The narrator’s craft in writing is clearly shown in his choice to finish the account with Shiloh,
rather than Dan,
where Micah’s carved image was set up. This illustrates the illegitimacy of this shrine in Dan. Shiloh, in the central hill country of Ephraim, thirty kilometres north of Jerusalem, close to Micah’s house, is the location of the first tabernacle, set up after Israel arrived in Canaan.1 Shiloh is where the land was divided by lot among the tribes (Joshua 18:1, Joshua 18:8–10; Joshua 19:51). That is where the ark and the ten words of the law were. The shrine at Dan was the rival of Shiloh’s house of God. It was a symbol of the religious chaos in the time of the judges, and indeed so much of Israel’s following history, where among the prophets it would be a byword for gross impiety (2 Kings 10:29; Jeremiah 4:15; Amos 8:14).2
31 So they set up Micah’s carved image that he made, as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.