The Story of Micah’s Idols

In this chapter, the story moves from the various judges of Israel to an anecdote that illustrates the overall worsening spiritual situation in the land. The people turn from the Lord and do more and more wrong among themselves. The last verse of the book of Judges is very telling, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” The same words come in the present chapter, in Judges 17:6.

In this story, a man named Micah (not to be confused with the prophet Micah) took a lot of silver money from his mother. He confesses that he did this, and returns the money to her. She says, “May you be blessed by the Lord, my son!” She finds a silversmith to melt down the silver money to make an idol which gets set up in their house. One of Micah’s sons is then appointed as the priest to serve this idol.

The spiritual meaning of this is that an idol of any kind is a falsifying of our own worship and sense of the Lord. An idol is a ‘thing’ in a ‘place’, vested with power, whereas our worship and sense of the Lord is that he is fully everywhere and in everything. (Arcana Caelestia 3479, 3732) The essence of idolatry is that it emphasises external forms with no attention to the place and purpose of internal forms and realities. Our ‘idols’ can be whatever we love or desire or feel is important to us, over and above the Lord.

The story then shifts to a wandering Levite, a priest of Israel, who came from Bethlehem in Judah, and is looking for any place to stay. Israel had appointed six cities for Levites to live in, but this Levite is a wanderer. He eventually meets Micah, who takes him into his house and makes him a paid priest. Micah feels important because of this development.

This part of the story depicts the decline of Israel from its worship of the Lord to a state of allowing anything to be done if it seems right in someone’s eyes. The Levite is a trained priest, trained in the law of Moses, someone who should know the commandments of the Lord and also their prohibitions. This Levite is ‘looking for a place to go to’ which describes his apparent falling away from true priesthood. (See the description in Apocalypse Explained 444, about the Levites, and in Doctrine of Life 39 about priests.)

As well as indicating the extent of the spiritual fall of Israel into idolatry and wrong practices, this chapter representatively describes our own scope for moving away from a genuine worship of the Lord into a worship of ourselves and of the world, and the change that comes within us in doing this. It often changes very gradually and inexorably so that it is imperceptible even to ourselves. This is a danger, and the reason for our self-examination and vigilant care.

The name Micah means, “Who is like Jehovah God?” which is an ironical name for someone who turns away from God to substitute an idol made from silver money, in a completely false worship. In genuine repentance, we may ask, “Who is like Jehovah God?” implying that no one is like God, including ourselves, because we are all involved in wrong feelings, thinking and actions, and we know our need of and dependence on the Lord. (Apocalypse Revealed 531)

It is important to note the mother’s first words, “May you be blessed by the Lord, my son!” saying this for his confession and return of the money. She begins her part in the story with the truest of statements, i.e. that the Lord wants to bless us, even while she may just be glad to have all her money back.

“Silver” in the Word can mean truths, truths of faith and truth of good, but in an opposite sense, when used dishonestly, it means falsities. (Arcana Caelestia 1551)

49. We have so far shown that the Word in its natural sense, the literal sense, is in its holiness and in its fullness. We must now say something about the Word’s being in that sense present also in its power.

The magnitude and nature of the power of Divine truth in heaven, as well as on earth, can be seen from what we said in the book Heaven and Hell 228-233, about the power angels have in heaven.

The power of Divine truth is especially a power against falsities and evils, thus against the hells. One must fight against these by means of truths from the Word’s literal sense. It is also by means of the truths a person has that the Lord has the power to save him. For a person is reformed and regenerated by means of truths drawn from the Word’s literal sense, and he is then released from hell and introduced into heaven. This power is one that the Lord took on also in respect to His Divine humanity, after He had fulfilled everything in the Word, even to its outmost expressions. [2] That is why, when the Lord was about to fulfill the last of these by His suffering of the cross, He said to the chief priest,

“...hereafter you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the Power, coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matthew 26:64, cf. Mark 14:62)

The Son of man is the Lord in relation to the Word. The clouds of heaven are the Word in its literal sense. Sitting at the right hand of God (as also in Mark 16:19) is omnipotence exercised by means of the Word.

The Lord’s power emanating from the outmost expressions of the Word was represented in the Jewish Church by Nazirites, and by Samson, of whom we are told that he was a Nazirite from his mother’s womb, and that his power lay in his hair. Nazirite or the state of being a Nazirite also means a person’s hair.

[3] That Samson’s power lay in his hair, he himself declared, saying,

No razor has come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite...from my mother’s womb. If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man. (Judges 16:17)

It is impossible for anyone to know why the vow of a Nazirite, which means a person’s hair, was instituted, and why it is that Samson drew his power from his hair, unless he knows what the head symbolizes in the Word. The head symbolizes the wisdom of heaven, which angels and people have from the Lord by means of Divine truth. Therefore the hair of the head symbolizes the wisdom of heaven in outmost expressions, and also Divine truth in outmost expressions.

[4] Because this is the symbolic meaning of the hair by its correspondence with the heavens, therefore it was a statute for Nazirites that they not shave the hair of their heads, because it was the consecration of God upon their heads (Numbers 6:1-21). And for the same reason it was also a statute that the high priest and his sons not shave their heads, lest they die, and wrath come upon the whole house of Israel (Leviticus 10:6).

[5] Because the hair, on account of that symbolic meaning, which it had from its correspondence, was so holy, therefore the Son of man, that is, the Lord in relation to the Word, is described even in respect to His hair, that it was “like wool as white as snow” (Revelation 1:14). The Ancient of Days is described similarly (Daniel 7:9).

On this subject, see also something above in no. 35.

In sum, the power of Divine truth, or of the Word, lies in the literal sense, and that is because the Word is present there in its fullness, and because in that sense angels in both of the Lord’s kingdoms and people are together.