Judges 18:25
And the children of Dan said unto him, Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, with the lives of thy household. And the children of Dan said unto him, Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, with the lives of thy household.
The closing chapters of Judges, chapters 17 through 21, belong early in the period of the judges though they are placed last in the book, for the main story of the judges properly ends with chapter 16 and these are closing episodes standing outside the stories of the judges themselves. This verse stands within that closing section, in the sad record of Israel's transgressions and constant lapsing into idolatry set alongside God's effort to restore them. It belongs to the account of the sanctuary established at Dan, one of those two closing episodes.
The setting is the armed migration of the Danites, with six hundred warriors standing armed at the gate, seizing possessions and sacred objects and images and idols. They took the Levite priest and persuaded him to leave with them to serve a whole tribe rather than one household. They then established a sanctuary and idolatrous worship at the city they renamed Dan.
In the verse the Danites threaten Micah to be silent and not continue protesting as they take his priest and sacred objects. They warn that angry men would run upon him and kill him together with his household. The threat displays the force behind the seizure and the forceful, violent conduct accompanying the taking of his possessions.
The wording turns on the Hebrew word nephesh, often translated soul, which here means life or lives and can mean a person. The phrase rendered angry fellows is in Hebrew men bitter of soul, and the phrase rendered losing thy life with the lives of thy household is in Hebrew losing thy soul with the souls of the household. The Danites thus warn that the man and his household could lose their lives.
That threat illustrates tribal clannishness taking precedence over justice, and the violence and moral disorder of a time when people did what seemed right in their own eyes. Such conditions never excuse sin. The verse therefore belongs to the record of Israel's backsliding, disgrace, and punishment, showing that backsliding cannot be done with impunity.
It belongs more particularly to the account of Dan's first apostasy. That apostasy is proposed as the reason the tribe was nearly lost and left out of the sealing in the numbering of the 144,000.