micahs teraphim - cox

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Journal of ebrew Scriptures

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Volume 12, Article 11 DOI:10.5508/jhs.2012.v12.a

Micah's Teraphim

B. D. COX AND S. ACKERMAN
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/rambi/http://bibil.net/http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/journal_hebrew/index.htmlhttp://collectionscanada.ca/electroniccollection/003008-200-e.htmlhttp://www.jhsonline.org/http://purl.org/jhshttp://dx.doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2012.v12.a11http://dx.doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2012.v12.a11http://purl.org/jhshttp://www.jhsonline.org/http://collectionscanada.ca/electroniccollection/003008-200-e.htmlhttp://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/journal_hebrew/index.htmlhttp://bibil.net/http://jnul.huji.ac.il/rambi/


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MICAHSTERAPHIM

BENJAMIN D.COXUNIVERSITY OFTEXAS ATAUSTIN

SUSANACKERMANDARTMOUTH COLLEGE

Determining the proper interpretation of the eight passages in the

Hebrew Bible in which the term occurs (Gen 31:1935;Judges 1718; 1 Sam 15:23; 19:1117; 2 Kgs 23:24; Ezek 21:26 [inmost of the Bibles English versions, 21:21]; Hos 3:4; and Zech10:2) has proven to be, in many respects, a vexing problem forscholars. For example, as well documented by K. van der Toornand T.J. Lewis in their jointly authored entry in the Theo-logical Dictionary of the Old Testament, and in addition by van derToorn in a 1990 article that appeared in the Catholic Biblical Quar-terly, no consensus has been reached regarding the etymology of .,0F1although many suggestions have been put forward 1F2 How

1K. van der Toorn and T.J. Lewis, ., in G.J. Botterweck, HRinggren, and H.-J. Fabry (eds.), TDOT, 15 (Grand Rapids,MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2006), 77789 (77879); K. van derToorn, The Nature of the Biblical Teraphim in the Light of the Cunei-form Evidence, CBQ52 (1990), 20322 (2034). See further, in van derToorn and Lewis, , n. 1 on p. 778, which refers readers to theextensive etymological discussion found in HALOT, 4, 179496. Also seeLewiss etymological discussion in Teraphim, in K. van der Toorn, B.Becking, and P.W. van der Horst (eds.), DDD(Leiden/New York/Kln:E.J. Brill, 1995), 15881601 (158890), and that of A. Jeffers, in herMagicand Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria (Studies in the History andCulture of the Ancient Near East, 8; Leiden/New York/Kln: E.J. Brill,1996), 22325.

2Even in those cases, moreover, where a certain etymology has gaineda modicum of supportmost notably, H.A. Hoffners suggestion, build-

ing on the work of B. Landsberger, that Hebrew might be relatedto the Hittite-Luwian word tarpi(), meaning some sort of otherworldlyspirit (H.A. Hoffner, Jr., The Linguistic Origins of Teraphim, BSac124[1967], 23038; idem, Hittite Tarpi and Hebrew Terpm, JNES 27[1968], 6168)the proposed derivation hardly advances our under-standing of the role of the teraphim in ancient Israelite religion (van derToorn, Nature of the Biblical Teraphim, 204). Similar sentiments areexpressed by J.S. Bray, Sacred Dan: Religious Tradition and Cultic Practice in


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2 JOURNAL OF HEBREW SCRIPTURES

exactly to envision the has also been an issue that has re-sisted resolution, as the of Gen 31:34 atop which Rachel sitsseem as though they must be markedly different in size than the -that Michal puts in Davids bed in 1 Sam 19:13 as a doppelgnger for her fugitive husband.2F3These two passages also illustratethe ambiguity that the term -can manifest in terms of number, referring both to plural (as in the story of the multiple on which Rachel sits) and to in the singular (as in thestory of the lone that Michal uses to impersonate David).Even here, though, the matter is confused, since the seeminglysingular of the David-Michal story has a wig of netted goathair ( ) placed , literally at its heads (1 Sam19:13, 16).

3F

4Still, as again has been well documented by van der Toorn in

his CBQarticle, by van der Toorn and Lewis in the TDOT, and inaddition by both van der Toorn and Lewis in other publications,

4F

5

Judges 1718(Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, 449; NewYork/London: T & T Clark, 2006), 119; Lewis, Teraphim, 1588; andvan der Toorn and Lewis, ., 779

3Although cf. R. Albertz,A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testa-ment Period, 1: From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy(OTL; Louisville,KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 254, n. 53, who arguesbased onthe work of H. Rouillard and J. Tropper (Trpym, rituels de gurison etculte des anctres daprs 1 Samuel XIX 1117 et les textes paralllesdAssur et de Nuzi, VT37 [1987], 34061)that the of 1 Samuel19 need not be life-size.

4 On the phrase ,, see K. van der Toorn Family Religion inBabylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life(Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East, 7; Lei-

den/New York/Kln: E.J. Brill, 1996), 219, n. 59. On the interpretationof the rather enigmatic phrase in 1 Sam 19:13, see, amongothers, P.K. McCarter, 1 Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction andCommentary(AB, 8; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 326, and van derToorn, Family Religion, 220, and the references there.

5 T.J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (HSM, 39;Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 178 and n. 12 on that page; idem, Tera-phim, 15881601; and idem, Divine Images and Aniconism in AncientIsrael (Review article of Tryggve Mettinger, No Graven Image? IsraeliteAniconism in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context [ConBOT, 42; Stockholm:Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1995]), JAOS 118 (1998), 3653 (4344). K. van der Toorn, From Her Cradle to Her Grave: The Role of Religion inthe Life of the Israelite and the Babylonian Woman (The Biblical Seminar, 23;Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 3940; idem, Ancestors and Anthropo-

nyms: Kinship Terms as Theophoric Elements in Hebrew Names, ZAW108 (1996), 111 (9); idem, Family Religion, 21825, translated with minorchanges in Ein verborgenes Erbe: Totencult im frhen Israel, TQ177(1997), 10520 (11418); idem, Israelite Figurines: A View from theTexts, in B.M. Gittlin (ed.), Sacred Time, Sacred Place: Archaeology and theReligion of Israel(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 4562 (5456); andidem, Recent Trends in the Study of Israelite Religion, in G. Wiegers(ed.), in association with J. Platvoet,Modern Societies and the Science of Reli-


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 3

some things are clear. First, as demonstrated in Gen 31:1935 and1 Sam 19:1117, as well as in Judg 17:5, where the EphraimiteMicah is said to have made () , are somesort of concrete objects. The witness of 1 Samuel 19 also suggests

that because that storys has a human-like head and can beused to impersonate David, -are anthropoid in form. It further seems certain, based on texts such as Ezek 21:26 and Zech10:2, that were used for purposes of divination.

5F

6 In Ezek21:26, for example, consultingthe is listed alongside twoother well-known divination rites from the ancient Near East,belomancy and hepatoscopy. The terms divination () and arguably stand paralleled in 1 Sam 15:23 as well.6F7

Both van der Toorn and Lewis further propose that the spe-cific divinatory practice with which the are to be associatedis necromancy. They suggest this, first, because the particular termused for divination in the three passages just cited (1 Sam 15:23;Ezek 21:26; and Zech 10:2), , can be used elsewhere in theHebrew Bible in texts that refer specifically to the calling up ofdead spirits (Deut 18:1014 and, according to van der Toorns andLewiss interpretation, Mic 3:6, 11).

7F

8 In addition, van der Toornand Lewis posit there is a relationship between King Josiahs put-ting away of the -in 2 Kgs 23:24, as part of his massive project of religious reformation, and the condemnation of the con-sulting of the dead in Deut 18:11, so much so that Deut 18:11,according to van der Toorn and Lewis, appears to be the programbehind Josiahs actions.

8F

9 Indeed, the central point of van derToorns 1990 CBQarticle, which he and Lewis re-affirmed in theTDOT, was to argue in support of a proposal that went back to F.Schwally, writing in 1892, and that had recently been revivedin

gion: Studies in Honor of Lammert Leertouwer (SHR, 95; Lon-don/Boston/Kln: E.J. Brill, 2002), 22343 (22829).

6 Although cf. Rouillard and Tropper, Trpym, rituels de gurison etculte des anctres, 34061, and especially 34651, who, while agreeingthat have a divinatory function, argue that 1 Samuel 19 presumesanother use for in healing rituals, with a functioning as asubstitute image of an invalid onto which his or her illness is passed.

7H.C. Brichto, Kin, Cult, Land and AfterlifeA Biblical Complex,HUCA 44 (1973), 154 (46); Lewis, Teraphim, 1598; van der Toorn,Nature of the Biblical Teraphim, 214; idem, Family Religion, 22324; andvan der Toorn and Lewis, ., 787

8

Van der Toorn, Nature of the Biblical Teraphim, 215; idem, FamilyReligion, 224; and van der Toorn and Lewis, , 787, in all threecases citing F. Stolz, Der Streit um die Wirklichkeit in der Sdreichspro-phetie des 8. Jahrhunderts, WD12 (1973), 930 (2225).

9 Van der Toorn and Lewis, -, 788; see similarly J. Blenkinsopp, Deuteronomy and the Politics of Post-Mortem Existence, VT45 (1995), 116, especially 1112; van der Toorn, Nature of the BiblicalTeraphim, 215; and idem, Family Religion, 224.


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1987by H. Rouillard and J. Tropper:9F

10that the themselvesare not household god figurines, as many twentieth-century biblicalscholars had assumed,

10F

11 but representations of deceased spirits.More specifically (so this proposal goes), are representationsof a familys deceased ancestors.11F12As such, the are especiallyable and, in fact, perfectly suited to perform the necromantic func-tion of transmitting oracular messages from the realm of the deadto their families living descendants.

To be sure, in Gen 31:19, 30, 32, 34, and 35, the synonymoususe of the terms and ;(treated as a plural form, godssee 31:32, 34) might suggest that the older identification of the as household gods is correct, and multiple texts from Nuzihave also been used to argue that the cognate term for thatis used within them, ilnu, means household gods. Yet at Nuzi,ilnu, because it is often coupled with eemm, meaning spirits ofthe dead, is better interpreted as meaning deceased spirits in gen-

10 F. Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode nach den Vorstellungen des alten

Israel und des Judentums einschliesslich des Volksglaubens im Zeitalter Christi(Giessen: J. Ricker, 1892), 3537; Rouillard and Tropper, Trpym, rituelsde gurison et culte des anctres, 35157. Rouillard and Tropper (ibid,357, n. 44) and van der Toorn, (Nature of the Biblical Teraphim, 204, n.8; idem, Family Religion, 224, n. 83) also cite, among older scholars whopromoted this same view: A. Lods, La croyance la vie future et les culte desmorts dans lantiquit isralite (Paris: Fischbacher, 1906), 236; R.H. Charles,Eschatology: The Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, Judaism and Christianity(2nded. [1913]; reprinted New York: Schocken, 1963), 2123; H. Wohlstein,Zu den altisraelitischen Vorstellungen von Toten- und Ahnengeistern,BZ 5 (1961), 3038 (3738); and J. Lust, On Wizards and Prophets,

Studies on Prophecy(VTSup, 26; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 13342 (138). Fora catalog of more recent adherents, see n. 12.11As van der Toorn (in Nature of the Biblical Teraphim, 204, and

Family Religion, 222) and Lewis (in Teraphim, 1589) point out, this sug-gestion goes back to S. Smith, writing in 1926 (apudC.J. Gadd, Tabletsfrom Kirkuk, RA 23 [1926], 49161 [127]) and again in 1931 (WhatWere the Teraphim? JTS 33, 3336). The premier presentation is A.E.Draffkorn (Kilmer), ILNI/ELOHIM,JBL76 (1957), 21624.

12Van der Toorn, Nature of the Biblical Teraphim, 204 and 21517;van der Toorn and Lewis, ,, 783, 78788. See similarly AlbertzHistory of Israelite Religion, 1, 38; Blenkinsopp, Deuteronomy and the Poli-tics of Post-Mortem Existence, 12; M. Dijkstra, Women and Religion inthe Old Testament, in B. Becking et al., Only One God? Monotheism inAncient Israel and the Veneration of the Goddess Asherah(The Biblical Seminar,

77; London/New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 16488 (168);Lewis, Cults of the Dead, 178; idem, The Ancestral Estate ( ) in2 Samuel 14:16, JBL 110 (1991), 597612 (603); idem, Teraphim,159899; idem, Divine Images and Aniconism in Ancient Israel, 43; O.Loretz, Die Teraphim als Ahnen-Gtter-Figur(in)en im Lichte derTexte aus Nuzi, Emar und Ugarit, UF24 (1992), 13478, especially 15268; van der Toorn, Family Religion, 22325; idem, Israelite Figurines, 54;and idem, Recent Trends, 22829.


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 5

eral and a households deceased ancestors in particular,12F

13 and re-cently discovered texts from Emar, where ilnuis paralleled by mt,the dead, indicate this as well.

13F

14In the Hebrew Bible too, can refer to deceased spirits: in 1 Sam 28:13; Isa 8:19; Num 25:2, as

quoted in Ps 106:28; and probably Exod 21:6. 14F15This in turn sug-gests an Israelite understanding of the cum of Gen31:19, 30, 32, 34, and 35 and elsewhere as representations of de-ceased spirits or, just as van der Toorn and Lewis have proposed,as ancestor figurines.

In this paper, it is our intention, first, to look closely at thestory of Micahs in Judges 1718 in the light of this proposalin order to argue that the identification of -as ancestor figurines is well supported by the Micah account. Indeed, we maintainthat this identification actually clarifiescertain details of the Micahnarrative, especially the heretofore unanswered question of whatprompted Micah, in Judg 17:5, to make his .in the first placeAfter presenting our explanation of this and a related matterregarding an ambiguity in the interpretation of the term inJudg 18:14, 17, 18, and 20we will turn, in Section 2 of our paper,

13Although cf. B.B. Schmidt, Israels Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult andNecromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition (Winona Lake, IN:Eisenbrauns, 1996), 12325, who rejects both the identification of theilnuwith the eemmat Nuzi and their identification as deified ancestors.Also cf. Rouillard and Tropper, Trpym, rituels de gurison et culte desanctres, 354, who follow A. Tsukimoto, Untersuchungen zur Totenplege(kispum) im altern Mesopotamien (AOAT, 216; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neu-kirchener Verlag, 1985), 1045, to suggest a somewhat more complexrelationship between the terms ilnu and eemm at Nuzi: that the eemm

were a familys recent ancestors who, after a certain period of time, passedon to join a more ancient and deified set of ancestors, the ilnu.14D. Fleming, NbandMunabbitu: Two New Syrian Religious Per-

sonnel, JAOS 113 (1993), 17583 (17677); Loretz, Die Teraphim alsAhnen-Gtter-Figur(in)en, 16667; K. van der Toorn, Gods andAncestors in Emar and Nuzi, ZA84 (1994), 3859; idem, Nature of theBiblical Teraphim, 22122; idem, Ancestors and Anthroponyms, 6;idem, Family Religion, 5556, 22223; and Tsukimoto, Untersuchungen zurTotenplege (kispum), 911. See also the summary of the Emar data providedby van der Toorn and Lewis, in , 780, and by Lewis, in TheAncestral Estate, 600, and in Teraphim, 159092, 159899. Cf.Schmidt, Israels Beneficent Dead, 12530, who, as in his analysis the Nuziilnu(n. 13 above), rejects the identification of the ilnuwith mtat Emar.

15On this interpretation of Exod 21:6, see van der Toorn and Lewis,

,, 783, and, as cited there, Schwally Das Leben nach dem Tode, 3739; H. Niehr, Ein unerkannter Text zur Nekromantie in Israel:Bemerkungen zum religionsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund von 2 Sam12,16a, UF 23 (1991), 3016; and A. Cooper and B.F. Goldstein, TheCult of the Dead and the Theme of Entry into the Land, BibInt1 (1994),285303, especially 294 and n. 23 on that page. On Num 25:2 as quotedin Ps 106:28, see Lewis, Cults of the Dead, 167, and idem, The AncestralEstate, 602.


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to engage another potential enigma in the Micah story: why Micah,upon the occasion of the Danites theft of all his households reli-gious treasures (a significant compendium, as we will discuss fur-ther below), focuses exclusively on the loss of the that hehad previously made (Judg 18:24). Our account regarding this issuewill illuminate, we will argue in Section 3, the Bibles other story ofthe stealing of , Rachels theft of her father Labans inGen 31:1935. Finally, in our concluding remarks, we will return tothe story of the thieving Danites in Judges 1718 to ask if there aresome last subtleties at play regarding their absconding with Micahs , which concern the value of the not just to Micah,which we will have discussed in Section 2, but the potential appealof the .to the tribesmen of Dan as well

Before beginning this exposition, though, we must raise twocautions. The first concerns the difficulty that attends any analysisof Judges 1718, given this texts well known polemical intent.

15F

16More specifically, Judges 1718 polemicizes against the Danitepriesthood by ridiculing the integrity of its levitical founder, whowas easily persuaded to abandon his contractual obligations toserve as Micahs household priest in order to take up a post amongthe Danites that carried greater power and prestige;

16F

17 the text de-rides as well the sanctuary at Dan that this levitical priest came toserve, by portraying it as centered upon a cult image with a copi-ously suspect heritage. The image had been cast from silver stolenfrom Micahs mother, for example, as well as having come to theplundering Danites by illicit means. In addition, the designating ofthis cult image using the phrase (in Judg 17:3, 4; and18:14) or (in 18:20, 30, and 31) -alone (more on this grammatical ambiguity below) carries negative connotations, given that is deployed pejoratively in Deut 27:15 and Nah 1:14 (cf. also

16Our characterization of the polemic in Judges 1718 that follows istaken primarily from van der Toorn, Family Religion, 24748; see some-what similarly, regarding the story as a polemic against the levitical priest-hood, M.Z. Brettler, The Book of Judges: Literature as Politics,JBL108(1989), 395418 (409), following M. Noth, The Background of Judges1718, in B.W. Anderson and W. Harrelson (eds.),Israels Prophetic Herit-age: Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg(New York: Harper and Row, 1962),6885. Also, regarding the story as a polemic against the sanctuary at Dan,see J.D. Martin, The Book of Judges (CBC; Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1975), 18283, 187; A. Rof, NoEphodor Teraphimoude hierateias oude dln: Hosea 3:4 in the LXX and in the Paraphrases of

Chronicles and the Damascus Document, in C. Cohen, A. Hurvitz, and S.M.Paul (eds.), Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume: Studies in the Bibleand the Ancient Near East, Qumran, and Post-Biblical Judaism (Winona Lake,IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 13549 (148); and J.A. Soggin,Judges: A Commen-tary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981), 26869, 27778.

17As Brettler somewhat colloquially but aptly states (in The Book ofJudges, 409), the Levite opts to become a big shot in Dan rather thanremain a hick priest in Ephraim.


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 7

Isa 42:17; Hab 2:18) and that the making of a is condemned inthe second commandment as articulated in Exod 20:4 and Deut5:18. M.Z. Brettler moreover argues, following M. Noth, that thestory implies a negative attitude about the Danites as a people,

because of the way in which they conquer the unsuspecting peace-ful residents of Laish.

17F

18Such a polemically charged account cannot, of course, be

treated as a straightforward depiction of Israelite cult. Nevertheless,we maintain that the texts polemics still must, in terms of theirunderlying portrayal of Israelite religious practice, present a picturethat was generally believable to their ancient Israelite audience. Thisis because, like any polemic, the polemics of Judges 1718 weregenerated in an attempt to persuade their listeners to take the sideof the polemicists in very real and live arguments that were takingplace within the Israelite community at the time of these polemicsproduction. Or, to put the matter somewhat more colloquially:polemics arent about beating a dead horse. It therefore followsthat while there is certainly room for exaggeration in Judges 1718,and even parody and caricature that can be over the top, thepolemics of this text would have needed to ring true to theiraudience in at least their broad outlines, regarding, for example, thepossibility that a household such as Micahs might have employedits own levitical priest and that a female member of Micahs house-hold (his mother) might have commissioned the fabrication of acult figurine. More important for our purposes: the account in Judg

18 Brettler, The Book of Judges, 409; see similarly J.C. McCann,Judges (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox Press, 2002), 12324. Cf.however, R.G. Boling, Judges: A New Translation with Introduction and Com-

mentary(AB, 6A; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), who, while he alsosees the story as polemical, takes the thrust of the polemic to be directedagainst the cultically selfish (p. 255) and delinquent (p. 258) Micah,whose corruption of the hero of the story (p. 255), the Levite, is maderight only by the Danites, who execute Yahwehs judgment against theproud Ephraimite (p. 259). V.H. Matthews, Judges and Ruth (NCBC;Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 169, similarly findsMicah to be characterized as self-centered and unruly; see too L.Klein, The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges (JSOTSup, 68; Bible andLiterature Series, 14; Sheffield: Almond, 1988), 14749, 151. Other schol-ars have described the storys polemical character in different terms still:e.g., Y. Amit, Hidden Polemic in the Conquest of Dan: Judges XVIIXVIII, VT 40 (1990), 420 (710); McCann, Judges, 12025, especially124; and P.E. McMillion, Worship in Judges 1718, in M.P. Graham,

R.R. Marrs, and S.L. McKenzie (eds.), Worship and the Hebrew Bible: Essaysin Honour of John T. Willis (JSOTSup, 284; Sheffield: Sheffield AcademicPress, 1999), 22543 (234), citing D.R. Davis, Comic LiteratureTragicTheology: A Study of Judges 1718, WTJ 46 (1984), 15663. E.A.Mueller, The Micah Story: A Morality Tale in the Book of Judges (Studies inBiblical Literature, 34; New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 2635, surveys vari-ous interpretations and then turns, in pp. 51128, to offer her own analy-sis.


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17:5 of Micahs making must point to what an ancientIsraelite audience thought was possible within Israelite householdcult.

Yet herein lies the issue that is at the heart of our second cau-

tion: that what the ancient Israelite audience of Judges 1718thought was possible within Israelite household cult, and thus whatthey understood and assumed regarding this texts cultic reso-nances, is not necessarily information that Judges 1718 explicitlyarticulates. As we have already noted, for example, Judges 1718,like the seven other biblical passages that speak of the ,assumes its audience knows what are, even though we todaymust resort to hypotheses developed from reasonable conjecture todetermine the nature of the ,and their significance. Likewiseand more germane for our purposes, the text leaves us in ignoranceregarding the several matters (such as what prompts Micah to makehis in the first place) that we have identified above as ourprimary interest. Our explanations of these matters will thus bynecessity be based on hypotheses and (we hope) reasonable con-jecture, regarding, for example, the nuances we will propose an-cient Israelite audiences would have heard in the Judges 1718account (and also in Genesis 31) and the ways in which these audi-ences would have filled in details that these stories tend to glossover. Still, we must admit our inferences will become less secure asour essay progresses; indeed, our concluding comments, about thepotential value of the to the tribesmen of Dan who stolethem, are the product of considerable supposition. Nevertheless,we have judged this matter to be worth considering, if for no otherreason than the fact that, as we have mentioned briefly in the pre-ceding paragraphs, biblical scholarship has generally focused its

analysis of the Danites thievery only on their taking of the cultfigurine Micahs mother had commissioned.Indeed, it is our contention that despite a degree of specula-

tion, our discussion of the Danites stealing of Micahs -provides a more coherent interpretation of this theft than is otherwiseavailable in the literature. Similarly, we aim, in discussing the otheraspects of the accounts of Judges 1718 and Genesis 31 thatwe will consider, to illuminate details of these stories that scholarshave heretofore been unable adequately to explain.

1. ANDMICAHMADE In Judg 17:5, after an initial notice (to which we will return) that

Micah had a , or a shrine, we are told ,and he made . At one level, this seems a fairly simpleand straightforward statement, almost as basic a declarative sen-tence as one can construct, in fact, according to the norms ofHebrew grammar. At another level, however, this declaration is rifewith ambiguity. As is suggested, for example, by our having left thephrase untranslated, scholars disagree, and markedly,


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 9

on how to render this expression. For some, is to beunderstood as a hendiadys and thus refers to only a single object,

18F

19perhaps a image that was covered with an overlay, or ,of silver or gold (the term is used in precisely this waytodescribe the gold plating that covers an imagein Isa 30:22, wherewe read of the ). According to most commentators,however, refers to an object other than Micahs . Butwhat?

19F

20The overgarment, or , that is a part of the priestly vest-ments? Or a divine image of some sort, as the term mightmean elsewhere in Judges (Judg 8:27)? Or is in Judg 17:5, andalso in Hos 3:4 and several passages in 1 Samuel, a synonym for theterm , ark, as van der Toorn in CBQand van der Toorn andLewis in the TDOThave argued, meaning that in Judg 17:5

19See, for example, van der Toorn, Family Religion, 250. See also C.A.Faraone, B. Garnand, and C. Lpez-Ruiz, Micahs Mother (Judg. 17:14)

and a Curse from Carthage (KAI89): Canaanite Precedents for Greek andLatin Curses against Thieves?JNES64 (2005), 16186 (164, n. 13), whoargue not only that the phrase is to be understood as a hen-diadys but that it should be taken as referring to the of 17:4(which they also interpret as a hendiadys; see further below, n. 23), with referring specifically to the proper and to its moltenplating or . Other commentators similarly take and to be equivalent, with stemming from one stratum inthe history of Judges 1718s textual development and the variant from another. See, for example, C.F. Burney, The Book of Judges,with Introduction and Notes (2d ed.; London: Rivingtons, 1920), 409; E.C.LaRocca-Pitts, Of Wood and Stone: The Significance of Israelite Cultic Items inthe Bible and Its Early Interpreters(HSM, 61; Winona Lane, IN: Eisenbrauns,2001), 60; and G.F. Moore, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges

(2d ed.; ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1903), 378. However, while Judges1718 no doubt has a multi-layered redactional history (see n. 22 below),it seems to us that the plainest meaning of the textand the oneembraced by the final redactor of Judges 1718, in 18:17, 18, and 20(although we admit, as we will note at several points in this paper, thatthese verses are grammatically confused and thus less than clear)is tosee the and the as distinct objects. See furtherAlbertz, History of Israelite Religion, 1, 37: the teraphim [...] are here [inJudges 1718] distinguished clearly from a cultic image of the god proper[i.e., the .[

20 For discussions of the term that go beyond the brief com-ments we offer here, see Bray, Sacred Dan, 11218; S. Rudnig-Zelt, VomPropheten und seiner Frau, einem Ephod und einem TeraphimAnmerkungen zu Hos 3:14, 5, VT 60 (2010), 37399 (38587); M.

Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into the Characterof Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School(Oxford: Clar-endon, 1978), 16668; P.J. King and L.E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel(Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville/London: Westminster/John Knox,2001), 10; C. Meyers, Ephod, in D.N. Freedman (ed.), ABD, 2 (NewYork: Doubleday, 1992), 550; and P.D. Miller, The Religion of Ancient Israel(Library of Ancient Israel; London: SPCK; Louisville, KY: Westmin-ster/John Knox, 2000), 56.


11/38


designates a wooden box, like the ark, in which, van der Toorn andLewis further propose, ?were kept

20F

21Fortunately for our purposes, it is not necessary that we

resolveor even attempt to resolvethis debate, since all of these

interpretations agree that whether the of Judg 17:5 overlaidMicahs or was independent, Micah did make the onwhich it is our intention, as we noted above, to focus. More spe-cifically, as we have also noted above, it is our attention to focus, atleast initially, on a further point of ambiguity that we find in Judg17:5: the question of what motivated Micah, at this particular pointin the narrative, to make his . The texts silence on this issuedoes seem to us curious, given that we are told in some detail in thepreceding verses exactly what motivated a different member ofMicahs family, Micahs mother, to consecrate two hundred piecesof silver to Yahweh and commission a metallurgist to fabricatefrom these .

21F

22This is, incidentally, another ambiguousphrase within Judges 17, which is perhaps to be taken, as is perhaps , as a hendiadys, meaning a cast-metal figurine (thegrammar of 17:4, which refers to the using a singularverb, , argues for this interpretation).

22F

23 Or the phrase might be understood, as might , as referring totwo separate objects, an image, ,, and a molten image

21Van der Toorn, Nature of the Biblical Teraphim, 21113; van derToorn and Lewis, ., 78487. See also K. van der Toorn and CHoutman, David and the Ark, JBL 113 (1994), 20931 (21219, 230).But cf. Lewis, Teraphim, 1598, who writes, the full picture of theephod [...] remains somewhat murky, and van der Toorn, Family Religion,250, who states that an ephod refers to an image of the god.

22

To be sure, some scholars have proposed that Judg 17:14 was anoriginally separate tale from the next major episode that follows in Judges17, Judg 17:713 (as is indicated by the fact that Micahs name is renderedas in Judg 17:14 and as -in Judg 17:713). Verses 56, according to this reconstruction, were added by a redactor to unite the twopericopes. See, e.g., Boling,Judges, 25859; van der Toorn, Family Religion,247; also the somewhat similar proposal advanced by Matthews,Judges andRuth, 168, 170. If these scholars are correct, one could perhaps argue thatthe contrast we seek to draw here between the description of the mothersmotivations for making her in 17:14 and the absence of anydiscussion of Micahs motivations for making his in 17:5 isthe result only of authorial idiosyncrasy: one author chose to articulate hissubjects motivation, another did not. But one might more readily main-tainas is our preferencethat even if a redactor did add 17:56, he

would have shaped these verses according to the model of 17:14 andthus would seek to intimate a motivation for Micahs craftsmanship. Thismotivation we will propose presently.

23Scholars who read this phrase as a hendiadys include Boling,Judges,256; Martin,Judges, 185; Rudnig-Zelt, Vom Propheten und seiner Frau,377, 382; Soggin,Judges, 265; van der Toorn, Nature of the Biblical Tera-phim, 211; and idem, Israelite Figurines, 49, n. 16, with additionalreferences.


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 11

,(the wording of Judg 18:17 and 18, and perhaps of 18:20, 30and 31, where the term appears independent of , arguesfor this).

23F

24 Yet whatever the , it is clear what hasmotivated its/their fabrication: after the mother has had stolen

from her a cache of eleven hundred pieces of silver, she utters acurse that seemingly condemns the thief but that she seeks toreverse on discovering that the miscreant was her own son. Toeffect this reversal, she blesses the son in the name of Yahweh andthen consecrates a part of the silver to Yahweh as she seeks toevoke the deitys favor (Judg 17:23).

24F

25Conversely and curiously, as we have previously suggested, no

explanation is given for Micahs fabrication of his . Note alsoanother curious feature ofand yet another ambiguity we findinthe Judg 17:15 pericope: that although this tale of familydrama is filled with Micahs kin (Micah himself, his mother, and theson whom Micah is said to appoint to serve his household as priestat the end of 17:5), nowhere in this text, nor anywhere else in thelonger Judges 1718 narrative, is any reference made to Micahsfather. Our hypothesis is that this is because the story presumes thefather to be dead and, moreover, quite recently dead. We furthersuggest, inspired by the proposition that the -are to be identified as ancestor figurines, that the fathers recent death explainswhy Micah felt prompted, according to the narratives conceit, tomake his ,in Judg 17:5: that shortly after his fathers demiseMicah is appropriately depicted as fabricating a as a rep-resentation of this newly deceased ancestor.

To be sure, Judges 1718 never explicitly claims that Micahsfather is dead. Nevertheless, we propose that the story has within it

24

Scholars who interpret in this way include D.M. Gunn, Judges(Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2005),231; LaRocca-Pitts, Of Wood and Stone,6061; S. Niditch,Judges: A Com-mentary (OTL; Louisville/London: Westminster/John Knox, 2008), 172,n. g on p. 177, 181; Rof, NoEphodor Teraphim, 148; and T.J. Schnei-der, Judges (Berit Olam: Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry; Col-legeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 233. See also Bray, Sacred Dan, 64,who revives an old suggestion made by Moore,Judges, 37576, and byBurney, Judges, 409, 419, by reconstructing an original account in whichonly the term .appeared, supplemented later by a glossator who added

25On the general nature of this sort of curse and its ability to bereversed through blessing, see Sheldon H. Blank, The Curse, Blasphemy,the Spell, and the Oath, HUCA23 (1950/51), 7395 (8792), and Josef

Scharbert, , in G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), TDOT, 1(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 26166. On Micahs mothers cursemore specifically, see Faraone, Garnand, and Lpez-Ruiz, MicahsMother (Judg. 17:14) and a Curse from Carthage, 16186, and C.Meyers, Judg 17:14, Mother of Micah, in C. Meyers (ed.), with T.Craven and R.S. Kraemer, Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named andUnnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, andthe New Testament(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 248.


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several hints that point in this direction. We note first that ournarrative consistently and repeatedly refers to Micah, and not hisfather, as the head of his household. Indeed, eleven times withinJudges 1718in Judg 17:4, 8, 12; 18:2, 3, 13, 15, 18, 22, 25, and

26we find the household in question referred to as the ,the house of Micah, or the house of (a longer form ofthe same name). Perhaps one could argue that the reason thehousehold is always assigned to Micah, and that the father is nevermentioned, is a narrative assumption that Micah, after he came ofage, moved away from his fathers house and established a home-stead separate from his fathers. But this hypothesis is highlyunlikely: first, because such a scenario contradicts the model ofancient Israelite family life best indicated by both our archaeologi-cal and textual evidence, in which sons do continue to reside, evenupon reaching adulthood, within their fathers households;

25F

26second, because such a scenario cannot explain the presence ofMicahs mother in her sons home. Were her husband still alive, sheshould be resident with him in his household. Or, if her husbandhad divorced her, she would have returned from his household toresume living in her fathers house. The fact that she instead liveswith her son could only suggest to an ancient Israelite audience thatthe father had died and that Micah had succeeded him as thehouseholds paterfamilias.

That the father is dead is additionally suggested by the factthat, as we have already seen, the mother, as our story opens, laysclaim to the ownership of eleven hundred pieces of silver. Unfor-tunately, because our story begins in medias res, we are not told howthe mother came into possession of her silver riches. We can, how-ever, be sure of some ways in which she did not. For example,

because it was overwhelmingly the norm in Iron Age Israelite tra-dition for marriages to be contracted not by the brides familybestowing a dowry upon her, but through the grooms family trans-ferring bridewealth (, usually translated as either marriagepresent or marriage fee) to the brides father,

26F

27 it cannot be

26The premier presentation of this reconstruction of ancient Israelitehousehold and family structure is L.E. Stager, The Archaeology of theFamily in Ancient Israel, BASOR260 (1985), 135. Other helpful discus-sions include O. Borowski, Daily Life in Biblical Times (Atlanta: Society ofBiblical Literature, 2003), 1321; W.G. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelitesand Where Did They Come From? (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK:Eerdmans, 2003), 1027; idem, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk

Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans,2005), 1829; King and Stager, Life in Biblical Israel, 919, 2843; C.Meyers, Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (NewYork/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 12838; J.D. Schloen, TheHouse of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the AncientNear East (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001), 13583; and van derToorn, Family Religion, 19499.

27T.M. Lemos,Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine, 1200


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 13

supposed that Micahs mothers eleven hundred pieces of silverwere brought by her into her marriage. Nor does it make sense tosuppose that Micahs mother came to possess her eleven hundredpieces of silver during the course of her married life, given that

typically within an Iron Age Israelite household, property wouldhave been held by a womans spouse.28Yet if Micahs mother couldnot have come into possession of her cache of silver pieces duringher marriage, and if the norms of Israelite marital practice dictatethat she did not bring this silver with her to her nuptials, then itnecessarily follows that the mother could have only acquired thesilver after her marriage to Micahs father had come to an end: thatis, she has taken over possession from the silvers previous owner,the father, because he is, as we have suggested, dead.29

The father, we have further proposed, must be understoodnot only as dead but also as recentlydead. Again, we must be clearthat this is nowhere indicated explicitly in the text. Yet the evidencethat points to the fathers recent death is again, we maintain, pro-moted by several hints found within the Judges 1718 account.Some of these hints, indeed, seem to us even more forceful thanthose that pointed to the supposition that the father was no longerliving.

We begin by noting the fact that others among the fathersgeneration are still alive (the mother). This suggests the fathersdeath is at least somewhat recent, given that, on average, men out-lived women in ancient Israel.

29F

30That the fathers death, moreover,is not just somewhat, but instead quite recent is suggested by theseveral details in our story that present Micahs family in the stateof household upheaval that a new death would entail. Striking inthis regard is the insistence of Judg 17:5 that once the mothers and Micahs are made, Micah installs one of hissons to serve his household as priest.

30F

31This seems yet another curi-

BCE to 200 CE(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

28B. Levine, Numbers 2136 (AB, 4A; New York: Doubleday, 2000),435.

29 This interpretation is also urged by G.I. Emmerson, Women inAncient Israel, in R.E. Clements (ed.), The World of Ancient Israel: Sociologi-cal, Anthropological and Political Perspectives: Essays by Members of the Society forOld Testament Study (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989),37194 (381).

30C. Meyers estimates, for example, that the average life expectancyfor women in ancient Israel was about thirty years of age, as opposed to

forty for men; see her Discovering Eve, 11213; eadem, The Family inEarly Israel, in L.G. Perdue et al., Families in Ancient Israel (The Family,Religion, and Culture; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1997), 147 (28).

31Boling argues that the identification in 17:5 of one of Micahs sonsas the familys priest is meant to be read metaphorically and also as fore-shadowing (Judges, 259). It is metaphorical, as Boling sees it, in that sonrefers not to a biological son at all but to son as an unrelated affiliate of


15/38


osity within our story, given that Judg 17:5 begins, as we have pre-viously mentioned, by noting that the man Micah had a shrine) ). So why is this already extant shrine onlynow, at the end of 17:5, getting a priest? Some scholars explain by

comparing Gen 28:22 to suggest that Micahs orshrine was a simple , or standing stone, which would nothave required a priest to attend it;

31F

32the presence of a priest, whoseprimary function in our story is to serve as an oracular specialist(Judg 18:5),

32F

33 only becomes necessary, according to this account,after the fabrication of Micahs , when a divinatoryexpert, or priest, would be required to make inquiries using this (orthese) item(s).

33F

34As we will discuss further below, however, we dothink our text indicates that Micahs or shrine is betterunderstood as an actual shrine building, or at least a dedicatedsacred space. We also think it most logical to presume that this sortof dedicated building or space must have had furnishings in it thatwould have called for the services of a divinatory specialist prior tothe making of either the or the . So againwe ask: why, in Judg 17:5, is Micahs previously extant shrine onlynow getting a priest?

Our suggestion is that the shrine is notgetting a priest in 17:5for the first time; rather, we propose the shrine is getting a newpriest in 17:5 because the previous priest had somehow been sepa-rated from his post. More specifically, we suggest that just as Micahappointed his son to serve as priest of his households shrine in17:5, the man who preceded Micah in the role of paterfamilias hadpreviously appointed his son to serve as the shrines priest. Moresimply put: we suggest that Micahs father appointed Micah to

Micahs family. More specifically, the reference to son, according toBoling (and here is the foreshadowing), anticipates the story of the leviti-cal priest who becomes like a son to Micah in 17:713. The priestreferred to in 17:5, that is, is the Levite who is not actually installed until17:12. This interpretation seems, though, unnecessarily to override theplain meaning of the text, which we, along all other commentators, wouldtake to mean that Micahs original priest was his biological son who wasthen replaced by a priestly specialist of the levitical guild. See likewiseAlbertz, A History of Israelite Religion, 1, 100; J. Gray, Joshua, Judges, Ruth(NCB Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; Basingstoke, UK:Marshall Morgan and Scott, 1986), 341; Gunn,Judges, 231; Martin, Judges,186; Matthews, Judges and Ruth, 169; McCann, Judges, 120; Niditch, Judges,182; and Soggin,Judges, 270.

32 T.N.D. Mettinger, No Graven Image: Israelite Aniconism in Its Ancient

Near Eastern Context(ConBOT, 42; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell Inter-national, 1995), 141, citing A. de Pury, Promesse divine et lgende cultuelle dansle cycle de Jacob. Gense 28 et les traditions patriarcales(Paris: J. Gabalda, 1975),42728.

33Bray, Sacred Dan, 89, 95, 126, 138; M.S. Moore, Role Pre-Emptionin the Israelite Priesthood, VT46 (1996), 31629 (326).

34Such an argument is put forward by Rof, NoEphodor Teraphim,148.


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 15

serve as priest of the shrine while the father was still alive. Butamong the transitions that ensue upon the occasion of the fathersdeath, Micah, according to our storys logic, was required to assumeleadership over the family and thus to pass the priestly role onto a

son of the next generation.35The implication that follows is crucialfor our argument regarding timing: that it is the recent death ofMicahs father and the change in Micahs household role that stemsfrom that death that drives the change in the priestly office.

Still, there is an event that precedes even the changes inhousehold leadership that Judg 17:5 presumes: Micahs theft of hismothers silver, her curse of the thief, the silvers restoration, andthe fabrication of the that results. Unlike the leadershiptransitions of Judg 17:5, this incident can hardly be said to be nor-mative upon the occasion of a paterfamiliass death. Nevertheless,we argue that the silvers theft too is best explained as a conse-quence of the fathers just prior demise. More specifically, thefathers just prior demise could explain why Micah, at this particu-lar point in his life, is said to try to take the silver to which hisfather, we have argued above, had previously laid claim. Perhaps,for example, we are meant to reason that as the households newpaterfamilias, Micah felt that the silver should by rights belong tohim rather than his mother. Alternatively, we may be meant tothink that Micah perceived that an opportunity to seize the silvermore easily became available when its guardianship passed from hisfather and into female hands. In either case, however, it is the pre-sumption of the fathers quite recent death and the transitions andeven turmoil that ensue that explain most convincingly why Micahis said in 17:2 to have made a play for his mothers silver hoard.

This brings us back to the that Micah is said to havemade in 17:5, an action that we propose is part and parcel with allthe other acts that we have just argued follow closely on the heelsof Micahs fathers death: the mothers taking possession of herhusbands silver hoard; Micahs attempting to claim that silverhoard for himself; Micahs appointing his son to replace him, as weinterpret, as the familys priest; and, we now add, Micah fabricatingof a image to serve as a representation of his recently deadfather. To put the matter another way: understanding ingeneral as representations of a familys deceased ancestors, as vander Toorn and Lewis have most recently argued, and understandingMicahs in particular as a representation of his latelydeceased father, elucidates in a compelling way an otherwise unex-plained detail of Judges 17what prompts Micah in 17:5 to make a

in the first place? According to our interpretation: on theoccasion of his fathers demise, Micah fabricated a -as a rep

35 See similarly Brichto, Kin, Cult, Land and Afterlife, 46, whowritesciting Judg 17:5that there is ample evidence that the role ofpriest in the Israelite family had at one time been filled by the firstborn.


17/38


resentation of his newly deceased ancestor.35F

36We might even sug-gest that Micah fabricated this as the transitional period thathis fathers death had occasioned comes to a close: first, after theinitial turmoil entailed by the silvers theft had been resolved, but

more important, after the initial rites of burial and mourning pre-scribed by Israelite ritual had come to an end and the dead father isfinally ready to be enshrined as one of his familys deceased ances-tors.

This leads us to consider the issue of Micahs shrine. We sug-gest, first, that Judges 1718 means us to envision Micah as placingthe that he made of his recently deceased father in his , or shrine, that is mentioned in Judg 17:5 and that the ,if it is a separate object from the , was placed in this shrine aswell. In addition, we propose that the shrine should be taken tohold Micahs mothers . All this is somewhat indicatedby the fact that the account of Micahs mothers commissioning ofher in 17:4 and the account of Micahs making of his in Judg 17:5b bracket the phrase in 17:5a, a juxtaposition that could readily suggest that all ofthese cultic appurtenancesthe , the , and the are to be associated in terms of physical location.Likewise, in Judg 18:14, 17, 18, and 20, the terms , , ,and (once rendered in their composite forms, and [18:14] and otherwise as up to four seeminglyindependent items [18:17, 18, and 20]) appear together, which againcould readily suggest that they were envisioned as housed together:more specifically, in the , which, as we suggested brieflyabove, we would take to be a dedicated shrine room or shrinebuilding that was within Micahs household compound.

To be sure, and as we have also already mentioned, somescholars have argued, based on Gen 28:22, that Micahs is to be understood as a or standing stoneand conse-quently as a sacred object in and of itself, rather than being arepository for other sanctified items.

36F

37But this argument has notfound much support in the literature, and it makes no sense if weare to understand Micahs , as we have just proposed, ashousing at least two and up to four items. Nor is it really plausibleto think that Micahs , or shrine, might refer to the sortsof small pottery shrines known from Syro-Palestinian archaeologi-cal excavations, such as the small, box-shaped pottery shrines that

36But cf. van der Toorn, Nature of the Biblical Teraphim, 212, andvan der Toorn and Lewis, , 787, who offer a different account ofMicahs motivation: that since Hos 3:4 intimates that areamong the standard furnishings of an ancient Palestinian temple,Micahs desire was to set up a real shrine as opposed to the more mod-est family chapel already extant in his household.

37Above, n. 32.


18/38

MICAHSTERAPHIM 17

were meant to represent, in miniature, shrine buildings,37F

38 or thesmall, cylinder-shaped pottery shrine such as was found among theremains of Middle Bronze Age Ashkelon.

38F

39The scale of these pot-tery shrines argues against identifying Micahs with theseartifacts. For example, a tenth-eighth century BCE exemplar of thebox-shaped pottery shrines that represent miniature shrine build-ings that comes from Tell el-Farah North stands only 20.8 cm highand is only 12.513.9 cm wide and 10.5 cm deep.

39F

40The cylinder-

38For exemplars and discussion, see, preeminently, J. Bretschneider,

Architekturmodelle in Vorderasien und der stlichen gis vom Neolithikum bis indas 1. Jahrtausend: Phnomene in der Kleinkunst an Beispielen aus Mesopotamien,dem Iran, Anatolien, Syrien, der Levante und dem gischen Raum unter besondererBercksichtigung der bau- und der religionsgeschichtlichen Aspekte (AOAT, 229;Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag; Kevelaer: Butzon and Bercker,1991), and B. Muller, Les maquettes architecturales du Proche-Orient Ancien:

Msopotamie, Syrie, Palestine du IIIe

au Ier

millnaire av. J.-C (2 vols.; Biblio-thque Archologique et Historique, 160; Beirut: Institut FranaisdArchologique du Proche-Orient, 2002); also O. Keel, Symbolism of theBiblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 162 and Figs. 221 and 222; idemand C. Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel(Minne-apolis: Fortress, 1998), 16263 and Figs. 188ab; and Z. Zevit, The Reli-gions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London/NewYork: Continuum, 2001), 32843.

39 L.E. Stager, The House of the Silver Calf of Ashkelon, in E.Czerny, I. Hein, H. Hunger, D. Melman, and A. Schwab (eds.), Timelines:Studies in Honour of Manfred Bietak, 2 (OLA, 149; Leuven/Paris/Dudley,MA: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 2006), 40310(4049); see also idem, The Canaanite Silver Calf, in L.E. Stager, J.D.

Schloen, and D.M. Master (eds.), Ashkelon, 1: Introduction and Overview(19852006)(Harvard Semitic Museum Publications: Final Reports of theLeon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,2008), 57780 (577), and idem, When Canaanites and Philistines RuledAshkelon, BAR 17/2 (Mar/Apr 1991), 2437, 4043. The shrine isillustrated as well in King and Stager, Life in Biblical Israel, 173 (Ill. 84).

40This shrine was originally published by A. Chambon,Tell el-Farah 1:Lge du fer (Paris: ditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1984), 7778and Pl. 66:1; the measurements given here are taken from Muller, Lesmaquettes architecturales du Proche-Orient Ancien, 1, 53, 341. For furtherdiscussion (with drawings and/or photographs), see Bretschneider,Archi-tekturmodelle in Vorderasien und der stlichen gis, 129, 233, and Plate 90 (Fig.79ab); Dever, Did God Have a Wife?11415, 117; idem, A Temple Builtfor Two: Did Yahweh Share a Throne with His Consort Asherah? BAR

34/2 (March/April 2008), 5462, 85 (62); Keel and Uehlinger, God, God-desses, and Images of God, 162 and Figs. 188ab; Muller, Les maquettes archi-tecturales du Proche-Orient Ancien, 1, 5354, 33942, and also 2, Fig. 14244;E.A. Willett, Women and Household Shrines in Ancient Israel (Ph.D.diss., University of Arizona, 1999), 123, 127; and Zevit, The Religions ofAncient Israel, 33738. The date of the shrine is debated in these sources:Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 115, gives a tenth-century BCE date, as doesWillett, Women and Household Shrines in Ancient Israel, 118. Keel and


19/38


shaped pottery shrine found at Ashkelon is likewise quite smallitstands 25.2 cm tall and is 13.8 cm wide at its greatest diameter.

40F

41But this small size seems a problem if Micahs shrine is to hold, aswe have suggested above, multiple objects, including Micahs

mothers and Micahs . Of course, just howsignificant this problem might be depends on how one interpretsthe and : as two, three, or four items. Still,we note that the Ashkelon shrine was specifically manufactured tohold only onepiece,

41F

42an 11 cm long and 10.5 cm high cast-metalfigurine of a bull-calf.

42F

43The small size of the pottery shrines known from archaeologi-

cal excavations also signals them as portable. Were Micahs portable, however, we would have expected this shrine tohave been included among the list of religious treasures that themen of Dan are said to have stolen from Micah in Judges 18. Yet,although the list of Micahs religious treasures is confused across itsmultiple iterations (and so, for example, as we have already men-tioned, and are treated as separate objects in Judg 18:17and 18 while seemingly as a single figurine in Judg 17:4 and 18:14),in none of the four lists of Micahs stolen treasures (18:14, 17, 18,and 20) is the included. This suggests again that Micahs was not a small and thus easily heisted pottery shrineand in addition suggests yet again that the was not a, or at least not the sort of small-scale (pillow-sized) thatthe phrase is used to describe in Gen 28:22. Rather,Micahs -is better interpreted as a fixed, dedicated, sanctified space. This is, in fact, precisely how is used in everybiblical text other than Gen 28:22 in which the term appears,including a verse that is almost immediately antecedent to Gen

28:22, Gen 28:17. There, Jacob specifically describes the place( ) of Bethel as a . Likewise in Ps 55:15 (in most ofthe Bibles English versions, 55:14), the Psalmist is said to walk into) a) ,, and in 2 Chr 34:9 is used as a synonymfor the Jerusalem temple.

Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of Gods, 162, assign the shrine to thelate tenth century BCE. Muller, Les maquettes architecturales du Proche-OrientAncien, 1, 53, proposes the tenth to ninth century BCE; Bretschneider,Architekturmodelle in Vorderasien und der stlichen gis, 233, suggests a dateof c. 900 BCE; Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 337, dates the shrine tothe ninth or eighth century BCE.

41

These dimensions are taken from Stager, The House of the SilverCalf of Ashkelon, 405.42Stager, The House of the Silver Calf of Ashkelon, 405, writes, a

doorway cut into the side of the cylinder [...] isjust large enoughfor the calfto pass through (emphasis ours). See similarly idem, The CanaaniteSilver Calf, 577.

43These dimensions are taken from Stager, The House of the SilverCalf of Ashkelon, 405; idem, The Canaanite Silver Calf, 579.


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 19

As to the specific nature of Micahs dedicated and sanctifiedshrine space: we could perhaps think of a cult corner or cultniche, a part of a room or courtyard within a house that wasdesignated for religious purposes and that thus contained a con-

stellation of religious objects and furnishings43F44such as, say, theand of Judg 17:45. These cult cornersor cult niches have been identified within the archaeologicalremains of several ancient Israelite houses.

44F

45Yet while it is certainly

44This definition of cult corner or cult niche is taken from Zevit,The Religions of Ancient Israel, 123.

45 A fragment of a second model house shrine from Tell el-FarahNorth, for example, was discovered in that sites House 440 (see Muller,Les maquettes architecturales du Proche-Orient Ancien, 1, 53, 33940, and 2,Fig. 142; Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 337), in conjunction withseveral arguably cultic artifacts that belonged to that households cult

corner, which was located in the houses central courtyard (Loci 440 and460). These artifacts included a figurine body of a nursing woman, thehead of a horse figurine, and a figurine of the woman holding a disktype (Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 241). The date of these domesticcult remains is debated: they are from the tenth century BCE according toDever, Did God Have a Wife? 115, 117; to Muller, Les maquettes architec-turales du Proche-Orient Ancien, 1, 5354 (with regard to the model-shrinefragment); and to Willett, Women and Household Shrines in AncientIsrael, 118. But they date from the ninth century BCE according toZevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 241.

Similar materials from household cult corners or cult niches werealso found in other houses at Tell el-Farah North (B. Alpert Nakhai,Varieties of Religious Expression in the Domestic Setting, in A. Yasur-Landau, J.R. Ebeling, and L.B. Mazow [eds.], Household Archaeology in

Ancient Israel and Beyond[Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, 50;Leiden/Boston: E.J. Brill, 2011], 34760 [354]), and remains from house-hold cult corners or cult niches have been found as well at other sites,for example: (1) the twelfth- and eleventh-century BCE village of KhirbetRaddana (Dever, Did God Have a Wife?115; B. Alpert Nakhai,Archaeologyand the Religions of Canaan and Israel [ASOR Books, 7; Boston: AmericanSchools of Oriental Research, 2001], 17374); (2) tenth-century BCEMegiddo (Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 177,citing Y. Shiloh, Iron Age Sanctuaries and Cult Elements in Palestine, inF.M. Cross [ed.], Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of theFounding of the American Schools of Oriental Research (19001975) [ZionResearch Foundation Occasional Publications, 12; Cambridge, MA:American Schools of Oriental Research, 1979], 14757 [149]); (3) ninth-and eighth-century BCE Beersheba (Willett, Women and Household

Shrines in Ancient Israel, 142, 150; Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel,17576); (4) Level A (ninth- to seventh-century BCE) at Tell Beit Mirsim(J.S. Holladay, Jr., Religion in Israel and Judah Under the Monarchy: AnExplicitly Archaeological Approach, in P.D. Miller, P.D. Hanson, andS.D. McBride [eds.],Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank MooreCross[Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987], 24999 [276]); (5) eighth-century BCETel Halif (J.W. Hardin, Understanding Domestic Space: An Examplefrom Iron Age Tel Halif, NEA 67 [2004], 7183 [7677, 79]); and (6)


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possible that Judg 17:45 means for us to envision that Micahsmothers and Micahs were stationed inthis sort of shrine corner or shrine niche, we believe a closereading of the larger Judges 1718 pericope suggests Micahs , or shrine, was actually a designated shrine room or shrinebuilding, separate from Micahs house proper.

Two aspects of the Micah story in particular indicate this tous. The first is that the entity that our Judges text calls the houseof Micah, or , was undoubtedly made up of/more than just Micahs personal domicile. This is indicated in Judg18:1314, for example, in which we are told that the six hundredmembers of the tribe of Dan who are passing by ,((v 13or the house of Micah, on their way to conquer and take as theirtribal fiefdom the northern city of Laish, are urged by the fiveadvance scouts who journey with themand who in their previousscouting journey had stayed with Micahto steal the located (v 14), literally in these houses(plural), or, more idiomatically, at least as we (along with severalother commentators) would interpret, in these buildings thatmake up an extended household compound that comprises thehouse of Micah. After the Danites do indeed steal this house-holds religious treasures, moreover, they are pursued (unsuccess-fully) by the men who were in the houses that were with the houseof Micah ( ; Judg 18:22), or,more idiomatically (at least, again, as we and several other com-mentators would interpret), the men whose homes were withinthe extended household compound of Micah.

45F

46 These men wetake to be Micahs sons, possibly his grandsons, and possibly unre-lated servants, slaves, and other sojournersalthough not the

Levite whom Micah is said to have appointed in Judg 17:713 toreplace his son as his familys priest. Rather, this Levite flees withthe Danites in 18:20, having been persuaded by them that it wouldprofit him more to serve as priest for an entire tribe than it hasserving as priest for only one household.

We further propose that there are indications within our storythat among the multiple buildings that comprise Micahs householdcompound is a dedicated shrine room or shrine buildingMicahs although we must admit that the text is not definitivein this regard. Still, we argue that this makes the best sense of sev-eighth-century BCE Hazor (Holladay, Religion in Israel and Judah Underthe Monarchy, 27879). A short but very good summary of the most

recent discussions of these various data can be found in L.A. Hitchcock,Cult Corners in the Aegean and the Levant, in A. Yasur-Landau, J.R.Ebeling, and L.B. Mazow (eds.), Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel andBeyond(Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, 50; Leiden/Boston:E.J. Brill, 2011), 32145 (32122).

46See similarly Meyers, The Family in Early Israel, 17; Stager, TheArchaeology of the Family, 22; van der Toorn, Family Religion, 19798;and Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 626.


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 21

eral otherwise enigmatic verses within Judges 1718. In Judg 18:3,for example, we are told that the five advance scouts who werepassing through Ephraim during their journey to the far north toseek land for the Danites were in the house of Micah, ,when they heard the voice of the Levite who had become Micahspriest in 17:713 and recognized itprobably because the Levite issaid to have come to Ephraim from Bethlehem and so spoke, likethe Danites, with the accent and speech patterns of the Southrather than those of the North.

46F

47The five Danite scouts then turnaside ( ) to speak to the Levite there (). But where isthere, or to where, specifically, would the Danites have turned,given that the Levite is said in Judg 17:12 to have been, like them,in the house of Micah ( )? Our suggestion is that theLevite was indeed in the house of Micah in the sense that he wasresident in one of the several buildings that made up Micahshousehold compound and that it was there that Micahs Danitevisitors encountered him when they turned aside from the actualhouse of Micahmeaning Micahs personal domicileto speakto him. We interpret similarly the grammatically difficult passagefound in 18:15, in which the company of the six hundred Danitemen on their way to capture Laish follows the advice of the originalscouts to detour toward the , literally thehouse of the Levite youth, the house of Micah. Because thisphrase approaches the nonsensical, some commentators delete thesecond half of it, the reference to the house of Micah, as anextraneous gloss.

47F

48 But we might better imagine a point in thescribal transmission of this verse in which a , meaning in, thatpreceded the phrase -, or the house of Micah, was mistakenly dropped.

48F

49If so, then the original text would be rendered

, the house of the Levite youth that wasin the house of Micah, or, as we interpret, the house of the Leviteyouth that was one of the buildings that made up the multi-buildinghousehold compound of Micah.

49F

50

47 G.A. Rendsburg, Linguistic Evidence for the Northern Origin of SelectedPsalms (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990); idem, Israelian Hebrew in the Book ofKings (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2002).

48So, e.g., the editors of the BHS, note on Judg 18:15; Martin,Judges,193; and Moore,Judges, 397.

49 This emendation is also suggested by Boling, Judges, 264; Niditch,Judges, 175, seems to embrace such a reading as well. However, Bolingsoverall understanding of what is meant by differs significantlyfrom ours.50See likewise J. Blenkinsopp, The Family in First Temple Israel, inL.G. Perdue et al., Families in Ancient Israel(The Family, Religion, and Cul-ture; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1997), 48103 (52), andL.G. Perdue, The Israelite and Early Jewish Family, in ibid, 163222(175). See also M.W. Bartusch, Understanding Dan: An Exegetical Study of aBiblical City, Tribe and Ancestor (JSOTSup, 379; London/New York: Shef-field Academic Press, 2003), 175 (note on v. 15), who suggests that it


23/38


When this verse in Judges 18:15 is read in conjunction with18:17, moreover, what is implied is that it was the house of theLevite youth that the Danites entered in order to steal the com-pounds religious treasures. Yet we have already suggested, based

on the juxtapositions of the phrases , , and in 17:45 and based on the occurrence of the terms, , , and in conjunction in 18:14, 17, 18, and20, that Micahs households religious treasures were housed withinMicahs , or shrine. Therefore, we now propose thatJudg 18:15s house of the Levite youth and Micahs were one and the same: that Micahs where the and were kept was a dedicated shrine room orshrine building that was the Levites domain within Micahs largerhousehold compound.

50F

51 Indeed, from at least one premonarchicIsraelite village, early twelfth- through mid-eleventh-century BCEAi (et-Tell), we have archaeological evidence of precisely this sortof dedicated shrine rooma space that was, like Micahs -, or shrine, associated with a multi-building household compound and that held religiously precious objects.

51F

52Among the IronAge II remains of Tell en-Nabeh (Stratum III), A.J. Brody hassomewhat similarly identified a roomRoom 513that, althoughit was also used as a storeroom, held a shrine that Brody theorizeswould have served the members of its extended familys five-building household compound.

52F

53But to suggest this answer to the interpretive question of how,

exactly, we are to understand the nature of Micahs , orshrine, is to raise immediately another interpretive problem, onethat is somewhat analogous to the interpretive problem we dis-cussed above regarding Micahs appointing his son as priest at the

may also be possible to understand Levite as a construct form and thusto read to the house of the young man, the Levite of the house ofMicah. This rendering would seemingly suggest, as we do here, a separatehouse for the Levite within the household compound of Micah.

51See similarly Bray, Sacred Dan, 63; Miller, The Religion of Ancient Israel,68; and especially Soggin,Judges, 272, 274.

52Although excavated by the French archaeologist J. Marquet-Krausein the 1930s and labeled by her as un lieu saint or a cult room (Lesfouilles de Ay (et-Tell), 193335[Bibliothque Archologique et Historique,45; Paris: Geuthner, 1949], 23), this rooms religious character has onlyrecently been thoroughly analyzed, especially by Zevit, in his The Religionsof Ancient Israel, 15356. See also the brief discussions of Dever, Did God

Have a Wife? 113, and Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan andIsrael, 173 (Nakhai is in addition responsible for bringing to our attentionthe quote from Marquet-Krause cited above).

53A.J. Brody, The Archaeology of the Extended Family: A House-hold Compound from Iron II Tell en-Nabeh, in A. Yasur-Landau, J.R.Ebeling, and L.B. Mazow (eds.), Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel andBeyond(Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, 50; Leiden/Boston:E.J. Brill, 2011), 23754, especially 25254.


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MICAHSTERAPHIM 23

end of Judg 17:5. Recall that in considering that issue, we noted theneed to identify who had served as Micahs households priest priorto the sons installation, since the statement that begins Judg 17:5,the man Micah had a shrine ( ), supposesan extant shrine that, as we have now demonstrated, was an actualdedicated space to which some priestly attendant must have beenassigned preceding the sons appointment. It seems in turn logicalto presume that this already existent shrine must have had some-thing already in itand more specifically, we have proposed, extantfurnishings that required this previous priests ministrations. Yet, ifJudg 17:45 intimate that the only furnishings of Micahs , or shrine, were the that Micahs mother hadcommissioned according to Judg 17:4 and the thatMicah made according to 17:5, then what was in this shrine build-ing beforethe fabrication of these objects?

The most plausible answer, we submit, rests on the gram-matical ambiguity of the term that we noted already in ouropening remarks: the fact that can have both a singular andplural meaning. In Judges 1718, we suggest, both are used, at dif-ferent points in the story.

53F

54 In Judg 17:5, as we would interpret,Micah makes a single and an associated (however onewants to interpret that term), which he places in his householdshrine, alongside his mothers . In Judges 18, the Danitesabscond not only with this single , its associated , andthe , but also with several other that stood, as we

would interpret, in Micahs shrine prior to Micahs making of hissingle in Judg 17:5. These other -we take to be representations of Micahs previously deceased ancestors, including,presumably, individuals such as Micahs great-grandfather, his

grandfather, perhaps some great-grand-uncles and grand-uncles. Infact, because Judg 18:14, 17, 18, and 20, in listing the treasures thatthe Danites stole from Micahs shrine, invoke nothing other thanthe terms , , , and -, we cannot help but concludeassuming we accept that the shrine must have had furnish-ings antecedent to its becoming the repository for the mothers and Micahs that in 18:14, 17, 18, and20 has a plural referent. Such a suggestion, moreover, could plau-sibly explain why, in at least 18:17, 18, and 20, the terms and are rendered separately, as opposed to the composite phrase that is found in 17:5, for while in 17:5refers, as we have interpreted, to the single -Micah appropriately made upon the death of his father, along with its associated

, 18:17, 18, and 20 refer to that or perhaps some other inconjunction with with which it is notas directly associated.54Somewhat analogous is the way in the Judges 1718 story car-

ries both a singular and plural meaning, as the personal house or domi-cile of Micah that stands within the multi-building, house of Micahcompound. See van der Toorn, Family Religion, 19798.


25/38


These are the multiple that represent Micahs previouslydeceased ancestors.

Note, however, that Micahs making of a -in 17:5 to augment the that, according to our interpretation, are alreadyextant in the shrine only makes sense if we are to understand the ,as ancestor figurines and not as household gods. After allwhy, in a household already in possession of a collection of gods,would Micah need to fabricate another? Only if we interpretMicahs to be the latest in a series of ancestor figurines, eachproduced upon the occasion of a household patriarchs death, canwe elucidate in a compelling way that the contents of Micahs , or shrine, prior to the addition of the items Micah and hismother made in Judg 17:45, would have been: the ancestor fig-urines of the households past patriarchs. Indeed, it may be thatwhile, above, we have consistently translated ,as shrinea better translation would be the house [] of the , with serving here, as elsewhere in the Bible (preeminently in Gen31:19, 30, 32, 34, and 35), as a synonym for and denoting afamilys representations of its deceased ancestors. Interesting tonote in this regard are the comments of E. Bloch-Smith, who hasdrawn on the work of B. Halevi to suggest that Jacobs in Gen 28:22 might not be consecrated to God/Elohim, as com-mentators usually assume, but rather a marker for Jacobs deifiedancestors, located on his familys ground.

54F

55 The ofMicahs household, as we interpret, might be similarly understood:as a repository for (among other things) several generations ofMicahs households ancestor figurines, to which Micahupon thedeath of his fatheradded that paterfamiliass image.

2. YOUHAVETAKENMY Yet as we have seen, Micahs housing of his paterfamiliass in his households , along with his mothers and his familys of past generations, is, by Judg 18:1617,disrupted, as the men from Dan who pass through MicahsEphraimite homestead on their way to take Laish plunder Micahshousehold shrine and take its treasures. Of these, the most preciousfrom the Danites point of view is surely the . After all, itis this object (if we interpret in the singular) or one ofthese two objects (if we interpret in the plural) that

55E. Bloch-Smith, The Cult of the Dead in Judah: Interpreting the

Material Remains, JBL 111 (1992), 21324 (220), citing B. Halevi, , Beth Mikra64 (1975), 10117 (114); see alsoE. Bloch-Smith,Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead(JSOTSup,123; JSOT/ASOR Monograph Series, 7; Sheffield: Sheffield AcademicPress, 1992), 122. Bloch-Smiths comments become even more interestingwere one to follow B. Halpern (Levitic Participation in the Reform Cultof Jeroboam I,JBL95 [1976], 3142 [3637]) and identify Bethel as thelocation of Micahs .


26/38

MICAHSTERAPHIM 25

becomes the focus of the sanctuary that the Danites, once theyhave taken Laish, establish for themselves (presuming here, withalmost all commentators, that the the Danites enshrine forthemselves according to Judg 18:3031 is somehow equivalent to

what is described elsewhere in Judges 1718 using the com-pounded phrase ). Indeed, if for no other reason thanmaterial worth, the would seem to be by far the mostvaluable of the objects that the Danites purloined (as metals likesilver were relatively scarce in ancient Israel and hence remarkablyprecious).

Nevertheless, as Micah and his household entourage pursuethe thieving Danites, he does not challenge them regarding the that his mother had commissioned. Instead, Micah accusesthe Danites of stealing my that I made (Judg 18:24). Mostlogically this is a reference to the of his deceased father thatMicah manufactured in 17:5 after the fathers demise (and perhapsthe associated , depending on how one understands that term),given, we can once more note, the way in which , arguablywith the meaning deceased spirits in general and a familys deceasedancestors in particular, is used elsewhere in the Bible as a synonymof . Note moreover that the term , like , can haveeither a singular or plural referent. Thus, while as a synonymof in Gen 31:19, 30, 32, 34, and 35 refers to multiple (the grammar of 31:32, 34 requires this), in Judg 18:24 canjust as readily refer to the single -(according to our interpretation) that Micah fabricated in Judg 17:5. Indeed, the verb used forMicahs manufacture of the in Judg 17:5 and the about which he speaks in Judg 18:24 is the same, , tomake. Of course, -is a very common Hebrew lexeme. Nevertheless, within the context of Judges 1718, an audience hearing ofMicahs making an in 18:24 would most readily think, wemaintain, of the that Micah made in Judg 17:5.

But why is it the loss of his fathers (and perhaps theassociated ) that is so devastating for Micah, and not, say, thetheft of the more valuable ? One answer might be thatsince Micahs mother has used only two hundred of her elevenhundred pieces of silver to make her cast-metal figurine(s), Micahimagines that he can easily replicate the lost and so neednot give priority to its/their theft. But we suggest something moreis at play here. More specifically: although we have heretofore con-sidered only the role of the and the deceased ancestors thatthey represent in rituals of divination, we propose now to take into

account deceased ancestors function in cementing their descend-ants claim to their families -. This term is commonly translated as inheritance, but as is well attested in the scholarly liter-ature, its meaning is in fact much more multivalent and complex.Indeed, so multivalent and complex is the term , as well as theconcepts associated with it, that no one definition can adequatelygloss every occurrence of the word in the Hebrew Bible, much less


27/38


the use of the cognates of elsewhere in ancient Near Easternliterature. Still, it is clear that in several instances in the Bible, does refer to inheritance in the specific sense of the land each Isra-elite family claimed perpetually to hold as its inalienable patri-

mony.55F56The biblical witness speaks clearly, moreover, to the need to

bury a familys ancestors together in a tomb associated with this, even if this required extraordinary measures at the time ofdeath or long after. The premier case is the imperative that theIsraelites of the Exodus generation feel, according to the biblicalaccount, to move the body of the long-dead Joseph out of Egyptso that he might be interred in the portion of the field that Jacobhad purchased from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem,which belonged to the descendants of Joseph as a (Josh24:32). Likewise, David is said to go to significant effort to exhumethe bones of the dead King Saul and his son Jonathan from theiroriginal tomb in Jabesh-Gilead so that they might be reburied inthe territory of Sauls tribe, Benjamin. More specifically, they arereburied in the tomb of Sauls father Kish in Zela (2 Sam 21:1314), a town which we can take, based on Josh 18:28, to be the assigned to the Saulides within the Benjaminites tribal allotment.Passages such as Josh 24:30 and Judg 2:9 similarly attest to thenecessity for burial within ones familys .56F57

But why is burial within the family so important? AsBloch-Smith has argued, ancestral tombs served to reinforce thefamily claim to the patrimony, the . That is, Bloch-Smith goeson to say, the existence of the tomb constituted a physical, per-petual witness to ownership of the land, or, more simply put, thetomb [...] constituted a physical claim to the patrimony.

57F

58

Likewise, H.C. Brichto, in a seminal article whose very title, Kin,Cult, Land and AfterlifeA Biblical Complex, captures perfectlythe intricate interrelationship that existed between an Israelite

56 In addition to the standard lexica, dictionaries, and encyclopedias,we have found especially helpful the discussions of G. Gerleman, Nutz-recht und Wohnrecht: Zur Bedeutung von and , ZAW 89(1977), 31325; N.C. Habel, The Land is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies(OBT; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), passim, but especially 3335; P.D.Hanson, The People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible (San Fran-cisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 6365; and Lewis, The Ancestral Estate,59899, 6057, with extensive references.

57These latter two references were brought to our attention by Bloch-

Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 111; see similarly eadem, The Cult of theDead in Judah, 222, and Lewis, The Ancestral Estate, 608. Cf. as wellJosh 24:33; Judg 8:32; 16:31; and 2 Sam 2:32 (as cited by Bloch-Smith,Judahite Burial Practices, 115) and, as Bloch-Smith elsewhere points out(Resurrecting the Iron I Dead, IEJ 54 [2004], 7791 [87]), Judg 12:7 and1 Kgs 11:43 (// 2 Chr 9:31). In addition see, as noted by Lewis (TheAncestral Estate, 608), 1 Sam 25:1 and 1 Kgs 2:34.

58Bloch-Smith, Cult of the Dead in Judah, 222.


28/38

MICAHSTERAPHIM 27

family, its deceased ancestors, and the familys land, claims thatthe burial place as the ancestral home attaches the family to thesoil.

58F

59The land represented the family, van der Toorn affirms,joining the ancestors with their progeny, and he adds, an

important reason why the family land was inalienable was the factthat the ancestors were buried there.

59F

60A familys tomb, in short,inexorably tied that family to its patrimony, co-mingling theancestors remains with the very earth of their descendantshomestead. Indeed, so tied are the ancestors remains to theirfamilys homestead that, according to Lewis, in a brilliant reading of2 Sam 14:16, the itself can be described as the ,literally (interpreting here as deceased spirits in general and afamilys deceased ancestors in particular) the patrimony of theancestors or the ancestral estate.

60F

61Yet just as a familys forebears, or , safeguarded their

descendants possession of their , or their ancestralestate, through the interring of their bones in the familys tomb, sotoo did the figurative representations of these deceased ancestors,the , also called the , participate in the safeguarding ofthe familial patrimony through their presence in their descendantshomes or extended household compounds. Indeed, this associationof the / with the safeguarding of a familys patrimonywas long ago argued by those who used Nuzi texts concerning theilnuto argue that the were household gods. To be sure, thespecific interpretation of the Nuzi texts that took the ilnu andkindred -to be emblems, and even jural guarantors, of inheritance rights within a family, particularly in the case of property thatwas being passed to an otherwise irregular heir,

61F

62 has been dis-counted, most pointedly by M. Greenberg in 1962.

62F

63 Yet

Greenberg still admits that the Nuzi ilnu pertained to issues offamily continuity (concerning, especially, the designation of eachgenerations paterfamilias). In this, he has been followed by M.A.Morrison, who has similarly affirmed that the ilnuwere importantmarkers of family continuity, passed down from a father to hisheir. More important for our purposes though, Morrison, whilelike Greenberg eschewing any hypothesis that relates the Nuzi ilnuexplicitly to inheritance rights, argues that the ilnu neverthelesswere, in some fundamental way, linked to the immovable propertyof the family. Morrison continues: [Their] transmission [...] fromone generation to another represented the continuity of the family

59

Brichto, Kin, Cult, Land and Afterlife, 5.60Van der Toorn, Family Religion, 199.61Lewis, The Ancestral Estate.62See, e.g., Smith, writing in 1931 (What Were the Teraphim? 34):

the house gods had a legal significance; the possessor of them had aclaim de iureto property.

63M. Greenberg, Another Look at Rachels Theft of the Teraphim,JBL81 (1962), 23948, especially 24146.


29/38


line [...] [they] were not only the tie between the family unit and itsproperty but also the very heart of the family.64

Of course, Morrison, who wrote in 1983, still understood theilnuto be household gods. Yet despite the revised understanding

of the ilnuas ancestor figurines that we have followed here, Mor-risons observations regarding their tie to the familys propertyshould still hold. Indeed, given the analysis of a familys ancestorsthat we have discussed abovethat one of the ancestors key roleswithin the network of reciprocity that ties them to their livingdescendants was to help safeguard those descendants claim to theirproperty or an interpretation of the ilnu as ancestor figu-rines helps to explain whythese images should be associated with afamilys property in a way that interpreting the ilnu(or in Israelitetradition, the / .) as household gods never made clearWe therefore conclude that the ilnu/ / , as symbolicrepresentations of the human dead,

64F

65 served not only the divin-atory function within their descendants households on which wehave heretofore focused. In addition, these ilnu// helped bind their family to its. Van der Toorn concurs: Thepossession of the teraphim may indeed be regarded as a kind oflegitimization [...] by keeping the cult of its ancestors, the familyproclaimed its right to the land.

65F

66This understanding of the and the deceased ancestors

they represent as guarantors of the ,moreover, compellinglyaddresses the question we posed at the beginning of this part ofour discussion: why Micah, in 18:24, accuses the Danites of stealingonlyas we have interpretedhis -and perhaps the associated and why he does not make note, again at least as we haveinterpreted, of the theft of the .

66F

67 The answer is that

while the , as we have seen, is (are) surely very precious,it is (or they are) replaceable. The warrant to Micahs that issafeguarded by his fathers , however, is not so easilyrestored.

64M.A. Morrison, The Jacob and Laban Narrative in Light of NearEastern Sources, BA 46 (1983), 15564 (161); see similarly van derToorn, Gods and Ancestors in Emar and Nuzi, 38, who writes of

micahs teraphim - cox

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