Footnotes

1. Judges 17:1 The ancient traditions with which the Book of Judges ends were collected at a time when Jerusalem, capital of the Davidic dynasty, was also regarded as the only legitimate sanctuary of God. Every other place of worship, therefore, was suspect of separatism and impiety. Thus one of the chroniclers does not fail to give prominence to the following ancient story that presents in a somewhat flattering light, the origins of the sanctuary of Dan: it was founded in defiance of the traditional prohibition against any image of God (Deut 4:15f) and in the absence of any real authority that would later guarantee the legitimacy of religious practices.