Just like a Levite, Jonathan, played a main role in the previous narrative with Micah and the Danites (Judges 17:1–18:31), here we are introduced to another Levite. Like Jonathan (Judges 17:7–9), this Levite is also sojourning; he is not living in one of the Levitical towns, but is unemployed. And like Jonathan, this Levite was staying in the hill country of Ephraim, although in Judges 17:8 the Levite travels from Bethlehem of Judah to Ephraim, and here the Levite is already living in Ephraim. These echoes of the previous account lead us to expect the earlier kind of chaos to continue.1
This is deeply significant. The Levites were responsible for the spiritual leadership of the nation. And so by focusing on the Levites in these closing chapters, the narrator helps us see that a main cause of Israel’s spiritual decay in the days of the judges was the Levites’ failure to teach Israel the faith.
1 In those days, when there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite was sojourning in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, who took to himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.