Bible Commentaries

Matthew 26:63], and spakest of also in mine ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it. [See Proverbs 28:24.] And his mother said, Blessed be thou of the Lord, my son.

3. And when he had restored the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, his mother said, I had wholly dedicated [consecrating, I consecrated] the silver unto the Lord from my hand for my Isaiah 46:6-10], who made thereof a graven image and a molten image: and they were in the house of Micah.

5. And the man Micah had an house of gods, and made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated [installed] one of his sons, who became his priest.

6. In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. [See this forbidden in Deuteronomy 12:8.]

7. And there was a young man out of Beth-lehem-judah of the family [tribe] of Judah, who was a Levite, and he sojourned there. [See Genesis 49:7.]

8. And the man departed out of the city from Beth-lehem-judah to sojourn where he could find a place: and he came to mount Ephraim to the house of Micah [probably having heard of Micah's chapel], as he journeyed.

9. And Micah said unto him, Whence comest thou? And he said unto him, I am a Levite of Beth-lehem-judah, and I go to sojourn where I may find a place.

10. And Micah said unto him, Dwell with me, and be unto me a father and a priest, and I will give thee ten shekels [the shekel weighed about half an ounce] of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel, and thy victuals. So the Levite went in.

11. And the Levite was content to dwell with the man; and the young man was unto him as one of his sons.

12. And Micah consecrated the Levite [which none might lawfully do but the high-priest]; and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of Micah.

13. Then said Judges 17:10)—twenty-five shillings a year was not much for a priest, even including one suit of clothes and victuals. A man who had spent hundreds of shekels upon his gods thought he was liberal in spending five-and-twenty shillings a year on his priests! There are persons who think more of the church as a building than of the minister as a servant of the soul. Who was this Levite? Was he a man of any name? Not much in himself, but he was the grandson of Moses. To what adversities may we come in life, and to what "base uses"! The grandson of Moses, the caretaker of Syrian images, and the priest of an idolater! Who can say to what we may be driven? Once let the centre go; once depart from the vital point; take one step in a wrong direction, and who can calculate the issue? Be steadfast; hold on to the ascertained—to that which is proved to be beneficent, pure, noble; or you may come into a servility which not only disennobles you but throws unjustly a slur on the most famous memory. No man liveth unto himself. We have to take care of the past, if we would really take care of the future. Now Micah was comparatively happy. Micah consecrated the Levite. The Levite was not a priest, but he seemed to have an odour of sanctity about him, and, for the rest, Judges 17:13). Here is a false worshipper unconsciously throwing off his own idols! He keeps the idols as men keep cabinets of curiosities. He has a house, a little museum, a small miniature pantheon; but in his finer moods he appeals to the true and living God. So literal are we, we like to have something to lay the hand upon. Men like a substantial and visible religion. Yet Micah felt that God would do him good, seeing he had a Levite for his priest. The son did not quite fill up the space, but now with a real living Levite on the premises, the Lord—the eternal God, the Father of every living thing—will do this man of mount Ephraim good. How we degrade God,—that is to say, how we misconceive him and misrepresent him to ourselves! The Lord will do us good if our heart is right towards him. The Lord will make up for the absence of all priests, ministers churches, books, and ordinances, if we are unable to avail ourselves of such help: God will allow us to eat the shewbread, if there be no other food with which to appease our hunger. The true Church is where the right heart is. God himself is a Spirit. There is no image of him that can be made by human hands. There is one Priest—Jesus Christ, the true Melchizedek. He alone can sacrifice and has sacrificed and is sacrificed for us. There is one altar—the cross—the cross of Jesus Christ: God forbid that we should even know any other altar than the cross of our redeeming, atoning, glorious Saviour. For what are we looking? We cannot appease our deepest needs, silence our most poignant cries, by any manufactures possible to our ingenuity and skill: the Son of God is the Saviour of the world; he is able to save unto the utmost all that come unto God by him, seeing that he ever liveth to make intercession for us. If any man should now say that he himself is needful to our communion with Heaven, he is more than wrong in opinion, the case is infinitely more serious than that which can be measured by mere mistakenness of judgment: he usurps the place of Christ, he dethrones the Son of God, he at least divides the prerogative of the one Advocate. This, then, is our Christian position: Man needs a priest—that Priest is Jesus Christ; man needs communion with Heaven—that communion is spiritual; man needs an answer to the agony of his own accusation—that answer is in the cross of Christ. These are great mysteries, but the soul may become reverently familiar with them, after great suffering, prolonged prayer, and simple trust in the living God.

Prayer

Almighty God, thou hast recorded thy name in thy house, and there thou wilt meet them that seek thee. The heart seeketh God in all its pain and need; the spirit crieth out for the living God, as a land that is thirsty cries out for the great rain. We bless thee for this hunger and for this thirst; a blessing follows this desire, for this desire is none other than the gift of God. Now we know the meaning of the blessing pronounced upon those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Hereby know we that we are not of the earth earthy, but that we have in us the fire of God, the spark of deity, the mysterious power which makes us thy children. We cannot be satisfied with what we see, or hear, or touch; beyond all this we have needs they cannot satisfy. Our satisfaction is in the living God; our rest is in heaven; we are at peace only when we are reconciled unto God by our Lord Jesus Christ; therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, and now we rejoice as those who have entered into harmony with the spirit of heaven, and to whom is reserved an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. Our joy is pure; our peace is unspeakable; our heaven has begun below. We bless thee for all that is meant by the name Jesus Christ; in it is all eternity, and in it is all time; it is the music of creation; it is the Gospel addressed to human hearts; it is a refuge in time of need. When we need refuge, Jesus Christ is more to us than at any other time; when we feel our own littleness, then we see Christ's majesty. We come to the throne by the way of the cross. We bring with us no virtue of our own, but crying necessity, burning pain, consciousness of a great void; and yet we bring with us also a great hope; we feel that we shall not be disappointed whilst we linger at the cross, and pray where Jesus died. Our heart is full of thankfulness because of thy great mercy and care. Every day witnesses to thy tender lovingkindness. Thou dost live for thy creation; thou dost live in it, and through it all thou dost send currents of life, utterances of music, gospels of grace. So would we live that we may enter into thy purpose, and embody it, and realise it to those who look on. This being our desire, it shall surely be answered; for thou canst not deny thine own inspirations: these longings are part of the yearning of thine own solicitude. Thou wilt reply to us graciously, even when thou dost contradict and repel us in the mere letter. Why should we importune thee in the letter, when thou hast taught us to pray in the spirit and to fall into happy harmony with all thy will, first crucifying ourselves with Christ, and then having known the fellowship of his sufferings, knowing also the power of his resurrection? We will cast ourselves into thine hands, not daring to utter one petition lest we should offend thy purpose, but comprehending all our prayer in the one complete desire that thy will may be done on earth as it is done in heaven. We bless thee for all the hints of a better life, which we obtain from the existence through which we are now passing: we are walking in the night-time; we have nothing but the stars to read; but they are thy lights; thou hast set them in appointed places; thou hast taught them to glitter according to thy will, and to speak to the observant eye in significant light: and are not the breezes, too, full of hints of a better land? are they not tinctured with a fragrance not of earth? do they not come to us bringing health and revival and sweetness—all hints of a greater state? And the earth is for man: it is full of symbol and suggestion and strange writing, to be made out by the scholars of Christ. We will walk on—now up the steep places, wishing they were not so high; now down into the valleys, wishing they were not so long: but thou wilt not allow these selfish wishes to mar the perfectness of our resignation when we say with the spirit, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven. All our ways are in thine hands. Keep us wherever we are; keep us near the altar, near the cross, and thus near thine own heaven. We commend one another always to thy gracious keeping: we can only be kept as we are held in the hollow of thine hand: outside that hand there is no security; within it is the security of almightiness. Help us in all good purposes; give us steadfastness therein—that sacred determination, that faithful constancy, which comes of conviction akin to inspiration. Be with all who are on the sea—that great, wide, troubled sea. Be with all our friends who are far away—in the colonies, in other lands, speaking other languages, seeking to establish friendly relations with other peoples, struggling for bread, promoting the interests of civilisation, living a hard life that they may make the lives of others easier. Forget not our sick-chambers—the churches in our homes, the abodes of pain, chambers set apart for whispering, and thought, and patience, and prayer. Be with all persons in difficulty, extremity, intolerable anxiety, and grant unto such answers to their pain from heaven; then shall they sing in the night-time and glory exceedingly even in tribulation, knowing the dominion of God in human life, and answering with glad belief the gospel that thou doest all things well. Let thy word flame like a sun, or descend like the dew, or breathe into our hearts like the still small voice. Let it come as thou wilt, under what symbol thou dost ordain, only let it come—a word of emancipation, a word of benediction, a word of comfort, gracious as the speech of Christ, and sacred as his blood. Amen.