your kindness to me, to take away what are my care and charge, and on which my livelihood depends?Gill is dramatising the priest's unspoken motive, not translating. The next verse will show Gill read him correctly.
19“Be quiet,” they told him. “Put your hand over your mouth and come with us and be a father and a priest to us. Is it better for you to be a priest for the house of one person or a priest for a tribe and family in Israel?”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ha·ḥă·rêš way·yō·mə·rū lōw śîm- yā·ḏə·ḵā ‘al- pî·ḵā wə·lêḵ ‘im·mā·nū weh·yêh- lə·’āḇ ū·lə·ḵō·hên lā·nū hă·ṭō·wḇ hĕ·yō·wṯ·ḵā ḵō·hên lə·ḇêṯ ’e·ḥāḏ ’îš ’ōw hĕ·yō·wṯ·ḵā ḵō·hên lə·šê·ḇeṭ ū·lə·miš·pā·ḥāh bə·yiś·rā·’êl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-said to-him: “Be-silent! Put thy-hand upon thy-mouth, and-go with-us, and-be to-us for-a-father and-for-a-priest. Is-it-better thy-being priest to-the-house-of one man, or thy-being priest to-a-tribe and-to-a-family in-Israel?”
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The laying of the finger on the lip is one of the most universal of gestures. It is the attitude of Horus, the Egyptian god of silence.
For it is certain this was not an expedition of the whole tribe, which numbered 64,000 menPoole's census figure is from Numbers 26:43; his point is that the Danites' offer inflates a clan into a tribe.
suggesting, that it must be much more honourable for him, and more to his advantage, to officiate as a priest to a body of people
20So the priest was glad and took the ephod, the household idols, and the graven image, and went with the people.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hak·kō·hên way·yî·ṭaḇ lêḇ way·yiq·qaḥ ’eṯ- hā·’ê·p̄ō·wḏ wə·’eṯ- hat·tə·rā·p̄îm wə·’eṯ- hap·pā·sel way·yā·ḇō bə·qe·reḇ hā·‘ām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-was-good, the-heart-of the-priest, and-he-took the-ephod and-the-teraphim and-the-graven-image, and-he-came in-the-inward-part-of the-people.
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The disgraceful alacrity with which he sanctions the theft, and abandons for self-interest the cause of Micah, is very unworthy of a grandson of Moses.Ellicott is reading v. 20 in the light of v. 30, where the priest is finally named as Jonathan son of Gershom son of Moses. The descent is disputed in the text itself.
being wholly governed by his own interest, and making all his obligations of justice and gratitude give place to it. But it is not strange, if he who was before perfidious to God, should prove so to men.
a central position assigned him in the march, perhaps for his personal security; but more probably in imitation of the place appointed for the priests and the ark
21Putting their small children, their livestock, and their possessions in front of them, they turned and departed.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yā·śî·mū ’eṯ- haṭ·ṭap̄ wə·’eṯ- ham·miq·neh wə·’eṯ- hak·kə·ḇū·dāh lip̄·nê·hem way·yip̄·nū way·yê·lê·ḵū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-put the-little-ones, and-the-cattle, and-the-weighty-glory before-their-faces; and-they-turned and-they-went.
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The word is hakkebodah, which the LXX. (Cod. A) render “their glorious possession,” and the Vulg. “everything which was precious,” i.e., the valuables.
includes both women and children, as the members of the family who were in need of protection
Compare Jacob's care for his wives and children ( Genesis 33:1-5 ); only Jacob expected an attack from Esau in front, the Danites an attack from Micah from behind.
22After they were some distance from Micah’s house, the men in the houses near Micah’s house mobilized and overtook the Danites.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hêm·māh hir·ḥî·qū mî·ḵāh mib·bêṯ wə·hā·’ă·nā·šîm ’ă·šer bab·bāt·tîm ’ă·šer ‘im- mî·ḵāh bêṯ niz·‘ă·qū way·yaḏ·bî·qū ’eṯ- bə·nê- ḏān
Literal — word-for-word from the original
They had-made-far from-the-house-of Micah, and-the-men who were-in-the-houses that were-with the-house-of Micah were-cried-together, and-they-made-cleave unto the-sons-of Dan.
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The Beth-Micah was probably strong enough to resist any ordinary robbers, but no one could have expected a raid of 600 men.
The men, who were all Micah's workmen, were probably in the fields with their master at the time of the robbery. When the women saw what was done they gave the alarmBarnes is reconstructing: the text names neither workmen nor women. The literal sense of the verb (“were called together”) is his sourced point; the household scene is his conjecture.
the importance which Micah, like Laban, attached to his teraphim, is seen by the urgency with which he pursued the thieves, and the risk of his life in attempting to procure their restoration.
23When they called out after them, the Danites turned to face them and said to Micah, “What is the matter with you that you have called out such a company?”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yiq·rə·’ū ’el- bə·nê- ḏān way·yas·sêb·bū pə·nê·hem way·yō·mə·rū lə·mî·ḵāh mah- lə·ḵā kî niz·‘ā·qə·tā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-called unto the-sons-of Dan; and-they-turned-about their-faces and-they-said to-Micah: “What is-to-thee, that thou-hast-been-cried-together?”
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Dan showed himself in this proceeding like “a serpent on the way, an adder in the path”Ellicott is applying Jacob's blessing on Dan (Genesis 49:17) to this raid. The application is his; Genesis says nothing of Laish.
Just as Israel or Judah designates the whole nation, or the whole tribe, under the name of their patriarch, so here Micah would include all the clan who dwelt in Micah's house
what affront had been given him, what injury had been done him, that had provoked him to come out and follow them in such a manner?
24He replied, “You took the gods I had made, and my priest, and went away. What else do I have? How can you say to me, ‘What is the matter with you?’”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yō·mer ’eṯ- lə·qaḥ·tem wə·’eṯ- ’ĕ·lō·hay ’ă·šer- ‘ā·śî·ṯî hak·kō·hên wat·tê·lə·ḵū ‘ō·wḏ ū·mah- lî ū·mah- zeh tō·mə·rū ’ê·lay mah- lāḵ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-said: “My-gods which I-made ye-have-taken, and-the-priest, and-ye-have-gone; and-what is-to-me still? And-what is-this that ye-say unto-me, ‘What is-to-thee?’”
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but we may well hope that his present loss was his ultimate gain, and that he found the true God in place of the lost gods which he had made.Ellicott's hope for Micah is offered as hope, not as something the text reports. Judges says only that he went home.
Let us reckon our communion with God our greatest gain; and the loss of God the sorest loss. Wo unto us, if He depart. For what have we more?
and it is astonishing he should call them gods he knew the making of, and who could not save themselves from being stolen and carried off
we might render my God , offensive though the idea is to us; Micah was a worshipper of Jehovah
25The Danites said to him, “Do not raise your voice against us, or angry men will attack you, and you and your family will lose your lives.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
bə·nê- ḏān way·yō·mə·rū ’ê·lāw ’al- taš·ma‘ qō·wl·ḵā ‘im·mā·nū pen- mā·rê ne·p̄eš ’ă·nā·šîm yip̄·gə·‘ū ḇā·ḵem bê·ṯe·ḵā wə·’ā·sap̄·tāh nap̄·šə·ḵā wə·ne·p̄eš
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-said unto-him, the-sons-of Dan: “Let-not thy-voice be-heard among-us, lest men bitter-of-soul should-fall-upon you, and-thou-shouldst-gather thy-soul and-the-soul-of thy-house.”
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lest men bitter of soul fall upon thee. (Comp. Judges 8:21 ; Judges 15:12 ; 2Samuel 17:8 , “chafed in their minds.”) Thou lose thy life. —Literally, thou gather thy life, as in Psalm 26:9
Which, notwithstanding all thy pretences, thou valuest more than thy image, teraphim, and ephod.
The rough humour and insolence of the robbers are admirably described. The writer hardly disguises his relish of the scene.A judgement about the narrator's tone. Pulpit reads the same verses as reprobation rather than relish; the two readings stand side by side in the sources.
26So the Danites went on their way, and Micah turned to go back home, because he saw that they were too strong for him.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḇə·nê- ḏān way·yê·lə·ḵū lə·ḏar·kām way·yi·p̄en way·yā·šāḇ ’el- bê·ṯōw mî·ḵāh way·yar kî- hêm·māh ḥă·zā·qîm mim·men·nū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-went, the-sons-of Dan, to-their-way; and-Micah saw that they were-stronger than-he, and-he-turned and-he-returned unto his-house.
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Finding his party, however, not a match for the Danites, he thought it prudent to desist, well knowing the rule which was then prevalent in the land, that "They should take who had the power, And they should keep who could."The closing couplet is JFB quoting a proverbial verse, not Scripture.
and if he returned from his idolatry to the true God, and the right worship of him, having lost his gods, it was well for him they were taken away.Gill's “if” is honest: the text records Micah's return home and nothing about his heart.
The Hebrew merely puts the actions side by side, and leaves the order to be inferred.
27After they had taken Micah’s idols and his priest, they went to Laish, to a quiet and unsuspecting people, and they struck them with their swords and burned down the city.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·hêm·māh lā·qə·ḥū mî·ḵāh ’êṯ ’ă·šer- wə·’eṯ- ‘ā·śāh hak·kō·hên ’ă·šer hā·yāh- lōw way·yā·ḇō·’ū ‘al- la·yiš ‘al- šō·qêṭ ū·ḇō·ṭê·aḥ ‘am way·yak·kū ’ō·w·ṯām lə·p̄î- ḥā·reḇ wə·’eṯ- śā·rə·p̄ū ḇā·’êš hā·‘îr
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they had-taken what Micah had-made, and-the-priest who was to-him, and-they-came upon Laish, upon a-people quiet and-trusting, and-they-struck them to-the-mouth-of the-sword, and-the-city they-burned with-fire.
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The repetition of the epithets quiet and secure , as applied to the people of Laish, rather seems to indicate the writer's reprobation of the deed as cruel, like that of Simeon and Levi in slaying Hamor and Shechem.
We are revolted by this inroad and massacre of a quiet and secure people. Nevertheless, if the original grant of Canaan to the Israelites gave them the warrant of a divine commission and command for this enterprise, that sanctifies all and legalizes allThis is JFB quoting Chalmers, and it is a defence the text never mounts: Judges 18 records no divine command for this raid, no inquiry answered, and no judge. Cited here because the brief carries it, not because the synthesis endorses it.
But Dan was no gainer. His name disappears from the records of 1Chronicles 4:1 , and he is not mentioned among the elected tribes in Revelation 7.Ellicott's inference. He himself writes at v. 30 that whether this or “the smallness of Dan” explains the omission in Revelation 7 “must remain uncertain.”
and burnt the city with fire; to strike terror to all about; or it may be only they set fire to some part of it, as they entered, only to frighten the inhabitants, and throw them into the greater confusion, that they might become a more easy prey to themGill is conjecturing a tactical motive; the Hebrew supplies none.
28There was no one to deliver them, because the city was far from Sidon and had no alliance with anyone; it was in a valley near Beth-rehob. And the Danites rebuilt the city and lived there.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·’ên maṣ·ṣîl kî hî rə·ḥō·w·qāh- miṣ·ṣî·ḏō·wn ’ên- lā·hem wə·ḏā·ḇār ‘im- ’ā·ḏām wə·hî bā·‘ê·meq ’ă·šer lə·ḇêṯ- rə·ḥō·wḇ way·yiḇ·nū ’eṯ- hā·‘îr way·yê·šə·ḇū ḇāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-there-was-no deliverer, because it was-far from-Sidon, and-a-word there-was-not to-them with man; and-it was-in-the-valley which belongs-to-Beth-rehob. And-they-built the-city and-they-dwelt in-her.
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The city was too far off from the suzerain power to obtain any help; and as no alliances had been made with the Syrians (again reading Aram for adam = ‘any man’), there were no friendly neighbours to come to the rescue.The bracketed reading of Aram for adam is Cambridge's own emendation, offered as probable, not as attested text.
At the foot of the lowest range of Lebanon, and at the sources of the Jordan ( Numbers 13:21 ), north of Lake Huleh. It is probably the Rehob of Judges 1:31 , Joshua 19:30 ; and later it belonged to Syria ( 2Samuel 10:6 ) The name means “house of spaciousness.”
The city, which lay in ashes, was afterwards rebuilt by the Danites, and called Dan, from the name of the founder of their tribe
and that city being at a distance from them, and the Danites coming upon them suddenly, there was no time to send to them for help
29They named it Dan, after their forefather Dan, who was born to Israel—though the city was formerly named Laish.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yiq·rə·’ū šêm- hā·‘îr dān bə·šêm ’ă·ḇî·hem dān ’ă·šer yūl·laḏ lə·yiś·rā·’êl wə·’ū·lām hā·‘îr lā·ri·šō·nāh šêm- la·yiš
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-called the-name-of the-city Dan, by-the-name-of Dan their-father who was-born to-Israel; howbeit Laish was the-name-of the-city at-the-first.
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which signifies a "lion", and might be so called from its being infested with lions, which might come from the mountain of Lebanon, near to which it was, and whither Dan, as a lion's whelp, leaped, Deuteronomy 33:22 and now the prophecy had its accomplishment.Gill's identification of this raid as the fulfilment of Deuteronomy 33:22 is his own reading; Judges makes no such claim, and Gill's further note about the Leshem stone in the high priest's breastplate is offered by him as a remark, not an argument.
that it might be manifest that they belonged to the tribe of Dan, though they were seated at a great distance from them, even in the most northerly part of the land; whereas the lot of their tribe was in the southern part of Canaan.
It was in the northern extremity of the land, and hence the origin of the phrase, "from Dan to Beer-sheba."
30The Danites set up idols for themselves, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
bə·nê- ḏān ’eṯ- way·yā·qî·mū hap·pā·sel lā·hem wî·hō·w·nā·ṯān ben- gê·rə·šōm ben- mə·naš·šɛh hū ū·ḇā·nāw hā·yū ḵō·hă·nîm lə·šê·ḇeṭ had·dā·nî ‘aḏ- yō·wm gə·lō·wṯ hā·’ā·reṣ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-raised-up for-themselves, the-sons-of Dan, the-graven-image; and-Jehonathan son-of Gershom son-of Manasseh, he and-his-sons, were priests to-the-tribe-of the-Danite until the-day of the-uncovering-of the-land.
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The extreme reluctance to admit this fact—the disgrace involved against the memory of Moses by this rapid and total degeneracy of his grandson—is probably the reason why up to this point in the narrative the name has been withheld.
The Masoretes, probably grieved that a descendant of Moses should have been implicated in idolatrous worship, adopted this expedient for disguising the fact without absolutely falsifying the text.
Ben Mosheh is therefore unquestionably the original reading, although the other reading ben Menasseh is also very old
Thus instead of giving glory to God, they attributed the victory to their idols, and honoured them therefore.
31So they set up for themselves Micah’s graven image, and it was there the whole time the house of God was in Shiloh.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yā·śî·mū lā·hem ’eṯ- ’ă·šer mî·ḵāh ‘ā·śāh pe·sel kāl- yə·mê bêṯ- hā·’ĕ·lō·hîm hĕ·yō·wṯ bə·ši·lōh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-placed for-themselves the-graven-image-of Micah which he-made, all the-days of-the-being-of the-house-of God in-Shiloh.
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i.e., till Samuel’s early manhood, when the Philistines sacked Shiloh, to which place the Ark and Tabernacle never returned
At any rate the writer does not say that the Danite shrine disappeared when the temple in Shiloh came to an end; what he means is that the local cult existed side by side with the national sanctuary.
which, according to some Jewish writers (g), was three hundred and sixty years; that is, so long as the tabernacle was there, which was afterwards removed to Nob.The 360-year figure is rabbinic reckoning (Gill cites Maimonides on Zebachim), not a biblical datum.
Thus those who please themselves with their own delusions, if Providence unexpectedly bring any thing to their hands that further them in their evil way, are apt from thence to think that God is pleased with them.The brief supplies Matthew Henry's note on Judges 17:7-13 for every verse of this unit; it is his comment on Micah's welcome of the Levite, quoted here once because it states the principle the whole chapter illustrates. It is not a comment on 18:31.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens on a verb with nothing to answer: וַֽיַּעֲנ֞וּ (ʻânâh, H6030), which BSB does not translate at all. Poole supplies the idiom, “the word answering being oft used in Scripture of the first speaker,” and Ellicott points to Job 3:2. What the five men are answering is something they saw on the outward journey, and they name it as a list: ephod, teraphim, pesel, massēkāh. K&D reads their closing imperative as counsel already decided: “do not lose this opportunity of obtaining a worship of our own for our new settlement.” Poole is blunter, and reads the words off the deed: “their action is the best comment upon their words.” Cambridge adds the assumption underneath it all, that “the Danites recognize that the God of Micah is none other than their own God.” ⚙ That is what makes this an idolatry story rather than an apostasy story. Nobody in Judges 18 changes gods. They change addresses, and take the furniture.
The staging is precise. Six hundred men are נִצָּבִ֖ים (nâtsab, H5324, “posted”) at the pethach hashaʻar, and Cambridge notes that this phrase is “always of the gate of a city … not the door of a house,” which is how Barnes and Pulpit conclude that Beth-Micah was a village. The five go up (ʻâlâh, H5927): Pulpit and K&D both take the verb architecturally, the chapel was an upper room, K&D comparing 2 Kings 23:12. Then the Hebrew tense breaks. K&D, quoting Bertheau, observes that the perfects bâʼû and lâqᵉḥû “do not denote the coming and taking … as a continuation of the previous account” but set them beside the clause about the priest, so that the robbery and the conversation are simultaneous. JFB describes the result without the grammar: “While the armed men stood sentinels at the gates, the five spies broke into the chapel, pillaged the images and vestments, and succeeded in bribing the priest.” Benson says why the priest was at the gate at all: “Whither they had drawn him forth, that they might without noise or hinderance take the things away.” ⚙ And the narrator gives the priest the soldiers' own participle, niṣṣāḇ. He is posted, like them, facing out, while his sanctuary empties behind his back. Cambridge, honest about the ruin of the text here, concedes that “it is impossible to recover the original form of the text.”
The bribe is three imperatives and a comparison: be silent, put your hand on your mouth, come. Ellicott catalogues the gesture (Job 21:5; 29:9; Proverbs 30:32) and notes it is “the attitude of Horus, the Egyptian god of silence.” Then הֲט֣וֹב, “is it good / better?” Not lawful, not true: better. K&D observes that the Hebrew א֚וֹ means “or rather,” marking the second option as an improvement on the first, and that “family” narrows “tribe” rather than widening it; Poole presses the arithmetic, since the whole tribe numbered 64,000 and this was one clan. The offer, examined, is smaller than it sounds. The priest takes it anyway, and the narrator answers the Danites' adjective with the matching verb: וַיִּיטַב֙ לֵ֣ב הַכֹּהֵ֔ן, his heart was made good. Poole: “being wholly governed by his own interest … But it is not strange, if he who was before perfidious to God, should prove so to men.” Pulpit: “greater dignity and greater emolument stifled all sentiments of gratitude and loyalty.” Ellicott calls the alacrity “very unworthy of a grandson of Moses.” Then he walks bᵉqereb hāʻām, in the very centre of the people, which JFB and Gill both take as imitation of the priests and the ark on the wilderness march. ⚙ The procession is shaped exactly like Israel. Only the contents are stolen.
Ellicott notices what one incidental word does to the genre: with ṭaph, little ones, “the fact of this being a regular migration is brought out.” Then the pursuit, and the unit's cruellest exchange. Micah cries אֱלֹהַי֩ אֲשֶׁר־עָשִׂ֨יתִי, “my gods which I made.” Ellicott: that phrase “would be a very ordinary expression for the Greeks, who called a sculptor a god-maker, but was startling on the lips of an Israelite.” Cambridge weighs the singular, “we might render my God, offensive though the idea is to us; Micah was a worshipper of Jehovah,” and notes the LXX softened it to “my graven image.” Gill states the plain absurdity: “it is astonishing he should call them gods he knew the making of, and who could not save themselves from being stolen and carried off.” Poole and Benson both turn it back on the reader; Benson's is the sharpest line in the whole brief: “Let us reckon our communion with God our greatest gain; and the loss of God the sorest loss. Wo unto us, if He depart. For what have we more?” The Danites do not argue. They threaten: men bitter of soul (Ellicott's literal) will fall on you, and you will gather your life, which Ellicott compares to Psalm 26:9. Cambridge, reading the scene's tone, says “the rough humour and insolence of the robbers are admirably described. The writer hardly disguises his relish.” Pulpit states the principle bare: “The argument of the Danites was the argument of the stronger.” JFB gives it in verse, quoting the maxim that “They should take who had the power, And they should keep who could.”
The two participles the narrator chose for the victims are the sting: שֹׁקֵ֣ט וּבֹטֵ֔חַ, quieting and trusting (bâṭach, H982, the lexicon's “to trust, be confident or sure”). Pulpit hears the repetition as judgement: it “rather seems to indicate the writer's reprobation of the deed as cruel, like that of Simeon and Levi in slaying Hamor and Shechem.” JFB quotes Chalmers taking the other side, that a divine grant of Canaan “sanctifies all and legalizes all,” a defence the text itself never offers. Cambridge explains the helplessness in political terms: too far from the suzerain city, and no alliances. And the narrator's clause is וְאֵ֨ין מַצִּ֜יל, “there was no deliverer” (nâtsal, H5337, “to snatch away”). ⚙ In a book about deliverers, the flattest sentence in this unit is the one that says there was none. Then the burned town is rebuilt and renamed for a dead ancestor. Gill recalls that Laish means a lion and connects it to Deuteronomy 33:22, “Dan, as a lion's whelp, leaped”; Ellicott records the cost, “But Dan was no gainer.”
Only now is the priest named, and his grandfather. K&D states the text-critical fact: “Ben Mosheh is therefore unquestionably the original reading,” with a nun suspended above the line to read Manasseh instead. Barnes gives the motive: “The Masoretes, probably grieved that a descendant of Moses should have been implicated in idolatrous worship, adopted this expedient for disguising the fact without absolutely falsifying the text.” Cambridge records the rabbinic rationale, that he “acted, not like a son of Moses, but like the impious king Manasseh.” Ellicott, Gill, Poole and K&D all lay out the alternatives for “the day of the captivity of the land,” which range from the Philistine capture of the ark to Tiglath-Pileser, three centuries apart, and none of them can settle it. Then the last verse sets the two sanctuaries side by side. Cambridge: “the writer does not say that the Danite shrine disappeared when the temple in Shiloh came to an end; what he means is that the local cult existed side by side with the national sanctuary.” ⚙ That sentence is the unit's verdict, and it is delivered in a date rather than a denunciation. For as long as God had a house in Shiloh, Israel also had this.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested. Judges 18 is not a story about Israelites who stopped worshipping the LORD. Cambridge says it plainly: “the Danites recognize that the God of Micah is none other than their own God,” and Ellicott notes that Jonathan's very name means gift of the LORD. Everyone in this chapter is, by their own account, a Yahwist. What the chapter records is what religion becomes when it is detached from the place and the word God appointed for it and attached instead to whatever a strong clan can carry. The evidence is in the vocabulary, not in any editorial comment. The men at the gate are girded with kelîm, prepared things (H3627), and they leave carrying other prepared things out of a house of God. The priest is posted with the identical participle used of the soldiers (nâtsab, v. 16 and v. 17). He walks bᵉqereb hāʻām, in the exact position JFB and Gill assign to the priests and the ark. The forms are all correct. The one question anyone asks in the entire unit is הֲט֣וֹב, “is it better?”, and it is a question about scale of employment. A worship that will answer that question and no other will end where this one ends: with a trusting city (bôṭêaḥ, v. 27) put to the mouth of the sword by men who put their trust in a stolen ephod, and with a shrine standing at Dan, the text says, for exactly as long as the house of God stood at Shiloh. ⚙ The most frightening thing here is not that the Danites chose a false god. It is that they never thought they had chosen at all.
Not a verse, a fallible line offered for testing: they never changed gods. They changed addresses, and took the furniture.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The list the spies recite in v. 14 is the inventory of Judges 17:3-5, item for item: פֶּסֶל and מַסֵּכָה made from the mother's silver (17:3-4), then אֵפוֹד and תְּרָפִים with a son consecrated as priest (17:5). K&D cross-references the reader back there at v. 14 (“see at Judges 17:4-5”), and Cambridge and Gill do the same. ⚙ The verbal chain is what makes chapters 17 and 18 one unit of narrative: a private chapel built on stolen and returned silver is stolen in its turn, and becomes a tribal sanctuary. The theft is not a deviation in the story; it is the story's own logic arriving at scale.
Judges 17:3 · Judges 17:4 · Judges 17:5
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes with Judges 17:5 — H646 ʼêphôwd (in 39 vv), H8655 tᵉrâphîym (in 15 vv, rare), H4318 Mîykâh (in 29 vv); and with Judges 17:3 and 17:4 — H4541 maççêkâh (in 28 vv), H6459 peçel (in 31 vv). This is verbal repetition inside one continuous narrative, not a citation of one book by another.
The pair peçel + maççêkâh is the exact pair named in the first of the Ebal curses, Deuteronomy 27:15, to which all the people were to answer Amen. Barnes cross-references Deuteronomy 27:15 and Exodus 20:4 at Judges 18:27, where the narrator calls the loot “what Micah had made.” ⚙ The Verifier's computed basis adds a detail the eye misses: Deuteronomy 27:15 and Judges 18:14 also share the root ʻânâh (H6030), the verb of answering. At Ebal Israel answered Amen to a curse on the maker of a pesel and a massēkāh; at Beth-Micah five Danites answer by proposing to acquire one of each. The narrator does not draw the line. The vocabulary does.
Deuteronomy 27:15 · Exodus 20:4
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes with Deuteronomy 27:15 — H6459 peçel (in 31 vv), H4541 maççêkâh (in 28 vv), H6030 ʻânâh (in 318 vv). The peçel+maççêkâh collocation is the rare element; ʻânâh is common and carries no weight on its own. Barnes independently cites Deuteronomy 27:15 at Judges 18:27.
The same two-word inventory that the Danites set up at Dan is the object of the prophetic verdict. Nahum 1:14 announces the cutting off of pesel and massēkāh from the house of the gods; Habakkuk 2:18 asks what profit a pesel is, that its maker carved it; Isaiah 42:17 turns back those who trust in a pesel and say to a massēkāh, “you are our gods.” ⚙ Isaiah's phrase is nearly Micah's own sentence in v. 24, spoken in defence rather than shame: “my gods which I made.” The Danite shrine of v. 30 is the standing object of a prophetic sentence that had not yet been spoken.
Nahum 1:14 · Habakkuk 2:18 · Isaiah 42:17
basis: Verifier: each of the three shares H6459 peçel (in 31 vv) and H4541 maççêkâh (in 28 vv) with this unit. Deliberately tiered below verbal: 28 and 31 verses is uncommon but not rare, no commentator in the brief cites these verses here, and neither prophet quotes Judges. The confirmed link is the recurrence of one fixed collocation inside a shared motif of manufactured gods.
Hosea 3:4 names the coming deprivation of Israel with two of the four nouns the Danites carried north: ephod and teraphim. ⚙ The pairing is not common. What Judges 18 shows being installed by robbery in the far north, Hosea foresees being stripped away, and the stripping is announced as mercy rather than punishment, since the promised sequel is a return to seek the LORD. Read together, Dan's founding equipment turns out to be exactly the equipment Israel must lose before she can look for her God.
Hosea 3:4
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H646 ʼêphôwd (in 39 vv) and H8655 tᵉrâphîym (in 15 vv, rare). The rare teraphim carries the link; no citation is claimed in either direction, and Hosea's context (deprivation) is the reverse of this unit's (acquisition).
Beth-rehob (H1050) occurs in only two verses in the Hebrew Bible: here, locating the valley in which Laish lay, and 2 Samuel 10:6, where it is a Syrian state hiring out troops against David. Cambridge and Pulpit both make the identification and infer the political situation behind v. 28: a valley in Syrian territory, too far from Sidon for rescue. K&D places it in the upper Huleh lowland by the central source of the Jordan, at Tell el Kadi.
2 Samuel 10:6
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H1050 Bêyth Rᵉchôwb (in 2 vv) — the rarest lexeme in the unit's whole candidate list. The link is the identity of a place-name, not a quotation; Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D make the same identification independently.
כְּבוּדָּה (H3520) appears in three verses in the Hebrew Bible. In Judges 18:21 it is what the Danites drove in front of their column; the Verifier finds it also at Psalm 45:13 and Ezekiel 23:41. ⚙ An honest caution belongs on this one: the three occurrences do not share a theme, and the versions cannot even agree what the Judges instance means — Ellicott sets out LXX Codex A's “their glorious possession,” the Vulgate's “everything which was precious,” and Codex B's “the heavy baggage,” while K&D decides for “the valuables, not the heavy baggage.” The link recorded here is a lexical rarity, and nothing more is claimed for it.
Psalm 45:13 · Ezekiel 23:41
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3520 kᵉbûwddâh (in 3 vv, very rare). Downgraded from verbal deliberately: the rarity is real but the senses diverge across the three occurrences and the Judges instance is itself disputed among the versions. No shared motif is asserted.
The Verifier returns Isaiah 10:30 and 1 Samuel 25:44 as high-scoring candidates on the strength of לַיִשׁ (H3919), a name occurring in only six verses. ⚙ We flag rather than build on it. The Laish of 1 Samuel 25:44 is a man, the father of Palti; the Laish of Isaiah 10:30 lies on the Assyrian approach to Jerusalem, nowhere near the Huleh valley K&D locates for this city. A rare shared lexeme is ordinarily strong evidence, and here it is evidence of a homonym. Cambridge notes besides that the Hebrew of v. 14 “can only be rendered the country, Laish,” the name reading like a marginal note, and that it is omitted in some LXX manuscripts.
Isaiah 10:30 · 1 Samuel 25:44
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3919 Layish (in 6 vv, rare) — but the lexicon itself records Laish as “the name of two places in Palestine,” and 1 Samuel 25:44 uses it of a person. Recorded here as a rejected candidate, not as a canonical connection.
Ellicott, Gill, JFB and Pulpit all connect the shrine of v. 30 to the northern calf of 1 Kings 12:29-30. Ellicott is careful about it: “If this pesel was in the form of a calf, the tradition of this cult may have given greater facility to the daring innovation of Jeroboam. In any case, it would make the inhabitants more ready to accept a cherubic symbol of Jehovah.” Pulpit puts it more directly, that the long existence of this worship at Dan “induced King Jeroboam to set up one of his golden calves at Dan.” Cambridge points forward further still, to Amos 8:14. ⚙ The point is not that Judges 18 predicts Jeroboam; it is that a sanctuary founded by theft and defended by numbers was still standing, with a hereditary priesthood, when a king needed one.
1 Kings 12:29 · 1 Kings 12:30 · Amos 8:14
basis: No Verifier-computed lexeme basis: these verses are not in the candidate list. The recorded basis is the shared site (Dan) and the continuity of a local cult there, as read by Ellicott, Gill, JFB, Pulpit and Cambridge. Nothing verbal is claimed.
Cambridge cross-references Genesis 31:30ff at v. 24, saying it “shews several points of resemblance to the present”; JFB makes the same comparison at v. 22, noting “the importance which Micah, like Laban, attached to his teraphim.” The shape recurs: a household's teraphim carried off by departing kin, an owner's hot pursuit, a confrontation on the road, and a man who has to be talked out of his gods by someone stronger. ⚙ The difference is the ending. Laban and Jacob cut a covenant and part; Micah is told to be quiet or die, and goes home.
Genesis 31:30
basis: No Verifier-computed lexeme basis for this pair. The recorded basis is the named cross-reference in Cambridge (at 18:24) and JFB (at 18:22), plus the shared narrative pattern of pursued household gods. Tiered structural, not verbal, since no shared lexeme is computed here.
The only question put to the Levite in this whole unit is הֲט֣וֹב, “is it better?” (v. 19), and it compares one household against a clan. The narrator's verdict on the answer is the matching verb: his heart was made good (v. 20). Pulpit names the transaction without softening it, “greater dignity and greater emolument stifled all sentiments of gratitude and loyalty to Micah”; Poole says he was “wholly governed by his own interest”; Ellicott compares a twelfth-century offer of an abbacy for a relic. ⚙ The apostolic letters describe the same trade in the church's own life: teachers who through covetousness make merchandise of those they teach, and men who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. The pattern is one structure, not one vocabulary, and it is stated here as a pattern only.
2 Peter 2:1-3 · 1 Timothy 6:5
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): no shared Strong's lexeme is possible and none is claimed, so a verbal tier is excluded by definition. The recorded basis is the shared structure of a sacred office transferred for better terms, which Poole, Pulpit and Ellicott each identify as the priest's motive in vv. 19-20. Neither New Testament passage mentions Judges 18.
Ellicott records at v. 27 that Dan's “name disappears from the records of 1 Chronicles 4:1, and he is not mentioned among the elected tribes in Revelation 7,” and at v. 30 that “whether this, or rather the smallness of Dan, is the reason for its exclusion from Revelation 7:4 must remain uncertain.” He reports too that “the Fathers thought, for this reason, that Antichrist would spring from the tribe of Dan,” and passes on Blunt's conjecture of Phoenician intermarriage. ⚙ We flag this rather than preach it. That Dan is absent from Revelation 7:5-8 is a fact of the text; that Judges 18 is the reason is an inference Ellicott himself declines to make, and the patristic Antichrist tradition is a later development resting on no statement of Scripture. It is also a cross-Testament pair, which cannot be verbal in any case: Greek and Hebrew share no Strong's numbers.
Revelation 7:5 · Revelation 7:6 · Revelation 7:7 · Revelation 7:8
basis: Provenance contested and explicitly left open by the commentator who raises it: Ellicott says the reason for Dan's exclusion “must remain uncertain,” and attributes the Antichrist inference to “the Fathers” without naming a source. Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew), so no shared-lexeme basis is possible and no verbal tier could apply.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
⚙ The offer made to Jonathan is the clearest definition of a hireling priesthood in Scripture: not “is it true?” but הֲט֣וֹב, “is it better?” (v. 19), and the narrator's verdict is that his heart was made good by it (v. 20). Ellicott calls the alacrity “very unworthy of a grandson of Moses”; Poole notes he “who was before perfidious to God, should prove so to men.” This priest keeps his office by outliving no one and serving whoever holds the gate; his sons inherit it, Judges says, until the land is stripped bare. The letter to the Hebrews sets the contrast at exactly this point: the Levitical priests were many in number because death kept removing them, while the Son holds his priesthood permanently, and can save completely because he always lives to intercede. A priesthood that can be transferred for a better salary is one that can also be lost; the priesthood of Christ is held by the power of an indestructible life. Hosea, in the same breath in which he foretells Israel stripped of ephod and teraphim (Hosea 3:4, the Verifier's confirmed lexical link to this unit), promises that afterward they will seek the LORD and David their king. ⚙ The apparatus goes; the true priest-king is what is sought when it is gone.
Hebrews 7:23-25 · Hosea 3:4-5
⚙ Judges 18:31 does not end in denunciation. It ends in a date: they set up Micah's graven image for themselves “all the time the house of God was in Shiloh.” Cambridge draws out precisely what that means: “the writer does not say that the Danite shrine disappeared when the temple in Shiloh came to an end; what he means is that the local cult existed side by side with the national sanctuary.” Two houses of God in one land, and K&D notes the narrator uses the very phrase bêt ʼĕlōhîm of Micah's chapel too. The northern rival sanctuary is exactly the question a Samaritan woman puts to Jesus at Jacob's well: our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say Jerusalem. His answer does not choose between the two mountains; it announces an hour in which the Father is sought in spirit and in truth, and elsewhere he points to his own body as the temple that will be raised. ⚙ Dan's shrine and Shiloh's house stood side by side for generations, and the New Testament ends the standoff not by demolishing one address but by giving the worshippers a person.
John 4:20-24 · John 2:19-21
⚙ The two participles the narrator chose for Laish are שֹׁקֵט and בֹּטֵחַ (v. 27), quiet and trusting, bâṭach being the lexicon's word for confidence and sureness. Pulpit hears the repetition as the writer's own reprobation of the deed, “like that of Simeon and Levi in slaying Hamor and Shechem,” while JFB records Chalmers arguing the opposite, that a divine grant “sanctifies all and legalizes all.” The text itself offers no such warrant: it reports no command, no inquiry answered, no deliverer, only that there was none (ʼên maṣṣîl, v. 28). ⚙ Set beside the Good Shepherd's own contrast, this chapter reads as an exact negative: men come to a settled people carrying a stolen ephod, and they steal, and kill, and destroy, and burn. He comes that they may have life and have it abundantly, and rebukes the disciples who want fire called down on a village that will not receive him. The claim here is the tool's own and should be tested: Judges 18 makes no prophecy about Christ. It shows, with unusual clarity, what men do with religion when no shepherd is in it.
John 10:10 · Luke 9:51-56
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. This unit sits on some of the most disturbed text in Judges, and the brief's own sources say so. Cambridge judges v. 16 “wholly an addition” and the second half of v. 17 “simply a doublet from Jdg 18:18,” argues that in v. 15 “even unto the house of Micah” is a gloss, and concludes at v. 17, “It is impossible to recover the original form of the text here.” These are source-critical judgements from style and repetition, not manuscript evidence, and this synthesis has not adopted them; it records them. In v. 18 the consonantal text reads פֶּסֶל הָאֵפוֹד, “the graven image of the ephod”; Ellicott defends the reading, K&D explains it, Cambridge and Pulpit call it a scribal slip, and BSB follows the LXX in inserting “and.” In v. 28 Cambridge proposes reading Aram (Syria) for adam (“any man”). None of these is settled here.
Manasseh or Moses (v. 30). The Masoretic text writes מְנַשֶּׁה with a suspended nun. K&D: “Ben Mosheh is therefore unquestionably the original reading, although the other reading ben Menasseh is also very old.” Barnes, Ellicott, Cambridge, Gill and Pulpit all describe the device and its motive in the same terms. The Vulgate reads Moses; the LXX witnesses are divided. The interlinear supplied in the brief glosses מְנַשֶּׁה as “of Moses,” which is a translation decision, not a variant reading, and is recorded as such here.
“The day of the captivity of the land” (v. 30). Genuinely unresolved. Options in the brief run from the Philistine capture of the ark in Eli's day (Geneva, Kimchi as reported by Gill, Poole's first option), through an otherwise unrecorded deportation, to Tiglath-Pileser in 734 or the fall of Samaria in 722 (Cambridge, Barnes, Benson). Houbigant's conjecture to read aron (ark) for arets (land) is reported by Benson and Pulpit; it is a conjecture with no manuscript support. Pulpit's own summary is the honest one: “no certainty can be arrived at without more actual knowledge.”
Parse oddity. The interlinear records לָּֽךְ at the end of v. 24 as second person feminine singular, though Micah is quoting the masculine question put to him in v. 23. This synthesis notes the anomaly and offers no explanation for it; it may be a form of the pausal suffix rather than a gender shift, and nothing in the brief settles it.
Voices. Matthew Henry's entry in the brief is his note on Judges 17:7-13, supplied by the source for every verse of this unit; it is quoted once, at v. 31, with that fact marked. JFB's comment at v. 27 quotes Chalmers, not JFB, on the legality of the massacre, and is flagged accordingly. Ellicott's remarks about Greek and Italian brigands, Egyptian Horus, and the Messenian renaming of Zankle are nineteenth-century comparative asides, not exegesis of the Hebrew.
⚙ Machine layer. Every parse, gloss, Strong's number and lexeme frequency above is from the brief; every cross-reference tier states its computed basis or admits it has none. The literal renderings, the notes marked ⚙, the sola reading and the christ entries are this tool's fallible synthesis and carry no authority. Where the tool saw a pattern the sources do not name — the three turnings of vv. 15, 21, 23 and 26; the mouth stopped in v. 19 and the mouth of the sword in v. 27; kelîm at the gate and kelîm from the chapel — those are marked ⚙ and are offered to be tested, not believed.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)