1. Once there was a man named Micah who lived in the Ephraim highlands.
2. He said to his mother, "The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you led you to declare a curse and even to repeat it when I could hear. I have that silver. I’m the one who took it, and now I’ll give it back to you."His mother replied, "May the Lord bless you, my son!"
3. When he gave the eleven hundred pieces of silver back to his mother, she said, "I wholeheartedly devote this silver to the Lord, to be made into a sculpted image and a molded image for my son."
4. So he gave the silver back to his mother, and she took two hundred pieces of silver and gave them to a silversmith, who used it for a sculpted image and a molded image. And they were placed in Micah’s house.
5. This man Micah had his own sanctuary. He made a priestly vest and divine images and appointed one of his sons to be his personal priest.
6. In those days there was no king in Israel; each person did what they thought to be right.