What does dystopian society look like? Many authors have imagined futures that sometimes, and in these times, seem strangely prescient. Octavia Butler or George Orwell are just two who come to mind. Whoever wrote the Book of Judges went further - depicting social anarchy that borders on the absurd and surreal - only to serve the final agenda: The reason for wanting, and getting, a king. There is a clear agenda underlines in these concluding chapters that will lead us to the next book and the first official royal house of Israel.
The last few chapters of Judges spin a different and much worse version of reality than the first 16 chapters in which one leader rises up after another in respond to local conflicts. Those leadership cycles are depicted as part of Adonai's blueprint of reward and punishment, bad times of oppression, followed by short lived repentance, faith and restoration of autonomy, into neglect, loss of power, again and again. But in the remaining five chapters there is no judge or justice, kindness or loyalty to kin:
בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֔ם אֵ֥ין מֶ֖לֶךְ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אִ֛ישׁ הַיָּשָׁ֥ר בְּעֵינָ֖יו יַעֲשֶֽׂה׃
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did as they pleased.
Under these chaotic conditions a horror story emerges, shedding light on the wild religious and political realities of these decadent decades in the history of Israel.
A man from the tribe of Ephraim by the name of Micah steals his mother’s silver stash, confesses, and somehow gets her to dedicate the money towards the construction of a local statue and mask representing the Divine. With these cultic idols he builds a local shrine, in direct competition with the Tabernacle in Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant resides, not too far away. He nominates one of his sons as the local cleric, in defiance of the laws in which the Levites are supposed to serve as sacred technicians. Then one day a young Levite from Bethlehem wanders over the hill country and is coaxed by Micah to become the new local religious authority, installed in the temple in return for food and board.
How bad is all this? On the face of it this is a tale about religious devotion and local response to spiritual needs, if with some murky background. Well, wait for what’s coming up next.
The premise paints a paradigm shift and the collapse of norms. A man steals from his mother who blessed instead of cursing him, and then dedicating the returned funds towards religious relics that are in direct denial of the party line: The objects that they smith from the silver are named ‘Statue and Mask’ - local cult images that are the direct words used in the Book of Names when the people create a Golden Calf. The thief builds his own temple, presumably dedicated to Adonai, even with idols as the centerpiece, creates his own priestly system and reminds us that the demand for centralized religious authority was perhaps the fantasy of later editors and creators of the state. Something in this decentralized version of religious-political existence has the wild west aspect to it -- lawlessness will breed violence, and the violence will grow. This is a tale not just about competing religious narratives and different ideologies imagining what is sacred and how to worship the divine - it’s another warning tale about what happens when people take authority into their own hands - and it was authored at a time when the agenda was clear - one central royal address is what will make things right. Or at least try to.
This story gets more interesting in the next chapter when we find out the young Levite’s heritage: He’s the grandson of Moses. How will this surprising reveal spin the hidden meaning of this tale?
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections: Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. January 2022-July 2025
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Amichai, You have a wonderful gift for retelling a story in which you weave a fidelity to the original with your own shrewd remarks and interpretive queries. Today I was reminded of Charles Lamb---a second tier poet and essayist in the early 19th century wrote a book, "Tales of Shakespeare" (1807) for his younger siblings to help them through the twists and turns of the Bard's plots. The book has never been out of print since.