And the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household idols, and consecrated one of his sons, so that he might become his priest.

Micah then said to him, “Stay with me and be a father and a priest to me, and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year, a supply of clothing, and your sustenance.” So the Levite went in.

So Micah consecrated the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in the house of Micah.

Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as a priest.”

He said to them, “Micah has done this and that for me, and he has hired me and I have become his priest.”

And the priest said to them, “Go in peace; your way in which you are going has the Lord’s approval.”

Now the five men who went to spy out the land went up and entered there; they took the carved image, the ephod, the household idols, and the cast metal image, while the priest was standing at the entrance of the gate with the six hundred men armed with weapons of war.

When these men entered Micah’s house and took the carved image, the ephod, household idols, and the cast metal image, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?”

And they said to him, “Be silent, put your hand over your mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be a priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and a family in Israel?”

The priest’s heart was glad, and he took the ephod, the household idols, and the carved image, and went among the people.

And he said, “You have taken my gods which I made, and the priest, and have gone away; what more do I have? So how can you say to me, ‘What is the matter with you?’”

Then they took what Micah had made and the priest who had belonged to him, and came to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, and struck them with the edge of the sword; and they burned the city with fire.

The sons of Dan set up for themselves the carved image; and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.