(14) Answered.--Equivalent to they said, as in Job 3:2, Zechariah 1:10.

Consider what ye have to do--i.e., whether, and how, you would possess yourselves of them. We notice in these Danite freebooters the same strange mixture of superstition and lawlessness, robbery, and devotion which has often been observed in Greek and Italian brigands.

Verse 14. - In these houses, showing that Beth-Micah, the house of Micah, was in fact a small village (see ver. 22).

17:7-13 Micah thought it was a sign of God's favour to him and his images, that a Levite should come to his door. Thus those who please themselves with their own delusions, if Providence unexpectedly bring any thing to their hands that further them in their evil way, are apt from thence to think that God is pleased with them.Then they answered the five men that went to spy out the country of Laish,.... That were sent by their brethren, Judges 18:5 and, as it seems from hence, were sent particularly to Laish; they had some notion of that place as proper for them, and therefore sent those men to reconnoitre it; and now as they had passed this way before, when they came within sight of Micah's house, it put them in mind of what they had seen there; wherefore one in the name of the rest, and with their approbation, acquainted the company with it:

and said unto their brethren, do ye know that there is in those houses; in one of them, pointing to the houses of a village or town in sight:

an ephod and teraphim, and a graven image, and a molten image? of which see Judges 17:4 and no doubt but they acquainted them, only that they had seen them, and so were certain but had consulted them, and that with success:

now therefore consider, say they:

what ye have to do; whether it may not be proper to consult them again, or rather to take them with us, to consult as occasion may require, and as tokens and pledges of God being with us, and so may the rather hope that everything will succeed to our wishes.