Глава 18

1–2. The Danites' search for their destiny. 3–6. Their meeting with the Levite in Micah's house and questioning the Lord. 7–12. Their visit to the city of Lais and testimony about him to their fellow tribesmen. 13–26. A visit by a detachment of Danites to the house of Micah, the theft of religious objects that were there and the abduction of the Levite. 27–29. The conquest of Lais by the Danites and the placing here of religious objects from the house of Micah. 30–31. Cult of the Danites. Judges 18:1. In those days Israel had no king; and in those days the tribe of Dan was looking for an inheritance for itself, where to settle, because until then it had not received a full inheritance among the tribes of Israel. Judges 18:2. And the sons of Dan sent from their tribe five men, mighty men, from Zorah and Eshtaol, to spy out the land and to know it, and they said to them, Go, find out the land. They came to Mount Ephraim to the house of Micah and spent the night there. The Amorites ousted him from the inheritance assigned to the tribe of Dan (Judges 1:34), and therefore the Danites were forced to look for their inheritance somewhere else in the promised land. The embassy they sent from Tzorah (Sar'a) and Eshtaol (Ashua) (cf. Judges 13:25), heading north and following through the inheritance of the tribe of Ephraim, reached the house of Micah, and stopped here for the night. Judges 18:3. Being at Micah's house, they recognized the voice of a young Levite and went there and asked him: who brought you here? what are you doing here and why are you here? Judges 18:4. He said to them: Micah did this and that for me, hired me, and I became his priest. Judges 18:5. They said to him: ask God so that we can know whether our path on which we are going will be successful. Judges 18:6. The priest said to them: Go in peace; your path in which you go is before the Lord. Having reprimanded a young man in Micah's house with a pronunciation (cf. Judges 12:6) different from the Ephraimites, a Levite and having learned from him about his position here as a priest, the Danite ambassadors asked him to ask God about the success of their journey, which he did. Judges 18:7. And those five men went and came to Laish, and saw the people who were in it, that they lived peacefully, according to the custom of the Sidonians, quiet and carefree, and that there was no one in the land who would offend in any way, or who would have power: they lived far from the Sidonians, and they had no business with anyone. Judges 18:8. And [the five men] returned to their brothers in Zorah and Estaol, and their brothers said to them: What are you up to? Judges 18:9. They said: Let us rise and go against them; we saw the land, it is very good; and you thought: don’t hesitate to go and take that land as an inheritance; Judgment 18:10 . When you go, you will come to a careless people, and that land is vast; God delivers her into your hands; This is a place where there is no shortage of anything that comes from the earth. Judges 18:11. And from the tribe of Dan, from Zorah and Eshaol, six hundred men departed from there, girded with weapons of war. Judges 18:12. They went and camped at Kiriath-jearim in Judah. Therefore, that place is called the camp of Dan to this day. He is behind Kiriath-jearim. After the Levite’s answer, the Danite ambassadors went to the north of the promised land, reached the city of Laisha, which was called Leshem under Joshua (Joshua 19:47), and saw the careless and disorderly lifestyle of the city’s inhabitants, and at the same time their distance from Sidon (Phoenicia), under whose protectorate they were. Lais-Dan, located on the site of Tell el-Qadi near Paneada, is separated from Sidon by the deep cliff of Nar el-Litani, from Damascus by Hermon, and from Syria by the valley of Bik'a (Kelesyria). Returning from Laish, the Danite ambassadors informed their fellow tribesmen both about the character of the inhabitants of this city and about the nature of the land itself, after which the Danites, numbering 600 people, armed, set out from Zorah and Eshtaol and headed north, encamping before Cariath-jearim (Joshua 18:14-15). Judges 18:13. From there they went to Mount Ephraim and came to Micah's house. Judges 18:14. And the five men who went to spy out the land of Laish said to their brothers: Do you know that in one of these houses there is an ephod, a teraphim, an image and a molten image? so think about what to do. Judgment 18:15 . And they went there and entered the house of the young Levite, the house of Micah, and greeted him. Judges 18:16. And six hundred men from the sons of Dan, girded with military weapons, stood at the gate. Judges 18:17. So the five men who had gone to spy out the land went and entered there and took the image and the ephod and the teraphim and the molten image. The priest stood at the gate with those six hundred people girded with military weapons. Judges 18:18. When they entered Micah's house and took the image, the ephod, the teraphim, and the molten image, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?” Judges 18:19. They said to him: Be silent, put your hand on your mouth and come with us and be our father and priest; Is it better for you to be a priest in one man's house than to be a priest of a tribe or tribe of Israel? Judgment 18:20 . The priest rejoiced, and took the ephod, the teraphim, and the image [and the molten image], and went with the people. Judges 18:21. They turned and went, and sent the children, livestock and burdens ahead. Judges 18:22. When they were far from Micah's house, [Micah and] the inhabitants of the houses neighboring Micah's house gathered and pursued the sons of Dan, Judges 18:23. and they shouted to the sons of Dan. [The sons of Dan] turned around and said to Micah: What do you need, that you shout like that? Judges 18:24. [Micah] said: You took my gods that I made and the priest and went away; what else? How do you say: what do you want? Judgment 18:25 . The sons of Dan said to him: Be silent, so that we do not hear your voice; otherwise some of us will become angry and attack you, and you will destroy yourself and your family. Judges 18:26. And the sons of Dan went their way; Micah, seeing that they were stronger than him, went back and returned to his house. Following the same path that their ambassadors had previously taken, the Danites reached the house of Micah and, having learned from the ambassadors about the objects of worship and the Levite that were there, they sent several people there, who entered the house, took the objects of worship that were there and persuaded the Levite to go with them. Judges 18:27. And [the sons of Dan] took what Micah had done, and the priest who was with him, and went to Laish, against a quiet and careless people, and beat him with the sword, and burned the city with fire. Judges 18:28. There was no one to help, because he was distant from Sidon and had nothing to do with anyone. [This city] was in a valley near Beth-Rechob. And they built the city again and settled in it, Judges 18:29. and they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of their father Dan the son of Israel; and before that the name of that city was Lais. Having reached Laish, the Danites killed the inhabitants of the city and burned the city itself, located at the entrance to the valley of Beth Rekhov (Kelesyria). The town of Beth-Rehov, after which the valley was named, is believed to be in Hibbariyeh. Court.18:30. And the sons of Dan set up an image for themselves; Now Jonathan the son of Gershon the son of Manasseh, himself and his sons, were priests in the tribe of Dan until the day of the migration of the inhabitants of the land; Judgment 18:31 . and they had with them the image made by Micah all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh. Having built a city and called it Dan, the Danites placed in it the objects of worship they had taken. The Levite they took away, named Jonathan, the grandson of Manasseh (or Moses, cf. Baba Batra, 109, question, jer Berakhot 10, 2), as well as the sons of Jonathan, were priests among the Danites. Thus, the Danites formed an independent cult, distinct from the legal worship at Shiloh. This cult existed until the time of the captivity of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord by the Philistines (1 Samuel 4:22) during the entire stay of the tabernacle of Moses in Shiloh (cf. 1 Samuel 1:3 etc.) (cf. introduction, about the origin of the book of Judges, c.) You might be interested in: