6 In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did as seemed right to him.
In those days there was no king in Israel, and in those days the Danites were looking for a heritage for themselves, to be their living-place; for up to that time no distribution of land had been made to them among the tribes of Israel.
Now in those days, when there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite was living in the inmost parts of the hill-country of Ephraim, and he got for himself a servant-wife from Beth-lehem-judah.
You are not to do things then in the way in which we now do them here, every man as it seems right to him:
There is a way which seems straight before a man, but its end is the ways of death.
And there was a king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel came together.
And they said, O Lord, the God of Israel, why has this fate come on Israel, that today one tribe has been cut off from Israel?
The way of the foolish man seems right to him? but the wise man gives ear to suggestions.
All a man's ways are clean to himself; but the Lord puts men's spirits into his scales.
As for the word which you have said to us in the name of the Lord, we will not give ear to you. But we will certainly do every word which has gone out of our mouths, burning perfumes to the queen of heaven and draining out drink offerings to her as we did, we and our fathers and our kings and our rulers, in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then we had food enough and did well and saw no evil.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Judges 17
Commentary on Judges 17 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 17
All agree that what is related in this and the rest of the chapters to the end of this book was not done, as the narrative occurs, after Samson, but long before, even soon after the death of Joshua, in the days of Phinehas the son of Eleazar, ch. 20:28. But it is cast here into the latter part of the book that it might not interrupt the history of the Judges. That it might appear how happy the nation was in the judges it is here shown how unhappy they were when there was none.
Jdg 17:1-6
Here we have,
Jdg 17:7-13
We have here an account of Micah's furnishing himself with a Levite for his chaplain, either thinking his son, because the heir of his estate, too good to officiate, or rather, because not of God's tribe, not good enough. Observe,