As if the rest of the book of Judges was not strange enough, the last five chapters of the book become “curiouser and curiouser,” to quote Lewis Carroll. In chapter 17, we have the story of an Ephraimite named Micah who steals 1100 pieces of silver from his mother, but then his honesty gets the better of him and he tells her what he has done. The mother, in turn, dedicates the silver to the Lord, but amazingly, she does this for the purpose of making an idol of cast metal. Beginning with this idol, Micah forms a shrine and installs one of his sons as priest. The author/editor of Judges comments on this tale, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 17:6) Obviously, the author/editor of the book of Judges is writing from the perspective of many years later when there is a king in Israel. He sees the problem with the time of the judges as being that the Israelites did not have a king, they did no...