WHEN MICAH'S MOTHER discovered the silver missing, the last person she suspected was her son Micah, so she laid a curse on the unknown thief's head that was enough to fell an ox. This threw such a scare into Micah that he produced the silver from under his bed and owned up.
To show there were no hard feelings, his mother counteracted the curse with a blessing that was enough to make hair grow on a doorknob. She also said she wanted Micah to have the money anyway, since he seemed to want it so badly, but told him to use it in a good cause. What he did was to have it melted down and made into a religious statue that made the Golden Calf look like an animal cracker and hired a priest just to take care of it. He had the idea that not only was this a good cause, but it was also good business. "Now I know that the Lord will prosper me," he said (Judges 17:13). That's what he knew.
After a while a bunch of Danite toughs turned up who were so impressed by the silver statue, they decided they'd have to have it. The priest started to make a fuss as they were struggling out the door with it, but when they explained to him that working for a tribe like the Danites got you a lot more in the way of fringe benefits than working for one small-time crook with an Oedipus complex, his scruples were overcome, and they ended up getting not only the statue, but the priest to go with it.
Judges 17-18
-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words
