Semi-Random Musings (43)

I have written a couple of times before about the “labels” the writers of the Old Testament used for the cities, towns, nations and people groups in their histories. These men wrote centuries after the events they described, for audiences unfamiliar with any helpful historical context and detail. In many cases, the ethnicity of the people who lived in any particular geographic location about which they were writing had changed drastically in the intervening years, giving rise to potential confusion.

The recurring dilemma these writers faced was how to refer to the geographic locations that had been home to a particular ethnic population during the time they were writing about, but at the time of writing were now home to a totally different people group; or were at one time named ‘X’ and were now named ‘Y’. Which name do you use? Which designation will communicate most effectively with your target audience?

The answer we find in scripture is that its writers often described ancient territories in then-current language, just as you and I might say, for the sake of clarity, that “the Israelites conquered Palestine”. While technically untrue (it was not called Palestine when they conquered it), it communicates much better than using a name nobody knows or remembers. The reader says, “Ah yes, I know where you mean”, and carries on unconfused.

Other examples exist, including my personal favorite, “Babylonian”, a biblical designation that could legitimately refer to any of five different ethnic groups (or any combination thereof) that at one time or another occupied the city of Babylon. “Philistine” is another, as is “country of the Amalekites”.

This morning I came across yet another case of “late-naming” in Genesis, where, upon finding that his relative Lot had been taken captive from Sodom by the king of Shinar and his allies, Abram led out his trained men and “went in pursuit as far as Dan”. No such place existed at the time, of course. The writer of Genesis is probably referring to a city then called Laish or Leshem (or perhaps something else entirely), in the far north of what would eventually become the nation of Israel, near the city of Sidon. Dan the son of Jacob, after whom the town’s conquerors eventually renamed it, would not even be born for three more generations when Abram traveled there.

Rather than going through unnecessary convolutions speculating that this was actually a different Dan, it’s useful to observe that the writers of OT history were simply using the language of their readers for clarity. This is the pattern they regularly followed.

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Speaking of Dan, I mentioned the other day that the tribe he fathered is missing from the genealogies in chapters 4 through 7 of 1 Chronicles, while the twelve other tribes are all covered in some detail (Judah, Simeon and Levi especially). This is not the only time the writers of scripture leave Dan’s name off a list of Jacob’s heirs. The 144,000 of Revelation 7 comprise 12,000 from every other tribe, a fact my co-writer Immanuel Can brought to my attention by email earlier this month. Only Dan is omitted. “Do you have any idea what happened to Dan?” he asks.

Short answer: no. I could speculate, as many have done. Despite the original size of the tribe (in Moses’ Sinai census, Dan fielded more soldiers aged 20 and up than any other tribe but Judah, 62,700), Dan was the only tribe that failed long-term to hold the original territory Joshua had assigned it. Joshua 19 plainly states, “the territory of the people of Dan was lost to them”.

The dispossessed tribe then began to look for somewhere easier to call home. Judges 18 records Dan’s conquest of the city of Laish and surrounding territory north of Israel near Sidon. After spying out the land north of Israel, Dan attacked a group of local settlers, a “people quiet and unsuspecting”, killed them, burned their city and occupied their territory. The massacre took place without sanction or blessing from God, and confirmed Jacob’s assessment of Dan’s tribal character as “a serpent in the way, a viper by the path”.

Judges 18 also tells us that Dan was uniquely persistent in idolatry among the tribes of Israel. First they stole a carved image from an Ephraimite whose territory they were passing through, then they set up their own rival priesthood-of-convenience in the north, far from the house of God in Shiloh. Later, Jeroboam set one of his golden calves in Dan as an alternative to the temple worship of Jerusalem, a sin that eventually resulted in the Assyrian diaspora of the ten tribes in the northern kingdom. In so many ways, his choice of location could not have been more appropriate.

So then, OT scripture associates the tribe of Dan with failure, betrayal and idolatry, an undesirable combination. Perhaps for this reason, as well as a convoluted reading of Jacob’s prophecies concerning Dan, some commentators speculate that the Antichrist of the end times will hail from the tribe of Dan. That view goes back as far as Irenaeus in the second century AD, though I find little in scripture to unambiguously attest to its plausibility.

So then, were the Danites especially evil? Perhaps, though some tribes, particularly Benjamin, gave them serious competition in that department. Did God cut Dan off from future blessing? Is that why they are left off these lists?

Perhaps not. Readers who believe Ezekiel 48 documents conditions in millennial Israel may find it interesting that the prophet assigns Dan both a gate in Jerusalem and a portion in the land along with all the other tribes. To me, that speaks of the grace of God and the permanence of his promises notwithstanding the moral failings of man.

Of course, to the supersessionist crowd who believe Ezekiel 48 describes allegorically the glories of the present day church, it says nothing of the sort. On that count, we will have to agree to disagree.