101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

272 101 Myths of the Bible
At this point, the story introduces an unemployed Levite priest from Bethlehemjudah
seeking work in Ephraim. Micah hired him to administer his sanctuary, the pay to
include various perks plus a salary of ten shekels a year. The priest treated Micah like
a son, and Micah declared that now that he had a Levite priest God would be good to
him.
Immediately thereafter, the story takes a strange twist. The tribe of Dan, unable to
hold its territory on the Canaanite shore area, sought out a new homeland. The spies
sent out passed by the house of Micah and recognized the voice of the Levite priest.
Continuing their search, they decided upon the territory of Laish, way up in the
north. Before setting out to conquer the territory, however, the Danites asked the
Levite priest to help them steal the idols and icons from Micah’s sanctuary.
And they said unto him, Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go
with us, and be to us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be a priest unto the
house of one man, or that thou be a priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel? ( Judg.
18:19)
The priest agreed to help. The Danites forcibly removed the religious items from
Micah’s sanctuary, conquered Laish (which they renamed Dan), and established a
new sanctuary under the guidance of the Levite. At the end of the story, we learn the
identity of the Levite,“Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh,” and that
he and his sons remained in charge of the shrine “until the day of the [Assyrian or
Babylonian] captivity of the land.”
During the narrative, the text proclaims,“In those days there was no king in Israel,
but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” ( Judg. 17:6).
That refrain, repeated throughout the rest of Judges, suggests to some that the
story of Micah shows how Israel needed a king to prevent religious corruption. In fact,
the opposite is the case. The Micah narrative is rich in symbolism that indicates that it
originated as a polemic against kingship after the split between Israel and Judah. The
story is about the feud between King Jeroboam and the priesthood of Shiloh after the
former undermined the authority of the latter.
According to 1 Kings, which chronicles the breakup of Israel and Judah, Jeroboam,
an Ephramite, led the opposition against King Solomon. One day, it says, a prophet