Judges 18:17, commentary and pictures

The five men who had gone to spy out the land went up and came in and took the graven image and the ephod and the teraphim and the molten image from Micah's house, while the priest stood in the entering of the gate with the six hundred men appointed with weapons of war. The graven and molten images, ephod, and teraphim were objects used in irregular worship and as means of divination, which the Danites carried away before persuading the Levite to become priest for their whole tribe.

The verse belongs to Judges 17-21, the closing chapters of the book outside the main story that ends with chapter 16 and outside the stories of the twelve judges. It belongs specifically to the account of the building of a sanctuary at Dan, one of the two closing episodes. Although placed at the end of the book, the events belong to the early part of the history of the judges, chronologically before the events of Judges 11-16.

The episode belongs to a time of grave moral disorder in Israel, when people did what seemed right to themselves rather than following God's standard. It stands in the sad record of transgression and constant lapsing into idolatry, a record of backsliding that brings disgrace and punishment and cannot be done with impunity. After taking the objects, the Danites persuaded the Levite to become priest for their whole tribe, and carried the priest and the idols to Laish, destroyed the city, renamed it Dan, and established idolatrous worship there that continued until the ten tribes went into captivity.

Dan therefore already had an established practice of idolatry when Jeroboam later set up his golden calf there. This early apostasy of the tribe of Dan is suggested as a reason Dan was later omitted from the tribes listed among the 144,000 in Revelation 7:1-8.