Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 18:20

"And the priest`s heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people." — Judges 18:20 (ASV)

The priest’s heart was glad. — (Judges 19:6; Judges 19:9; Ruth 3:7). The disgraceful alacrity with which he sanctions the theft, and abandons for self-interest the cause of Micah, is very unworthy of a grandson of Moses. Dean Stanley fittingly compares the bribe offered in 1176 to the monk Roger of Canterbury:—“Give us the portion of St. Thomas’s skull which is in your custody, and you shall cease to be a simple monk; you shall be Abbot of St. Augustine’s.”

In the midst of the people. — So that they might guard his person. It is not necessarily implied that he carried all these sacred objects himself; he may have done so, for the molten image, which was perhaps the heaviest object, is not here mentioned.