5. They said to him, “Please ask counsel of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous.”
6. The priest said to them, “Go in peace. Your way in which you go is before Yahweh.”
7. Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people who were there, how they lived in safety, in the way of the Sidonians, quiet and secure; for there was no one in the land, possessing authority, that might put them to shame in anything, and they were far from the Sidonians, and had no dealings with anyone else.
8. They came to their brothers at Zorah and Eshtaol; and their brothers asked them, “What do you say?”
9. They said, “Arise, and let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good. Do you stand still? Don’t be slothful to go and to enter in to possess the land.
10. When you go, you will come to an unsuspecting people, and the land is large; for God has given it into your hand, a place where there is no lack of anything that is in the earth.”
11. The family of the Danites set out from Zorah and Eshtaol, with six hundred men armed with weapons of war.
12. They went up and encamped in Kiriath Jearim, in Judah. Therefore they called that place Mahaneh Dan, to this day. Behold, it is behind Kiriath Jearim.
13. They passed from there to the hill country of Ephraim, and came to the house of Micah.
14. Then the five men who went to spy out the country of Laish answered, and said to their brothers, “Do you know that there is in these houses an ephod, and teraphim, and an engraved image, and a molten image? Now therefore consider what you have to do.”
15. They turned aside there, and came to the house of the young Levite man, even to the house of Micah, and asked him how he was doing.
16. The six hundred men armed with their weapons of war, who were of the children of Dan, stood by the entrance of the gate.