Tribes of Israel
Dan
Dan was the second-largest tribe in Israel and produced its strongest man. It also produced the first organized idolatry in the land, hosted one of Jeroboam’s golden calves, and is the one tribe missing from the list of the sealed in Revelation.
On this page
At a glance
The man behind the tribe
Dan was the first son born to Bilhah, Rachel’s servant, in the fertility contest between the two sisters. Rachel named him: “God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son” (Genesis 30:6). Nothing else about the man is recorded; the tribe is what the Bible has to say about Dan.
The blessings
Jacob’s word is finely balanced between honor and warning: “Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that his rider falls backward” (Genesis 49:16-17). A serpent is a small tribe’s weapon — ambush rather than open battle — and it describes Samson’s whole career exactly. It is also, in a book where the serpent is the enemy, an uncomfortable image.
Immediately after it Jacob breaks off with the only prayer in the chapter: “I wait for your salvation, O LORD” (49:18).
Moses’ blessing is short and fierce: “Dan is a lion’s cub that leaps from Bashan” (Deuteronomy 33:22) — Bashan being far north of the land Dan was actually given, which reads almost as a prediction of the migration.
Territory
Dan drew an allotment on the coastal plain between Ephraim and Judah — Zorah, Eshtaol, Aijalon, Ekron, Joppa (Joshua 19:40-46). It was fertile, and it was Philistine and Amorite country, and Dan could not hold it: “The Amorites pressed the people of Dan back into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the plain” (Judges 1:34).
So they left. Six hundred armed men went north, found the quiet, unprotected town of Laish near the headwaters of the Jordan, destroyed it, and rebuilt it as Dan (Judges 18). The phrase “from Dan to Beersheba,” used for the whole length of Israel, comes from that relocated city.
History in outline
c. 1910 BC — Born
Bilhah’s first son; Rachel names him Dan (Genesis 30:1-6).
c. 1445 BC — Oholiab
A Danite craftsman is appointed with Bezalel to build the tabernacle, “and I have given to all able men ability” (Exodus 31:6; 35:34).
c. 1445 BC — The blasphemer
The son of an Israelite woman of Dan and an Egyptian father blasphemes the Name in the camp and is stoned (Leviticus 24:10-16).
c. 1400 BC — An allotment they cannot hold
Amorite pressure confines Dan to the hills (Joshua 19:40-48; Judges 1:34).
c. 1375 BC — The migration
Danite scouts find Laish “quiet and unsuspecting”; six hundred men take it and rename it Dan (Judges 18:7-29).
c. 1375 BC — Micah’s idol
On the way they steal a Levite priest and a household shrine, and “set up the carved image for themselves... until the day of the captivity of the land” (Judges 18:14-31).
c. 1250 BC — Absent from the battle
Deborah’s song asks, “And Dan, why did he stay with the ships?” (Judges 5:17).
c. 1100 BC — Samson
Born to a barren Danite couple at Zorah, a Nazirite from the womb, he judges Israel twenty years and kills more Philistines at his death than in his life (Judges 13-16).
c. 966 BC — Hiram the craftsman
Solomon’s bronze-worker is described in Chronicles as the son of a woman of Dan (2 Chronicles 2:14).
931 BC — The golden calf
Jeroboam sets up one calf at Bethel and the other at Dan: “Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28-30).
c. 900 BC — Sacked
Ben-hadad of Damascus strikes Ijon, Dan, and Abel-beth-maacah at Asa’s request (1 Kings 15:20).
c. 733 BC — Exile
Tiglath-pileser takes the northern territories, Dan among them (2 Kings 15:29).
c. 590 BC — A last mention
Ezekiel still gives Dan a portion in the restored land and a gate in the city (Ezekiel 48:1, 32).
Israel or Judah?
Israel — the north, and at its very center. After the migration Dan’s city sat at the northernmost tip of Israel, and Jeroboam chose it deliberately as one of the two royal shrines so that northerners would not travel to Jerusalem to worship. “This thing became a sin, for the people went as far as Dan to be before one” (1 Kings 12:30).
The tribe was among the first regions Assyria took, in the campaign of 733 BC, a decade before Samaria fell. There is no record of Danites returning from exile, and Dan is missing from the tribal genealogies of 1 Chronicles.
Most strikingly, Dan is omitted from the twelve tribes sealed in Revelation 7:5-8 — the only one of Jacob’s sons left out, with Manasseh listed in its place. Scripture does not say why. Readers since the early church have connected it to the two idolatries the tribe is remembered for: the shrine at Laish, and the calf at Dan.
Notable people
Samson is Dan’s great figure and its great parable — enormous God-given strength, spent on personal grievance, undone by appetite, and redeemed only at the end when a blind prisoner prayed, “O Lord GOD, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once” (Judges 16:28). Hebrews 11:32 still lists him among those who by faith “were made strong out of weakness.”
Oholiab is the counterweight — a Danite artisan filled by God with skill, who built the tabernacle alongside Bezalel of Judah. The tribe’s first appearance in the wilderness is a man making a place for God to dwell; its last is a city where a golden calf stood.
Christ connection
Dan’s history is the clearest tribal illustration of what a shortcut costs. Given hard land, they took easy land. Given God’s worship, they took a convenient shrine. Given a judge with supernatural strength, they got a man who could not govern himself. And Jacob, in the middle of blessing them, stopped and prayed, “I wait for your salvation, O LORD” (Genesis 49:18) — the one line in the chapter that looks past all twelve sons to someone else entirely.
Yet Ezekiel’s restored land still has a portion for Dan and a gate named for Dan in the city called “The LORD Is There” (Ezekiel 48:1, 32-35). Even the tribe with the worst record is not written off the map of the age to come.
Key passages
- Genesis 30:6 — Dan’s birth and name.
- Genesis 49:16-18 — “A serpent in the way” — and “I wait for your salvation, O LORD.”
- Exodus 31:6 — Oholiab appointed to build the tabernacle.
- Judges 1:34; 18:1-31 — Pressed into the hills; the migration and the stolen idol.
- Judges 13-16 — Samson.
- 1 Kings 12:28-30 — Jeroboam’s golden calf at Dan.
- 2 Kings 15:29 — Deported by Tiglath-pileser.
- Revelation 7:5-8 — The sealed tribes, with Dan absent.