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DAN

(Heb. dān)

(PLACE)

Fragments A and B of the Aramaic Tel Dan inscription, which contains perhaps the only extrabiblical reference to the “house of David” (bwt dwd) (Tel Dan Excavations, Hebrew Union College)

A city in northern Galilee, in the Huleh Valley at the southwestern foot of Mt. Hermon. One of the springs which serves as a source of the Jordan River issues from under Tel Dan/Tell el-Qâi (2112.2949), the site of the ancient city. A major north-south road, connecting the Syrian city of Qatna with the Galilean city of Hazor, passed just west of Dan.

Second-millennium Mesopotamian and Egyptian records mention the city of Laish (“Lion”), the city’s name before its conquest by the Danites, who renamed it after their ancestor (Judg. 18; ; “Leshem,” Josh. 19:47).

Judg. 18 tells of the founding of the city and of its sanctuary. The Danite conquerors brought with them a levitical priest and cultic paraphernalia (Judg. 18:19-20). A priesthood which traced its roots to Moses (Judg. 18:30) served at the Danite shrine. After the split of the monarchy, the Israelite king Jeroboam made the shrine of Dan (along with Bethel) one of the two sanctuaries for the northern kingdom. Amos condemned these shrines (Amos 8:14), in which Jeroboam installed images of bull calves (1 Kgs. 12:29-30; 2 Kgs. 10:29).

Dan was conquered by Ben-hadad of Aram ca. 900 b.c.e. (1 Kgs. 15:20); this underscores the perennial threat Syria posed to Dan, which was much closer to Damascus than to Samaria, much less Jerusalem. Dan remained Israelite until 732, when Tiglath-pileser III (Pul) ended the Israelite era at Dan with his conquest of the Galilee and subsequent exile of many of its inhabitants (2 Kgs. 15:19, 29). There is archaeological evidence for settlement at the site through the Roman period.

As a frontier post, Dan was memorialized in the common phrase “from Dan to Beersheba” (e.g., Judg. 20:1; 1 Sam. 3:20) which marked, respectively, the northern and southern limits of Israel.

Excavations at Tel Dan, led by Avraham Biran, have uncovered remains of the Israelite sacred precinct and a 9th-century Aramaic inscription which mentions the “house of David” (byt dwd), the sole extant extrabiblical reference to King David.

Bibliography. A. Biran, Biblical Dan (Jerusalem, 1994).

Gregory Mobley







Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)

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