Judges 17:7

a young man … sojourned there i.e. in the neighbourhood of Micah's house. Technically the word sojourner(Hebr. gçr) means one who lives under the protection of a tribe to which he does not belong by birth. This young man, a Levite of Judah, was settled in the place where Micah lived, became intimate with him (Judges 17:11 b), and was installed as his domestic priest (Judges 17:12 a); we hear of the young managain in Judges 18:3; Judges 18:15. He cannot be the same person as the wandering Levite, also of Judah, called the manin Judges 17:8, who, in the course of his journey in search of employment, happened to arrive at Micah's house, and for a fixed stipend agreed to take up his abode there (Judges 17:8 a, Judges 17:12); his subsequent history is given in Judges 18:4-6; Judges 18:18-30. It is evident that two parallel narratives are interwoven here without altogether losing their distinctive features.

of Beth-lehem-judah, of the family of Judah … a Levite Beth-lehem was a centre for Levites at this time, cf. Judges 17:8; Judges 19:1; Judges 19:18. The memory of a connexion between certain Levitical families and the southern clans has been preserved by the genealogies: thus among the Levitical families mentioned in Numbers 26:58, the Libnites, Hebronites, Korahites are named after places in the territory of Judah (Joshua 15:42; Joshua 21:13; 1 Chronicles 2:43).

How could the young manhave belonged to the family of Judah and at the same time have been a Levite? (a) Wellhausen and Moore think that at this period Levitewas the designation not of a tribe, but of a priestly caste open to any one 1 [61]

[61] So Driver, Exodus, p. 29, in agreement with McNeile, Exodus, p. lxvi. f.

. The young man is described as a Judaean by birth and a Levite by profession; for -in early times it was not the pedigree, but the art, that was the essential thing" (Moore). The old tribe of Levi had been broken up (see Genesis 34; Genesis 49:5-7); the scattered members of it followed the priestly calling; out of this nucleus a priestly -tribe" of Levi was created by a genealogical fiction. (b) There may be some error in the text. The LXX. cod. B omits the first Judah; the Peshitto omits of the family of Judah, merely, no doubt, because the description seemed unintelligible Budde, however, suggests that the text has deliberately been altered: originally it ran of the family of Moses, and this was afterwards modified out of respect for the traditional founder of the priesthood. A certain amount of support for such an alteration is given by Judges 18:30; but Judahis hardly the name which would obviously occur as a substitute for Moses. It seems best after all to take the text as it stands, and to suppose that there was a time when -Levite" was the official title of one who had received the training of a priest, regardless of the tribe to which he belonged by birth (McNeile). The evidence suggests that the scattered members of the tribe of Levi, like those of Simeon, had attached themselves to the Judaean settlements. The break up of these two tribes is accounted for in Genesis 34; Genesis 49:5-7, which refer to an episode apparently in the early days of the occupation of Canaan, and therefore not far removed in date from the present narrative. How the Levi of this ugly story came to be the priestly tribe is one of the obscure problems of Hebrew history; see HDB. s.v. Levi. Judah is here a family, the term applied to the small clan of the Danites (Judges 13:2 n.). It was not till later, probably not before the time of David, that the familyof Judah grew into the tribe; Beth-lehem and the neighbourhood was most likely its ancient seat.