Micah's mother
Dec. 28th, 2008 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zeborahThis woman (Judges 17:1-4) is robbed of "eleven hundred shekels of silver", which the NIV equates to about 13kg. I note the phrase 'eleven hundred shekels' was also used for how much each person would pay Delilah to betray Samson, which makes me think it might be similar to phrases like "forty days" and "thirty sons", ie "not sure how many exactly, but a heckuva lot".
So on losing this money she utters a curse, as one would. A while later her son Micah tells her that he has the money. (His phrasing in the NIV is awfully ambiguous; if I were feeling snarky I'd suspect him of stealing it from her himself. But if I were to make such a suggestion I'd feel honour-bound to research how other versions phrase it, and I can't be bothered. Let's just assume he took it back from the thief.) "Bless you, my son," his mother says.
He returns the silver to her, and she consecrates it to the Lord for her son to make a carved image and a cast idol; that is, she gives about a fifth of the silver to a silversmith to make the image and the idol. Remember that line in the 10 Commandments about not making idols (Exodus 20:4)? Apparently neither she nor her son does. You would think that No Good Could Come Of This, but it turns out a bit more complicated than that. The worst that seems to happen to them is that some rival tribe steals the image and idol away from them again.
Undoubtedly there was a point to the story somewhere, but I've no idea what it is. C'est la vie.
So on losing this money she utters a curse, as one would. A while later her son Micah tells her that he has the money. (His phrasing in the NIV is awfully ambiguous; if I were feeling snarky I'd suspect him of stealing it from her himself. But if I were to make such a suggestion I'd feel honour-bound to research how other versions phrase it, and I can't be bothered. Let's just assume he took it back from the thief.) "Bless you, my son," his mother says.
He returns the silver to her, and she consecrates it to the Lord for her son to make a carved image and a cast idol; that is, she gives about a fifth of the silver to a silversmith to make the image and the idol. Remember that line in the 10 Commandments about not making idols (Exodus 20:4)? Apparently neither she nor her son does. You would think that No Good Could Come Of This, but it turns out a bit more complicated than that. The worst that seems to happen to them is that some rival tribe steals the image and idol away from them again.
Undoubtedly there was a point to the story somewhere, but I've no idea what it is. C'est la vie.
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Date: 2008-12-28 07:43 am (UTC)I did research other versions (even before I noticed that you'd said this) and it's ambiguous in all, except the only Dutch version that Bible Gateway has, a paraphrase "in everyday language" (that is, interpreted and dumbed down) which has "I have the money; I stole it." "Bless you because you've confessed this."
I do like "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit" that's scattered all through Judges. Makes one pay attention.
(and I still hate snap previews. Bad LiveJournal.)