So it says, "They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father,
who was born unto Israel, howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.
And the children of Dan set up the graven image."
And Jonathan, isn't it interesting that all of a sudden, now, we get the name of the guy?
It's kind of weird to pull out this guy's name, you know, because it's just like the
young man, young man, young man, young guy, young guy, young guy, young guy.
And then it's like, oh, by the way, Jonathan, Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of
Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the
captivity of the land. And they set them up Micah's graven image, which he made all
the time that the house of God was in Shiloh. Here's my theory, and this is just
kind of a theory that I'll throw out there, but you know, I can't prove this or
anything. This is just something that is possible because it's kind of, you have to admit,
it's kind of weird that it's just young man, young man, young man, and then all of a
sudden we find out exactly who it is, Jonathan, the son of Gershom, son of Manasseh. Very
specific. I think what is probably going on here is that it's intended for the reader
to not know who it is until the end. Now to us, this means nothing to us. Jonathan, the
son of Gershom, we're just like, okay, who's that? But you've got to remember, this book
is written at a time a little bit closer to the events themselves, right? We're reading
this thousands of years later. So my theory about this would be that basically everybody
knows that there's this idolatry that's gone on in Dan for hundreds and hundreds of years
because the Bible says that this idolatry in Dan went all the way until what? The captivity
of the land. This is when the Assyrians take the northern kingdom of Israel captive. That's
when this stops. So that means this went on for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
years. So it's a well known false religion up there. So basically you're reading about
this squirrely rotten guy and this guy just as soon as he hears how we're going to rob
Micah and you're going to get a bigger gig he's just so happy to betray. I mean this
guy is a rotten guy and then it's like oh by the way this is where your phony religion
comes from. Or this is where you know these people and maybe even if it's not directed
at anybody who'd ever followed this false religion, because it was a false religion
that went on in the northern kingdom for centuries. It'd be kind of like if we told some wild
story about some treasure hunter, some fraudulent treasure hunter who's got magic rocks that
he talks into a hat and all this stuff and they're like oh by the way it's Joseph Smith.
You know what I mean? I think that's kind of what's going on here and even if we weren't
talking to Mormons that could still be an effective device in a sermon or something
right like if I just started preaching against some false religion and didn't tell you what
it was that way you're open minded you're judging it based on the fact and then it's
like oh by the way here's who I'm talking about and it's like whoa so I think that that's
what's going on because it there's got to be some reason why the guy's name isn't brought
up until the story is completely over it's kind of like oh by the way that's the guy
who founded that false religion up in northern Israel that we've been preaching against for
years and telling you it was phony we've been telling you was bogus now they've been carried
away captive into Assyria and by the way that's the guy who founded it this bozo this horrible
person so anyway that's my theory about the ending there obviously there's no evidence
for that but it makes sense as an explanation for why it is the way it is anyway let's
buy our heads and have a word of prayer father we thank you so much for this great chapter
lord and even these obscure chapters in the bible that aren't necessarily popular they
have so many truths in them lord help us to learn these things and to be able to spot these
attributes of a false prophet or false religion and help us to take these characters as bad
examples and not to be disloyal not to be greedy not to preach what people want us to
preach but rather preach what you've told us to preach in your word in Jesus name.