Judges: Chapter 17

 

What is taken

what is offered

what fills the hand

in the stops along your way

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The next chapter begins abruptly, with no mention of the passage of time (the usual bridge between sagas), nor any reference to an external oppressor.  We have left the realm of history, to enter the timeless space of the domestic: a "man from the mountains of Ephraim" in the middle of an exchange with his mother about money.

Yet despite the change of ambiance and setting, there is a strange yet clear textual link to the Samson story: the very specific sum of 1100 silver coins--paid by the Philistines to Delilah for Samson's secret--repeated here, twice, as the sum stolen by Micah from his mother. More subtle: this timeless "in those days" is defined by "each man did what was right in his own eyes" (yashar b'enav), an echo of Samson's justification for his choice of Philistine wife: "for she is right in my eyes" (yeshara hi be'eynai).

The linkage between Micah's coins and Delilah's blood money associates places money at the center, associating it with betrayal, commodification and possession. And indeed, the relationship between Micah and his mother zings around these coins, which change hands repeatedly between them. Micah steals from his mother who curses him, then retracts the curse. He says he will return the money; she says the money is his; then retracts this offer as he gives her the money. Instead, she gives him a fraction  to pay for "an idol and an ephod"--returning us to the Gideon story, with its possibility of hereditary kingship, at a time "when there is no King in Israel.".

 The intense interaction of mother and son contrast with the Samson saga, where Manoach the father keeps asserting his centrality.  In the backdrop is the gaping absence of the father. And indeed in the next section, the father moves centre stage: Micah, now revealed to be a father himself, "fills the hands of his son" to make him the priest of this new house of God-idolatry. Yet when a young Levite passes by, Micah sees an opportunity. Even as the Levite emphasized his migratory status as one who is opportunistically looking to "sojourn where he finds," Micah eagerly grasps at him, begging him to "stay with me and be my father and my priest,"  the missing father found at last. 

To offset this desperation for relationship, Micah offers money: " I will pay you ten shekels of silver a year, an allowance of clothing, and your food." The Levite accepts the blandishments he "has found", and has "his hands filled"  in place of Micah's son. Though Micah searched for a father, "the youth became like one of his own sons" and Micah is convinced that some how in this, he has earned God's blessing.