Judges 17:7

And there was a young man out of Bethlehemjudah,.... As there were two Bethlehems, one in the tribe of Zebulun, Joshua 19:15 and another in the tribe of Judah, the place here designed, Judah is added

And there was a young man out of Bethlehemjudah of the family of Judah, who was a Levite, and he sojourned there. Beth-lehem-judah - so called in contradistinction to a town of the same name in Zebulun (Joshua 19:15).

Out of Beth-lehem-judah, or, of Beth-lehem-judah; so called here, as ,5, to difference it from Bethlehem in Zebulun, . There he was born and bred. Of the family of Judah, i.e. of or belonging to the tribe of Judah; not by birth, for he was a Levite; nor by his mother, for though that might be true, the mother’ s side is not regarded in genealogies; but by his habitation and ministration. For the Levites, especially in times of confusion and irreligion, were dispersed among all the tribes; and this man’ s lot fell into the tribe of Judah; which seems to be here noted by way of reflection upon that tribe, and as an evidence of the general defection, that a Levite could not find entertainment in that great and famous tribe, which God had put so much honour upon, , and therefore was forced to wander and seek for subsistence elsewhere. He sojourned there; so he expresseth it, because this was not the proper nor usual place of his abode, this being no Levitical city.

Judges 17:7 And there was a young man out of Bethlehemjudah of the family of Judah, who [was] a Levite, and he sojourned there.Ver. 7. And there was a young man.] Puer: so he is called ratione ministerii saith Junius. And why not for his folly? as Genesis 34:19. Neque distulit puer? A novice he was, Cereus in vitium flecti, one that would murder souls for a morsel of bread; which was the worse in him, because this was Jonathan, the nephew of Moses the man of God: for men are therefore worse than others, because they ought to be better. See Judges 18:30.

(7) A young man.—Later on in the story we, as it were incidentally, make the astonishing discovery that this young man was no other than a grandson of Moses. Out of Beth-lehem-judah.—So called to distinguish it from the Bethlehem in Zebulon (Joshua 19:15). (See Note on Judges 12:8.) In later times, when Bethlehem was famous as David’s birthplace, and the other Bethlehem had sunk into insignificance, the descriptive addition is often dropped. Of the family of Judah.—It may be doubted whether this refers to the “young man” or to Bethlehem, or whether it ought not, as in some MSS. and versions (LXX., Cod. B, and Syriac), to be omitted. If it applies to the young Levite, it must mean that he did not live in one of the Levitic cities, which belonged to his own family (the family of Gershom), which were in the northern and eastern tribes (Joshua 21:6), but in Judah, and therefore was ranked in civil matters as belonging to that tribe. Homes in the tribe of Judah were assigned to the priests alone (Joshua 21:9-42). He sojourned there.—Comp. Judges 19:1. The curse had been pronounced on the tribe of Levi: “I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49:7).

Verse 7. Of the family of Judah] The word family may be taken here for tribe; or the young man might have been of the tribe of Judah by his mother, and of the tribe of Levi by his father, for he is called here a Levite; and it is probable that he might have officiated at Shiloh, in the Levitical office. A Levite might marry into any other tribe, providing the woman was not an heiress.

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 man again in Judges 18:3; Judges 18:15. He cannot be the same person as the wandering Levite, also of Judah, called the man in 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 17:8-11 a, 12b–13); 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 man have belonged to the family of Judah and at the same time have been a Levite? (a) Wellhausen and Moore think that at this period Levite was the designation not of a tribe, but of a priestly caste open to any one1[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 Judah is 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 Hebrew words for “he sojourned there” are, שׁם גר gêr shām, which words are used Judges 18:30 in the genealogy of this young Levite, whose name was “Jonathan, the son of Gershom” (גרשׁם gêreshôm).

7. Of the family of Judah — This does not mean that this young man was a descendant of Judah, for he is immediately called a Levite, but that he belonged to the Levites who occupied by divine