Judges 18 · a question people ask
The priest said, "Go in peace." Did the LORD send the Danites?
The Danites asked the priest, "Please ask counsel of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous" (18:5). The chapter then gives his words: "Go in peace. Your way in which you go is before the LORD" (18:6). It doesn't say how he asked, and it says nothing more about his answer either way. The spies came back saying, "God has given it into your hand" (18:10), and the Danites took Laish and lived in it (18:27-28). Both readings below agree on those verses and that the chapter gives no verdict of its own on the priest's answer. Christians read it in two main ways.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
A true word, and it came true
Those who hold this view take "Your way in which you go is before the LORD" (18:6) as the LORD's favour on the journey. The priest was asked to "ask counsel of God" (18:5), and it went as he said: the spies found the land "very good" (18:9), and the Danites took the city and lived in it (18:28). They note that Dan's inheritance "had not fallen to them" (18:1), and that Joshua 19 tells the taking of Leshem among Dan's cities, ending, "This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Dan" (Joshua 19:48).
Judges 18:1 · Judges 18:5-6 · Judges 18:9 · Judges 18:28 · Joshua 19:47-48
His words, not the LORD's
Those who hold this view note that the priest was hired (18:4) and served in Micah's "house of gods" with a carved image and a molten image (17:4-5), and that the chapter records only the priest's words (18:6). Where Judges tells of Israel asking counsel of God later, it gives the LORD's answer: "The LORD said, “Judah first.”" (20:18). They note that before can mean simply "in front of", as in "the ways of man are before the LORD’s eyes" (Proverbs 5:21), and read 18:6 as the priest's word to the Danites, not a word that the LORD sent them. They point to where the journey ended: an engraved image set up in Dan (18:30-31).
Judges 18:4 · Judges 17:4-5 · Judges 18:6 · Judges 20:18 · Proverbs 5:21 · Judges 18:30-31
The verses
“They said to him, “Please ask counsel of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous.” The priest said to them, “Go in peace. Your way in which you go is before the LORD.””
“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 on the earth.””
“They took that which Micah had made, and the priest whom he had, and came to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, and struck them with the edge of the sword; then they burned the city with fire. There was no deliverer, because it was far from Sidon, and they had no dealings with anyone else; and it was in the valley that lies by Beth Rehob. They built the city and lived in it.”