Judges 17-18

The word "mercenary" has bit of a pejorative ring to it. After all, valuing cold, hard cash over personal beliefs has a soulless tint to it. Private military companies, or PMCs, provide soldiers to countries willing to pay for them; perhaps the most famous real-world example is America's use of PMCs in Iraq. In the video game Metal Gear Solid 4, the amount of soldiers in PMCs vastly outnumber those in countries' real armies--a situation primed for mind-bending, convoluted plot twists. On the other hand, Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Joss Whedon's TV show Firefly is also a mercenary, but a rather more raffish one.

The story of Micah's idols also features a mercenary willing to work for the highest bidder--but the twist is that this mercenary is a Levite priest. The priest first finds himself in the employ of Micah, a fellow with the wrong idea of who God really is. The whole saga starts when Micah halfheartedly tries to pilfer some silver from his mother's coffers; once he hears his mother curse, he thinks better of it and returns the booty to her. His mother says, "The LORD bless you, my son!" (17:2)--and promptly proceeds to build an idol from some of the silver. Definitely some cognitive dissonance going on here--it's like giving a waiter a big tip, and then following them to their house so you can burglarize it.

Into this screwy household ambles the priest, looking for work. Micah offers the priest a mouth-watering compensation package, apparently enough to convince the priest to overlook the presence of a big, honking, silver idol. You can almost picture Micah rubbing his hands together like some overacting movie character as he says, "Now I know that the LORD will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest" (17:13). If the foreshadowing here were any more explicit, it would be unsuitable for children under 18.

Meanwhile, the Danites, kicked out of their land by the Amorites and bereft of a home sweet home, make their way to Micah's city, loot the man's house, and abscond with his priest (offering an even better compensation package than Micah did) for good measure. Micah complains, but the Danites threaten him none too subtly, so all Micah can do is turn around and go home (18:25-26). One little side note I want to make here: When the Danites take Micah's idols and leave, they put "their little children" and livestock ahead of them as they leave (18:21). You'd think that the Danites would leave the children and animals outside the city gates. But perhaps this was a blustering show of power--the Danites felt so confident that they could parade their kids and livestock around the city as they ransacked Micah of his precious idols.

Micah was so sure that his silver idols or his flighty priest would protect him, but he lost both in the end. Of course, neither an idol nor a mercenary priest is worth anything, so Micah shouldn't have really felt like the world was ending. I don't personally know anyone who actually worships a carved statue, but the idols of money, power, fame, material possessions, or even certain relationships can tempt far more than some inanimate "god" that looks just as idiotic and vapid as the person who carved it. Losing something you value, even if that object doesn't have true value, can be devastating. But God, whose worth is boundless, will never leave us. He is the One we should value over all else.