(27) Burnt the city with fire.--This was unusual, for we are told that Hazor was the only city which Joshua burnt (Joshua 11:13). Perhaps they had devoted the city by a ban, as Jericho was devoted (Joshua 6:24); or the burning may have been due to policy or to accident. Probably the notion that such conduct was cruel and unjustifiable never occurred to them; nor must we judge them by the standard of Christian times. But Dan was no gainer. His name disappears from the records of 1Chronicles 4:1, and he is not mentioned among the elected tribes in Revelation 7. Blunt (Undesigned Coincidences, pt. 2, 4) conjectures, from 2Chronicles 2:14, that the cause of their disappearance from Israelite records--the latest mention of them as a tribe being in 1Chronicles 27:22--was due to their intermarriages with the Ph?nicians.

Verse 27. - And they. In the Hebrew the they is emphatic. It would be better expressed in English by repeating The children of Dan. The repetition of the epithets quiet and secure, as applied to the people of Laish, rather seems to indicate the writer's reprobation of the deed as cruel, like that of Simeon and Levi in slaying Hamor and Shechem. They smote them with the edge of the sword - a phrase denoting an exterminating slaughter (Exodus 34:26; Joshua 19:47; 1 Samuel 15:8, etc.). And they burnt the city, etc. Perhaps they had made the people and city a cherem, a devoted thing, and therefore slew the one and burnt the other (cf. Numbers 21:3; Joshua 8:19; Joshua 11:11, etc.); or the burning of the city may have been one of the means by which they destroyed the people.

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.And they took the things which Micah had made,.... The ephod, teraphim, and the two images, the Danites took them, or having taken them kept them, and went on with them:

and the priest which he had; him also they took, and who was willing enough to go with them:

and came unto Laish, unto a people that were quiet and secure; having no sentinels placed at any distance to give them warning of an enemy, nor any watchmen on their walls to discover one; and perhaps their gates not shut, nor any guard at any of their passes and avenues, having no apprehension at all of being visited by an enemy, especially from Israel, not being apprized that they had any pretensions to their city, and the land about it:

and they smote them with the edge of the sword; entered their city, and fell on them suddenly, and cut them to pieces:

and burnt the city with fire; to strike terror to all about; or it may be only they set fire to some part of it, as they entered, only to frighten the inhabitants, and throw them into the greater confusion, that they might become a more easy prey to them; for their intention was to inhabit it, and it seems to be the same city still, though they rebuilt it, and called it by another name.