After this nothing is heard of Dan till the specifica- tion of the inheritance allotted to him (Josh, xix, 48). He was the last of the tribes to receive his portion, and that portion, according to the record of Joshua — strange as it appears in the face of the numbers just quoted — ^was the smallest of the twelve. But, not- withstanding its smaUness, it had eminent natural ad- vantages. On the north and east it was completely embraced by its two brother tribes Ephraim and Ben- jamin, while on the south-east and south it joined Judah, and was thus surrounded by the three most powerful states of the whole confederacy. Of the towns enumerated as forming *' the ' border* of its in- heritance," the most easterly which can now be iden- tified are Ajalon, Zorah (Zareah), and Ir-Shemesh (or Beth-shemesh, q. v.). These places are on the slopes of the lower ranges of hills by which the highlands of Beigamin and Judah descend to the broad maritime plain, that plain which on the south bore the distinc- tive name of "the Shefelah," and more to the north, of "Sharon." From Japho — afterwards Joppa, and now T&fa — on the north, to Ekron and Gathrimmon on the south — a length of at least fourteen miles— that noble tract, one of the most fertile in the whole of Palestine, was allotted to this tribe. By Josephus (Ant. V, 1, 22, and 8, 1) this is extended to Ashdod on the south, and Dor, at the foot of Carmel, on the north, so as to embrace the whole, or nearly the whole, of the great plain, including Jamnla and Gath. (This discrepancy may be accounted for by supposing that the Danites at some period may have overrun the country thus far, when the Philistines were humbled by the powerf^ Ephraimites and the still more pow- erful David.) But this rich district, the corn-field and the garden of the whole south of Palestine, which was the richest prize of Phcenician conquest many centuries later, and which, even in the now degenerate state of the country, is enormously productive, was too valuable to be given up without a struggle by its orig- inal possessors. The Amorites accordingly "forced the children of Dan into the mountain, for they would not suffer them to come down into the valley" (Judg. i, 84) — forced them up fh)m the corn-fields of the plain, with their deep black soil, to the villages whose ruins
DAN
654
DAN
still crown the hills fhat skirt the kmUnd. Tnie,tbe help of the great tribe so closely connected with Dan was not wanting at this junctore, and ** the hand of the children of Joseph," i. e. Ephraim, ** prevailed against the Amorites" for the time. But the same thing soon occnrred again, and in the ^impse with Which we are afterwards favored into the interior of the tribe, in the histoiy of its great berOj the Philis- tines have taken the place of the Amorites, and with the same result. Although Samson "comes down" to the " vineyards of Thnnath" and the valley of So- rek, yet it is firom Mahaneh-Dan— the fortified camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol, behind Kiijath- jeariro— that he descends, and it is to that nataral ikstness, the residence of his father, that he ** goes up" again after his encounters, and that he is at last borne to his family sepulchre, the burying-place of Manoah (Judg. xiv, 1, 5, 19; xlii, 25; xvi, 4; comp. xviii, 12; zvi, 81). It appears fhnn that history tiiat there was an under-current of private and social intercourse be- tween the Philistines and the Danltes, notwithstand- ing the public enmity between Israel and the former (Judg. xiii-xvi).
These considerations enable us to understand how it happened that long after the partition of the land " all the inheritance of the Danltes had not fallen to them among the tribev of Israel" (Judg. zviii, 1). They perhaps furnish a reason for the absence of Dain from the great gathering of the tribes against Sisera (Judg. V, 17). They also explain the warlike and in- dependent character of the tribe betokened in the name of their head-quarters, as just quoted — ^liahaneh- Dan, **the camp, or host, of Dan" — in tiie ftict special- . ly insisted on and reiterated (inriii, 11, 16, 17) of the complete equipment of their 600 warriors ** appointed with weapons of war," and the lawless freebooting style of their behavior to Micah. There is something very characteristic in the whole of that most fresh and interesting story preserved to us in Judg. xviii — a narrative without a parallel fbr the vivid glance it af- fords into the manners of that distant time— charac- teristic of boldness and sagacity, with a vein of grim sardonic humor, but undeformed by any unnecessaiy bloodshed.
In the "security" and "quiet" (Judg. xviii, 7, 10) of their rich northern possession the Danltes enjoyed the leisure and repose wliich had been denied them in their original seat. But of the fate of the city to which they gave " the name of their father" (Josh, xix, 47), we know scarcely anything. The strong re- ligious feeling which made the Danites so anxious to ask counsel of God from Micah^s Levite at the com- mencement of their expedition (Judg. xviii, 6), and af- terwards take him away with them to be " a priest unto a tribe and a &mi]y in Israel," may have point- ed out their settlement to the notice of Jeroboam as a fit place for his northern sanctuary. But beyond the exceedingly obscure notice in Judg. xviii, 80, we have 110 information on this subject. From 2 Chron. ii, 14, it would appear that the Danites had not kept their purity of lineage, but had intermarried with the Phoe- nicians of the country. (Soe an elaboration of tills in Blunt, Coincidences^ pt. ii, ch. Iv.)