THE CARVED IMAGE AND MOLDED IMAGE OF MICAH The divine inspiration presents to us this episode to reveal the extent of the spiritual blindness that dwelt upon the people. Intending to please the Lord, a certain woman, set an ephod and house idols in her house; Her son Micah sought from one of his sons to be a priest; until a young Levite came to visit them, and they hired him to be a priest in their house. 1- Setting a carved and mounded image in Micah’s house 1 - 6 2- Micah hires a Levite to become his private priest 7 – 13 1- SETTING A CARVED AND MOULDED IMAGE IN MICAH’S HOUSE: “Now there was a man from the mountains of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said to his mother, ‘The eleven hundred shekels of silver that were taken from you, and on which you put a curse, even saying it in my ears— here is the silver with me; I took it’ And his mother said, “May you be blessed by the LORD, my son!’. So when he https://coptic-treasures.com/ had returned the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, his mother said, ‘I had wholly dedicated the silver from my hand to the LORD for my son, to make a carved image and a molded image; now therefore, I will return it to you’. Thus he returned the silver to his mother. Then his mother took two hundred shekels of silver and gave them to the silversmith, and he made it into a carved image and a molded image; and they were in the house of Micah. The man Micah had a shrine, and made an ephod and household idols;[a] and he consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest.. In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (1 – 6). This episode happened before the days of Samson. It so seems that Micah was called ‘Michio’, meaning (Who is like Jehovah?), or ‘Micael’, meaning ((Who is like God?); According to the Jewish scholars, his name became ‘Micah’ for he worshipped the idols. His previous name indicates that his parents were godly, who believed that no one is like Jehovah; but his mother perverted to idolworship, side by side of her worship of the living God; she made out of the idol an image of God; which contradicts with the name of her son. It so seems that her son stole eleven hundred shekels from his rich mother; who cursed the thief. Not enduring to hear the curse by his own ears, her son came with the silver to his mother, confessing that he was the one who robbed her (1). She refused to return the silver to her safe. She dedicated it to the Lord, made a carved image and a molded image, and gave them to her son to put in a shrine in his house………… According to some, she did not mean them as idol-worship, but meant to worship the true God through the carved and the molded images. She thought that by so doing, she would take the curse away from her son, and make hiss house a sanctuary to the Lord. ………. Micah, in his turn, made ephod , namely, an attire for a priest, and household idols; And consecrated one of his sons to become his priest (5), and gave him, as a priest, offerings to offer them to https://coptic-treasures.com/ the Lord. ………. A priest was therefore set, not from the Lord, but from his own father. All that revealed the extent of the ignorance and foolishness of this family; that give an example of the general corruption; expressed by the verse, saying: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (6). If Micah set out of his silver a god for himself; and his son a priest on his own; Many among us up to the present days, intend to set gods on their own. Some, as said by the apostle Paul: “whose god is their bellies: (Philippians 3: 19); and some had their gods their temporal honor, etc ……… And some seek priests, not called by God to rightly define the word of truth, but seek then from their own children, to make them give the divine commandments to suit themselves; and to distort the truth to suit their evil desires. 2- MICAH HIRES A LEVITE TO BECOME HIS PRIVATE PRIEST: The corruption was not confined to the common people, many of whom set teraphimsin their houses, as gods, to worship the true God; namely the worship of the living God got mixed with idol-worship; But it even extended to the priests and the Levites, who forgot all about their mission, as men whose portion is the Lord, and their work is the ministry in the holy temple, on behalf of the whole congregation; and came out searching for profit; and seeking to be hired by the people as their private priests for wages.. In the days of Nehemiah they worked in the fields (Nehemiah 13: 1). The leaven that should have borne within it the work of God to leaven the whole dough, got preoccupied with the issues of the world, and became up for hire, not to the account of God, but to that of their bellies. Among those Levites: https://coptic-treasures.com/ “ there was a young man from Bethlehem in Judah, of the family of Judah; he was a Levite, and was staying there. 8 The man departed from the city of Bethlehem in Judah to stay wherever he could find a place. Then he came to the mountains of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, as he journeyed. 9 And Micah said to him, “Where do you come from? So he said to him, “I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I am on my way to find a place to stay .”Micah said to him, “Dwell with me, and be a father and a priest to me, and I will give you ten shekels of silver per year, a suit of clothes, and your sustenance.” So the Levite went in. 11 Then the Levite was content to dwell with the man; and the young man became like one of his sons to him. 12 So Micah consecrated the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and lived in the house of Micah. 13 Then Micah said, “Now I know that the LORD will be good to me, since I have a Levite as priest!” (7 – 13) Micah counted himself happy to have a live-in private priest, instead of his son before him (5). And the young Levite found it a lucky break, in such difficult circumstances in which the Levites lived. Micah rejoiced to have his own gods, Ephod, and priest …….. A painful portrait of the corruption that dwelt upon Israel in those days, as a fruit of their mixing with the pagans and partaking of their worship, disregarding the divine law.
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