Judges 18:27-31 – The foolishness of troubling trouble

When Micah realized that his band of men could not overcome the six hundred armed Danites, they departed and headed for home. The Danites with Micah’s stolen relics and priest headed for Laish. When they came to this quiet and remote town, they stuck it with sword and burned it down. Being a quiet and isolated town, rescue effort by the people of Sidon was near impossible. The Danites torched and destroyed Laish, annexed and rebuilt the town. They then named it Dan and it became their settlement. They failed to conquer the land allotted to them so they migrated and finally made Laish theirs.       

This account has painted the terrible misdeeds of the Danites. They were people who stole someone else’s idols and priest. It was not like that the priest was anything to crow about, but one who was disloyal and could be bought. They also attacked a defenceless city, and worst still set up a system counter to that of the worship of Jehovah, the true God. They set up their own shrine in this new city and installed the graven image that they stole from Micah in Ephraim. In verse 30, we are finally told the name of the Levite. His name was Jonathan, the son of Gershom, who was in reality the elder son of Moses. But in order not to disgrace Moses, the author referred to him as the son of Manasseh.  So, Jonathan and his family became priests to the Danites. It shows us how the priestly tribe had also deteriorated. What hope has the nation, when the people who were appointed to serve God, reneged on their assignments and led the people further away from God?

Here we learn the dangers that awaited the Danites did not come from some external force, but it was a situation of their own making. They had placed themselves in a spiritually precarious and untenable situation by making Jonathan their priest. Through him, the Danites had built a system of worship that was opposed to the house of God located at Shiloh. It is one thing to be attacked from without the community, but the Danites’ source of spiritual downfall came from the corrupt system they themselves had built. As God’s community, let us be wary of dangers from outside, but we also must deal with the failings from within. We must not allow the root of evil from within to fester and destroy us. Take the wise advice of the English proverbs: Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.