Micah, an Ephraimite, restores to his mother eleven hundred shekels of silver, which he had taken from her, Judges 17:1, Judges 17:2. She dedicates this to God; and out of a part of it makes a graven image and a molten image, and gets them up in the house of Micah, Judges 17:3, Judges 17:4; who consecrates one of his sons to be his priest, Judges 17:5. He afterwards finds a Levite, whom he consecrates for a priest, and gives him annually ten shekels of silver, with his food and clothing, Judges 17:6-13.

INTRODUCTION TO JUDGES 17
This chapter relates the first rise of idolatry in Israel after the death of Joshua, which began in Mount Ephraim, occasioned by a sum of money stolen by a man from his mother, which being restored, part was converted to an idolatrous use; two images were made of it, Judges 17:1 and there being no king in Israel to take cognizance of it, the idolatry took place and continued, and afterwards spread, Judges 17:6, and this idolater not only made one of his sons a priest, but took a Levite for another, whom he hired by the year to serve him, Judges 17:7.

(Judges 17:1-6) The beginning of idolatry in Israel, Micah and his mother.
(Judges 17:7-13) Micah hires a Levite to be his priest.

III. Image-Worship of Micah and the Danites; Infamous Conduct of the Inhabitants of Gibeah; Vengeance Taken upon the Tribe of Benjamin - Judges 17-21
The death of Samson closes the body of the book of Judges, which sets forth the history of the people of Israel under the judges in a continuous and connected form. The two accounts, which follow in Judg 17-21, of the facts mentioned in the heading are attached to the book of Judges in the form of appendices, as the facts in question not only belonged to the times of the judges, and in fact to the very commencement of those times, but furnished valuable materials for forming a correct idea of the actual character of this portion of the Israelitish history. The first appendix (Judg 17-18), - viz., the account of the introduction of image-worship, or of the worship of Jehovah under the form of a molten image, by the Ephraimite Micah, and of the seizure of this image by the Danites, who emigrated form their own territory when upon their march northwards, and the removal of it to the city of Laish-Daniel, which was conquered by them, - shows us how shortly after the death of Joshua the inclination to an idolatrous worship of Jehovah manifested itself in the nation, and how this worship, which continued for a long time in the north of the land, was mixed up from the very beginning with sin and unrighteousness. The second (Judg 19-21)-viz., the account of the infamous act which the inhabitants of Gibeah attempted to commit upon the Levite who stayed there for the night, and which they actually did perform upon his concubine, together with its consequences, viz., the war of vengeance upon the tribe of Benjamin, which protected the criminals, - proves, on the one hand, what deep roots the moral corruptions of the Canaanites had struck among the Israelites at a very early period, and, on the other hand, how even at that time the congregation of Israel as a whole had kept itself free and pure, and, mindful of its calling to be the holy nation of God, had endeavoured with all its power to root out the corruption that had already forced its way into the midst of it.
These two occurrences have no actual connection with one another, but they are both of them narrated in a very elaborate and circumstantial manner; and in both of them we not only find Israel still without a king (Judges 17:6; Judges 18:1, and Judges 19:1; Judges 21:25), and the will of God sought by a priest or by the high priest himself (Judges 18:5-6; Judges 20:18, Judges 20:23, Judges 20:27), but the same style of narrative is adopted as a whole, particularly the custom of throwing light upon the historical course of events by the introduction of circumstantial clauses, from which we may draw the conclusion that they were written by the same author. On the other hand, they do not contain any such characteristic marks as could furnish a certain basis for well-founded conjectures concerning the author, or raise Bertheau's conjecture, that he was the same person as the author of Judg 1:1-2:5, into a probability. For the frequent use of the perfect with ו (compare Judges 20:17, Judges 20:33, Judges 20:37-38, Judges 20:40-41, Judges 20:48; Judges 21:1, Judges 21:15, with Judges 1:8, Judges 1:16, Judges 1:21, Judges 1:25, etc.) can be fully explained from the contents themselves; and the notion that the perfect is used here more frequently for the historical imperfect with vav consec. rests upon a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the passages in question. The other and not very numerous expressions, which are common to Judg 17-21 and Judg 1, are not sufficiently characteristic to supply the proof required, as they are also met with elsewhere: see, for example, בּאשׁ שׁלּח (Judges 1:8; Judges 20:48), which not only occurs again in 2-Kings 8:12 and Psalm 74:7, but does not even occur in both the appendices, בּאשׁ שׂרף being used instead in Judges 18:27. So much, however, may unquestionably be gathered from the exactness and circumstantiality of the history, viz., that the first recorder of these events, whose account was the source employed by the author of our book, cannot have lived at a time very remote from the occurrences themselves. On the other hand, there are not sufficient grounds for the conjecture that these appendices were not attached to the book of the Judges till a later age. For it can neither be maintained that the object of the first appendix was to show how the image-worship which Jeroboam set up in his kingdom at Bethel and Daniel had a most pernicious origin, and sprang from the image-worship of the Ephraimite Micah, which the Danites had established at Laish, nor that the object of the second appendix was to prove that the origin of the pre-Davidic kingdom (of Saul) was sinful and untheocratic, i.e., opposed to the spirit and nature of the kingdom of God, as Auberlen affirms (Theol. Stud. u. Kr. 1860). The identity of the golden calf set up by Jeroboam at Daniel with the image of Jehovah that was stolen by the Danites from Micah the Ephraimite and set up in Laish-Daniel, is precluded by the statement in Judges 18:31 respecting the length of time that this image-worship continued in Daniel (see the commentary on the passage itself). At the most, therefore, we can only maintain, with O. v. Gerlach, that "both (appendices) set forth, according to the intention of the author, the misery which arose during the wild unsettled period of the judges from the want of a governing, regal authority." This is hinted at in the remark, which occurs in both appendices, that at that time there was no king in Israel, and every one did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6; Judges 21:25). This remark, on the other hand, altogether excludes the time of the falling away of the ten tribes, and the decline of the later kingdom, and is irreconcilable with the assumption that these appendices were not added to the book of the Judges till after the division of the kingdom, or not till the time of the Assyrian or Babylonian captivity.