3. Similar declensions from the strict line of duty marked the conduct of other tribes. _Zebulun_ contented itself with merely imposing tribute on the nations within its borders; _Asher_ made no attempt to expel the powerful Phœnicians on the sea-coast from Accho to Zidon, or from their more inland settlements; and _Naphtali_ spared the inhabitants of the fenced cities of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath (Judg. i. 30–33). This neglect of an obvious duty soon led to worse results. Contrary to the express commands of the Law, and the repeated exhortations of Moses and Joshua, the Israelites began to make leagues with the heathen nations. Leagues with nations led to marriages with individuals, and these to their natural consequences. Their new relatives invited the Israelites to their idolatrous festivals, where the consecrated licentiousness gratified their sensual appetites, and before long there _arose a generation, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which He had done for Israel_ (Judg. ii. 10). Forgetting Him who had done so great things for them, they bowed themselves to strange gods, and practised the worst abominations, even sacrificing their sons and their daughters to Baal and Ashtaroth (Ps. cvi. 37, 38; Judg. ii. 13). This gradual spread of idolatry, and as a natural consequence, of moral and social degeneracy, is strikingly illustrated by two incidents recorded in the last five chapters of the Book of Judges, which seem to have been inserted for this very purpose as a kind of appendix to that Book[173]. CHAPTER II. _MICAH AND THE DANITES, THE TRIBAL WAR._ JUDG. XVII.–XXI. B.C. CIRC. 1406. THERE was living about twenty years after the death of Joshua in Mount Ephraim in central Palestine a man named MICAH, whose mother one day lost 1100 shekels of silver. So terrible was the curse she imprecated on the thief, that her son in alarm confessed that he had abstracted the money. Instead of reproaching him, his mother thereupon informed him that she had dedicated this sum, probably the savings of a lifetime[174], to the Lord, to make a graven and a molten image. Upon this Micah restored the money to his mother, who sent 200 shekels to a founder for the purpose of fashioning the idol. When made, it was set up in Micah’s house, and he consecrated one of his sons as priest, and arrayed him in a sacred vestment, probably made in imitation of the ephod of the High-priest. Not satisfied, however, with the ministrations of his son, on the arrival of a young Levite of Bethlehem in Judæa, travelling, probably, in search of employment as a teacher of the Law, he persuaded him also to become his priest, and agreed to give him 10 shekels of silver a-year, suitable sacerdotal vestments, and his living. On these terms the Levite was content to dwell with him, became his priest, and _was unto him as one of his sons_.