Bird's-eye view
The closing chapters of Judges serve as a grim appendix to an already grim book. The refrain, "in those days there was no king in Israel," is not a wistful comment about politics, but a theological diagnosis of a people who had rejected the kingship of God Himself. Consequently, every man did what was right in his own eyes, which is simply another way of saying that every man was a law unto himself. This passage is the culmination of that lawlessness. The tribe of Dan, failing to take the territory God had allotted them, decides to take matters into their own hands. What follows is a toxic brew of stolen idols, a hireling priest, and a brutal conquest that is nothing less than a counterfeit of the holy conquest of Canaan under Joshua. This is what happens when God's people decide they know better than God. They do not get a better kingdom; they get a tawdry, violent, and idolatrous parody of one.
Here we see the establishment of a formal, rival worship center in Israel, a sin that would plague the northern kingdom for centuries. It is a story of covenantal unfaithfulness becoming institutionalized. A renegade tribe, led by a renegade priest descended from Moses of all people, sets up a renegade sanctuary. This is not just a minor slip; it is apostasy with a blueprint and a budget. It stands as a stark warning that a godly heritage is no inoculation against rebellion, and that worship invented by men, no matter how sincere it feels, is always an abomination to the God who has revealed precisely how He will be approached.
Commentary
27 Now they took what Micah had made and the priest who had belonged to him, and they came to Laish, to a people quiet and secure, and struck them with the edge of the sword; and they burned the city with fire.
The narrative is blunt and unsparing. "They took." The foundation of this new settlement is theft. They stole Micah's homemade religion, lock, stock, and priest. Sin is never static; it compounds. Micah's private idolatry now becomes the state religion of a tribe. Their journey begins with covetousness, graduates to larceny, and now culminates in mass murder and arson. This is not the holy war commanded by God against the Canaanites, whose iniquity was full. This is a gangster raid. The people of Laish are described as "quiet and secure," not to excuse their paganism, but to highlight the predatory nature of the Danites. The Danites are not acting as instruments of God's justice; they are acting as instruments of their own greed. They saw a soft target and they took it. When men abandon God's law, they do not become noble savages; they become simply savage. They saw an easy inheritance and seized it, which is a world away from receiving a promised inheritance by faith.
28 And there was no one to deliver them because it was far from Sidon and they had no dealings with anyone, and it was in the valley which is near Beth-rehob. And they rebuilt the city and lived in it.
Here we see the cold calculus of godless pragmatism. Laish was isolated, and so it was vulnerable. There was no one to deliver them. In one sense, this is a statement of geopolitical reality. But in a deeper sense, it reveals the terror of a world without God. When you have no covenant with God, you have no ultimate deliverer. The Sidonians were their nearest potential allies, but they were too far off, and there was no treaty. Men trust in alliances, in distance, in security. But God can use the sinful wrath of one pagan people to judge another. The Danites are culpable for their sin, but God in His sovereignty uses their sin to accomplish His purposes. The people of Laish had no deliverer because their gods were no gods, and they had no covenant with the true God. The Danites, in their apostasy, ironically become the rod of God's anger against them. And then, having done the dirty work, they "rebuilt the city and lived in it." They are settling down on a foundation of blood and theft, a picture of all human kingdoms built in defiance of God.
29 And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father who was born in Israel; however, the name of the city formerly was Laish.
Names in Scripture are significant. Renaming a place is an act of dominion. They obliterate the memory of Laish and stamp their own name on it. This is an exercise in legacy-building. They are establishing their own identity, their own inheritance, on their own terms. It is an act of profound arrogance. They are not entering a land God has given them and calling it by a name He has sanctioned. They are taking a land by violence and naming it after themselves. This is the spirit of Babel, of making a name for oneself, lest we be scattered. It is the antithesis of the spirit of Abraham, who went where God told him to go and received the name God gave him. This new Dan is a monument to their rebellion, not their faith.
30 Then the sons of Dan set up for themselves the graven image; and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the exile of the land.
And here is the rotten fruit of their conquest. The first order of business in their new city is to institutionalize their idolatry. They "set up for themselves" the idol. The reflexive pronoun is key. This is for them. It is a user-friendly, custom-built religion. And who presides over this sham worship? Jonathan, the grandson of Moses. This is a staggering detail. The corruption has reached into the family of the great lawgiver himself. A godly heritage provides great privilege, but it does not guarantee fidelity. Grace is not hereditary. Jonathan is a priest for hire, and his priestly line becomes a dynasty of apostasy. He trades the truth of his grandfather's God for a secure position and a salary. This counterfeit priesthood, serving a counterfeit god, endured "until the day of the exile of the land." This was not a fleeting mistake. This was a deep-seated, generational cancer that remained until the final judgment of God fell upon the northern kingdom. Sins like this have long and terrible consequences.
31 So they set up for themselves Micah’s graven image which he had made, all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh.
The final verse drives home the central contrast. This entire enterprise was conducted in open defiance of the true worship of God. While the ark of the covenant was at Shiloh, while the Levitical priests were offering the sacrifices God had commanded, this idolatrous shrine at Dan stood as a rival. It was a thumb in the eye of God. Israel was supposed to be one people, with one God, worshiping at one sanctuary. The Danites have rejected all of it. They have their own land, their own sanctuary, their own idol, and their own priesthood. This is the essence of schism and apostasy. They have created a parallel religion, a cheap knock-off of the real thing. But worship is not a consumer choice. God is not honored by sincerity offered in a disobedient manner. He is only honored by the worship He Himself has prescribed. The shrine at Dan and the tabernacle at Shiloh represent two ways: God's way and man's way. And as the rest of Scripture testifies, man's way, no matter how well-established, always leads to ruin.
Application
This sordid tale from the darkest days of the judges is not just ancient history; it is a mirror. The spirit of the Danites is the spirit of fallen man. We are all born wanting to do what is right in our own eyes. We want to carve out our own inheritance, establish our own righteousness, and invent a god who is comfortable with our choices. We are experts at setting up Micah's idol in our hearts, whether it is an idol of security, or wealth, or power, or religious respectability.
The counterfeit priesthood of Jonathan, the grandson of Moses, warns us that religious pedigree is worthless apart from living faith. It is possible to know all the right stories and still be a priest to a false god. This is a sobering word for those of us who have grown up in the church. We must have our own encounter with the living God, or we will end up serving the idols of our age, just with a thin Christian veneer.
But the ultimate contrast is not between Dan and Shiloh, but between Dan and Calvary. The Danites took an inheritance by the sword. We receive an inheritance by the blood of the Lamb. They set up a priest who was a hireling and a descendant of Moses. Our great High Priest is the Son of God Himself, who offered Himself once for all. They established a worship of their own making, which led to exile. Christ has established the new covenant, which leads to an eternal kingdom. The story of Dan is the story of self-salvation, and it is a bloody failure. The gospel is the story of God's salvation, and it is a triumphant success. We must flee from the temptation to build our own little kingdom of Dan and take refuge in the finished work of Jesus Christ, the one true King in Israel.