And he restored the eleven hundred silver-pieces to his mother; and his mother said, I had dedicated the silver to Jehovah from my hand for my son, to make a graven image and a molten image; and now I will restore it to thee.
A mother takes back her stolen silver, blesses the son who took it, and says she set the whole sum apart for the Lord — to pay for a carved image. Can God's name make a forbidden thing acceptable?
She speaks the Lord's name over a plan the law had already banned. One writer sets her words beside the commandments they break.
Micah, this man of Mount Ephraim, and his mother completely ignored what God's word said. The one stole, when the law had said, "You shall not steal" (Ex. 20:15), and his conscience felt nothing when he admitted it. The mother had wholly dedicated the silver to Jehovah for her son "to make a carved image and a metal image" (v. 3). Yet the law had said: "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image" (Ex. 20:3-4). She joined Jehovah's name to her idols. That is worse than plain idolatry. Yet her conscience stayed silent.
Her words sound devout. One writer holds them up against one more commandment, and against the blessing she just spoke over a theft.
Had she forgotten, "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain" (Ex. 20:7)? Blessing her boy for stealing! ... Can we in any way imagine God accepting anything offered against His will and word? Yet here we have His name on the lip, and things dedicated to Him for uses which are detestable in His eyes.
The verse has her handing the silver over "from my hand for my son." One writer reads that gesture as an old sin repeated.
She repeats the old sin of the wilderness. A metalworker turns the silver into a carved image and a metal image. She then solemnly passes them from her own hand, for her son, over to the LORD — with no doubt at all that He finds this acceptable.
The silver came back because of the curse in verse 2, not because a conscience woke up. The mother blesses him anyway.
What a scene this chapter brings us into! The thieving son, the cursing mother. He restores the money because he fears the curse. True faith was not there, only superstition. And that godless woman can say, "Blessed be my son by the LORD." Then she uses two hundred shekels of silver and has two images made.
She names the person the silver is for: her son. Her devotion has an object, and it is not God.
Then she made it clear that she idolized her son. She told him she had dedicated all this money to the Lord, to make a carved image and a molded image for her son (v. 3). She wanted her son to be religious, but she was teaching him to refuse to obey the Word of God!
She says she dedicated all of it. Verse 4 shows only two hundred of the eleven hundred pieces reaching the silversmith. One writer turns that gap into a rule.
She does not give it all. No idolatry, no god we set up with our own hands, ever costs us everything. Whatever the thing we put in God's place demands, it never costs our whole fortune — you may be sure of that.
This is one private household. One writer traces a whole tribe's idolatry back to it.
The idolatry in Dan did not start with them. It was the transplanting of a sin begun in the house of a man who, as far as we can tell, had no standing at all in Israel. Leprosy spreads, no matter which part of the body it starts in. No one may think himself too small or too unimportant to carry a disease that can infect a nation.
The same writer notes where this happened — close to the place where the ark of God stood.
All this happens not in some far-off corner of the little land of Israel. It happens in the hill country of Ephraim, close to Shiloh, where the ark of God stood. The golden calf was made the same way, in the shadow of Mount Sinai. Distance from God cannot be measured in miles.
- Motive — Fear of a curse brought the silver back, not repentance. The blessing she speaks rests on recovered money, not a changed heart.
- Name — She puts the Lord's name on a carved image. Tying His name to idols is worse than open idolatry, and her conscience stays quiet.
- Aim — The gift is "for my son." She wants him religious while training him to disobey God's Word.
- Cost — She promises eleven hundred pieces and spends two hundred. A home-made god never costs a person everything.
- Spread — One unknown household starts an idolatry that a whole tribe will take up. It began near Shiloh: distance from God is not measured in miles.
Now he restored the silver to his mother; and his mother took two hundred silver-pieces and gave them to the founder, and he made of them a graven image and a molten image; and they were in the house of Micah.
Micah's stolen silver comes back to his mother, and she turns it at once into religion. Commentators press two questions on it: what does God's name on a forbidden image mean, and where did the other nine hundred shekels go?
The mother's words in verse 3 dedicated the silver to the Lord. This verse shows what that dedication produced. One writer sets it against the commandments it breaks:
Utter disregard for God's word marked Micah, this man of the hill country of Ephraim, and his mother. The one stole, when the law had said, "You shall not steal," and his conscience was untouched when he admitted it. The mother had wholly dedicated the silver to the LORD for her son "to make a carved image and a metal image." Yet God had said: "You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image." She joined the LORD's name to her idols — a worse thing than mere idolatry — and her conscience was silent. She set up a form of worship of her own, and her guilty son fully identified himself with it.
She had promised the whole sum. The silversmith got a fraction of it. One writer turns that arithmetic into a question:
Micah's mother used 200 shekels for the making of the images. Are we like her in any respect? Do we speak of devoting everything to the Lord, then keep back nine elevenths for ourselves? But of course none of this was really devoted to the Lord, but to an evil purpose.
The verse closes by telling us where the images went. The mother is never heard from again:
The mother takes 200 pieces of the restored silver and has a carved image made, after which she seems to disappear from the history, having proved how completely disloyal she is, and how completely unlike the faithful in Israel, such as the mother of Samson. It is all with the evident approval of the son, who takes his metal, carved image and sets it up in his house as an idol.
One writer asks what Micah got out of this, then points to where he lived:
He is certainly dull of sight, and keenly looking after his own interest all the while. For what is more profitable than a god of your own making, kept in your own possession? And all this happens not in some remote corner of even the little land of Israel. It happens in the hill country of Ephraim, quite near to Shiloh, where the ark of God was. In the same way the golden calf was made in the shadow of Mount Sinai, for you cannot measure distance from God by latitude and longitude. Heathenism is not the sigh of a heart that says, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" No — it came when people knew God and yet "did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened."
One writer takes the root of idolatry deeper than silver. What a silversmith can cast, a mind can cast too:
The root of all idolatry is self-will. It is making a god of our own. It is starting with self and fashioning a god, not necessarily out of silver, and not necessarily with our hands. You would say there is very little danger nowadays of people fashioning gods with their hands. But there is a tool more cunning and skilful than the hands, and that is the intellect of man. Wherever self takes the place of the will of God, you will find the human mind at work fashioning a god to please itself. And it does this in the name of the Lord, in the name of the true God.
One writer traces the idolatry of a whole tribe back to this one house:
The idolatry in Dan did not begin with them. It was the transplanting of a sin that started in the house of a man who seems to have had no prominence at all in Israel. Leprosy will spread, whatever part of the body it begins in. And no one should think himself too small or too unimportant to spread a disease that may infect a nation.
- Stolen — A son took this silver from his own mother. He gave it back in fear of her curses, not in repentance.
- Dedicated — She gave the silver to the Lord, then spent it on what He had forbidden. Joining His name to an idol is worse, one writer says, than open idolatry.
- Withheld — She pledged all eleven hundred pieces and handed over two hundred. A vow spoken in full, kept in less than a fifth.
- Housed — The images ended up in a private house in Ephraim, close to the ark at Shiloh. Nearness to God's dwelling is no measure of nearness to God.
- Spread — What began in one obscure home spread until it infected a whole tribe. No one is too small to pass on the disease.
And the man Micah had a house of gods, and made an ephod and teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest.
Micah builds a complete religion inside his own house: a shrine, a priest's garment, household images, and a son ordained to serve at it. All of it carries the name of the Lord, while the priesthood God had set up already stood in Israel. The question is not whether Micah was religious. It is whether God ever asked for any of it.
Micah borrowed every piece of his shrine. Some came from the nations around him. Some came from Israel's own worship, used out of place. One writer names each source and the law it broke:
Micah also had a shrine. Where did he learn of this but from the idolatrous nations in the land? He made an ephod also, copying what was only to be worn by the high priest of Israel (Lev. 8:7). Then to crown his wickedness, he consecrated his son as his priest (v. 5). Scripture had said plainly that only men from Aaron's line were priests. Anyone who dared to trespass on this faced the death penalty (Num. 18:1-7). Also, a priest was a priest for all Israel, not for a family. But independence is a natural weed of the human heart, and that independence showed itself everywhere in Israel at the time: "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (v. 6).
The ephod was the high priest's garment. Lifted away from the man God appointed to wear it, it became an empty costume:
"The man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household gods," linking the false gods with the ephod — a worthless part of Jewish worship once it is separated from the high priest who wore it. Then he "ordained one of his sons, who became his priest" (v. 5). More than ever the word of God was forgotten. His son had no right to the priesthood, and Micah had no right to ordain him.
The word behind "household gods" is teraphim — small images kept at home. One writer weighs how serious they are, and where they lead:
The image (teraphim) stands a little below the idol. It is a kind of half-god whose domain is the household. It carries a certain importance, and people even consult it at times. Such superstitions soon lead to true idols… Often the believer lacks the energy to drive these causes of stumbling out of his family, and each one of us must watch this carefully.
Notice the order inside the verse. Micah never planned a system. Each piece called for the next:
The steps in this growth are very simple. In the fifth verse we find that he has an image, so he must have a house to put his image in. Then, as he has a house, there must also be an ephod, or priest's garment, and teraphim — minor images, as you might say — connected with it. And over all these there must be a priest to preside. Micah appoints one of his own sons as priest. But he soon finds something better than a priest he made himself, for he gets one who is at least partly a priest of God.
So who may be a priest? One writer answers with two classes, and a home-made priest belongs to neither:
True ministry of the Word is a blessed thing. But let us remember, as we saw in Gideon's history, that there are only two classes of priests; one class has but one solitary figure in it, the High Priest. No one dare take His place. The other class of priesthood has in it all God's people. "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood." The two classes are Christ alone, and all His people. But man-made priesthood always takes ministry — which should be service — and turns it into priesthood.
The same writer traces all of it back to one root, and warns that hands are not the only tool that makes gods:
The root of all idolatry is self-will; it is making a god of our own. It starts with self and shapes a god. That god need not be made of silver, and it need not be made with our hands… There is a tool more cunning and skilful than the hands: the mind of man. Wherever self takes the place of the will of God, you will find the human mind at work shaping a god to please itself — and it does this in the name of the Lord, in the name of the true God.
- His own will — the root of idolatry is self-will: making a god of our own, then attaching the true God's name to it.
- His own shrine — one image needed a house, the house needed an ephod and images, and those needed a priest. Each step called for the next.
- His own ephod — the high priest's garment, worn by anyone else, is worth nothing.
- His own priest — Scripture has only two priesthoods: Christ alone, and all His people. A family priest made at home is neither.
- His own images — household "gods" look minor, yet such superstitions soon lead to real idols. Clear them out of the home.