King James Version · The judges
Judges 17
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And there was a man of mount , whose name was . And he said unto his mother, The eleven hundred of silver that were taken from thee, about which thou cursedst, and spakest of also in mine ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it. And his mother said, be thou of , my son. And when he had restored the eleven hundred of silver to his mother, his mother said, I had wholly dedicated the silver unto from my hand for my son, to make a graven and a molten : now therefore I will restore it unto thee. Yet he restored the money unto his mother; and his mother took two hundred of silver, and gave them to the founder, who made thereof a graven and a molten : and they were in the house of . And the man had an house of gods, and made an , and teraphim, and one of his sons, who became his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And there was a young man out of Beth–lehem–judah of the family of Judah, who was a , and he sojourned there. And the man departed out of the city from Beth–lehem–judah to sojourn where he could find a place: and he came to mount to the house of , as he journeyed. 9And said unto him, Whence comest thou? And he said unto him, I am a of Beth–lehem–judah, and I go to sojourn where I may find a place. And said unto him, with me, and be unto me a and a priest, and I will give thee ten of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel, and thy victuals. So the went in. 11And the was content to with the man; and the young man was unto him as one of his sons. And the ; and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of . Then said , Now know I that will do me good, seeing I have a to my priest.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The judges, 1200 BC to 1050 BC ›
No central government and no standing army. The great empires are weak, which is precisely why Israel's troubles come from close neighbors: Moab, Ammon, Midian, and the newly arrived Philistines on the coast.
- Egypt
- Broken into competing power centres and no longer able to project force into Canaan. Its withdrawal is the single biggest reason this period has no imperial overlord.
- Mesopotamia
- Assyria exists but is dormant, hemmed in and looking east. The century that would have crushed a stateless Israel simply has not arrived yet.
- The coast
- The Philistines settle their five cities after arriving from the Aegean world, bringing Mycenaean-style pottery, a taste for pork, and an early advantage in ironworking. Further north the Phoenician ports of Tyre and Sidon start the trading expansion that will eventually give the alphabet to Greece.
- Further afield
- Greece has entered its dark age: the palaces are gone, Linear B is forgotten, and writing disappears from the Aegean for three centuries. In China the Zhou dynasty replaces the Shang in 1046 BC and issues the doctrine that heaven withdraws its mandate from unjust kings, an idea with an interesting resemblance to the book of Judges.