The Idol of Micah
A household shrine with a molten image and a hired priest, which ended with a whole tribe setting it up for itself—"all the days that the house of God was in Shiloh."
The account stands at the end of the book of Judges, outside the order of years: Seder Olam Rabbah places it in the days of Cushan-Rishathaim, that is at the very beginning of the age.
It begins with money. Micah returned to his mother the eleven hundred pieces of silver he had taken; part of it went to a founder. "And the man Micah had a house of God, and he made an ephod and teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, and he became his priest." Then a Levite from Bethlehem passes by, and Micah takes him for ten pieces of silver a year, clothing and keep.
Then come six hundred armed Danites, going to seek an inheritance. They take both the furnishings and the Levite; when Micah follows, he is told not to let his voice be heard, lest angry men fall upon him. "And the children of Dan set up the graven image, and Jonathan son of Gershom son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land."
The measure of it all here is time, not a verdict: "all the days that the house of God was in Shiloh." That is, beside the Mishkan, in those same years.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Shoftim 17–18 — the silver, the ephod and teraphim, the hired Levite and the Danites' departure
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sanhedrin 103b — the idol passed through the sea; "his bread was available to wayfarers"
- Seder Olam Rabbah 12 — "in the days of Cushan-Rishathaim was the idol of Micah"
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.