Study Desk

Now the governors of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to celebrate, for they said, "Our god has handed Samson our enemy over to us."

Now there was a man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah.

And he said to his mother, "The 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse and also spoke it in my hearing, behold, the silver is with me; I took it." And his mother said, "Blessed be my son by the LORD."

He then returned the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, "I wholly consecrate the silver from my hand to the LORD for my son to make a carved image and a cast metal image; so now I will return them to you."

So when he returned the silver to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave them to the silversmith, who made them into a carved image and a cast metal image, and they were in the house of Micah.

And the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household idols, and consecrated one of his sons, so that he might become his priest.

Now there was a young man from Bethlehem in Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite; and he was staying there.

Then the man left the city, Bethlehem in Judah, to stay wherever he would find a place; and as he made his journey, he came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah.

Micah said to him, "Where do you come from?" And he said to him, "I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to stay wherever I may find a place."

Micah then said to him, "Stay with me and be a father and a priest to me, and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year, a supply of clothing, and your sustenance." So the Levite went in.

Then Micah said, "Now I know that the LORD will prosper me, because I have a Levite as a priest."

In those days there was no king of Israel; and in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking an inheritance for themselves to live in, for until that day an inheritance had not been allotted to them as a possession among the tribes of Israel.

"When you enter, you will come to an unsuspecting people with a spacious land; for God has handed it over to you, a place where there is no lack of anything that is on the earth."

Then the five men who went to spy out the country of Laish said to their kinsmen, "Do you know that there are in these houses an ephod and household idols, and a carved image and a cast metal image? Now then, consider what you should do."

And they said to him, "Be silent, put your hand over your mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be a priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and a family in Israel?"

Then they took what Micah had made and the priest who had belonged to him, and came to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, and struck them with the edge of the sword; and they burned the city with fire.

Now it came about in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite staying in the remote part of the hill country of Ephraim, who took a concubine for himself from Bethlehem in Judah.

But his concubine found him repugnant, and she left him and went to her father's house in Bethlehem in Judah, and remained there for a period of four months.

Then her husband set out and went after her to speak gently to her in order to bring her back, taking with him his servant and a pair of donkeys. And she brought him into her father's house, and when the girl's father saw him, he was glad to meet him.

Now on the fourth day they got up early in the morning, and he prepared to go; but the girl's father said to his son-in-law, "Strengthen yourself with a piece of bread, and afterward you may go."