In a few hours from my writing this, we’ll be visiting the site of ancient Dan (Hebrew דן), the excellently-named biblical city that represented the northernmost point of the ancient unified Kingdom of Israel.
In the Hebrew Bible, the recurring expresssion “from Dan to Beersheva” represents the totality of the original united monarchy, the territory extending between its northern and southern limits, rather like saying “from sea to shining sea.”
When Jeroboam broke the northern kingdom of Israel off from the southern kingdom of Judah at the death of Solomon in 928 BC, he wanted to give his kingdom a distinctive identity and to prevent his subjects from going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and its temple in the south, where they might be propagandized into disloyalty to him:
26 And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David:
27 If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.
28 Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
29 And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan. (1 Kings 12:26-29)
As Dan represented the northernmost part of unified Israel and, thus, of its reduced partial successor state, also called Israel, Bethel stood near the southernmost boundary of the new northern kingdom
No city stands at Dan any more (although, rather remarkably, there’s a McDonalds only a few miles away). Today, the site is known in Hebrew as Tel Dan (תל דן, the “Hill of Dan”) and in Arabic as Tell el-Qadiتل القاضي) ,, the “Hill of the Judge”).
Among the principal archaeological points of interest connected with Tel Dan is a city gate built of mud bricks atop basalt megaliths that is estimated to have been built in roughly the eighteenth century before Christ — Middle Bronze II. It is commonly called “Abraham’s Gate” because of a story recounted in Genesis 14:
14 And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.
15 And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.
16 And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.
Posted from En Gev, Israel
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