Continuing our series on Dan Baker’s Worse Bible Passages.
From feticide to invasion. When I saw this on the list, I was a bit surprised. The Old Testament is filled with warfare, which is expected as the Middle East was in a strategic position, and thus quite desirable. Besides larger civilizations such as Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, which sought to secure it as something of a buffer zone, or even just to ally with local tribes to gain a hold on the area, many smaller tribes were also vying for the land.
The book of Judges, from which Barker takes this verse, is a great example of the continual warfare that we see in the area. Why he picked these verses, Judges 18:1-28, I’m not quite sure. But we will dive into it anyway.
First, a brief synopsis. The verse begins with the Tribe of Dan seeking a place to settle, as they hadn’t received an inheritance among the Tribes of Israel. So they went to the priest and asked him to inquire with God to see if their journey to find a place to call home would be successful.
The priest answered that yes, the journey has God’s approval. Hearing that, they took what Micah had made, and went to the city of Laish, against a people who were at peace. The Danites would attack them, and then burn down their city. The Danites would then rebuild the city under the new name Dan and settle there.
Barker concludes by saying that the Canaanites were not evildoers, but that the Israelites were invaders.
There is a lot to unpack here. So let’s begin with some foundational ideas. First, who inhabited Laish.
Laish, or Leshem as it is known in the book of Joshua, was a city that was in the extreme northern part of Canaan. The time period we are looking at is the Late Bronze Age, and the beginning of the Iron Age. This was a pretty tumultuous time in Canaan.
When we look at Canaan, we are looking at an area largely made up of independent city-states. Political unity among these city-states really only occurred through military conquest, and that was generally carried out by foreign powers.
One of the major foreign powers here was the Egyptians. Leading up to around 1550 BC, Egypt and the city-states of Canaan had more commercial relations. Egypt often had an overabundance of food, while Canaan didn’t, and Canaan had more access to raw materials. Canaan also supplied Egyptians with the ability to participate in international trade.
This all changed around 1550 BC, when Egypt began expanding its political and military domination into Canaan. The cause for this new focus was two-fold. First, it was part of their war against the Hykos peoples. The Egyptians had driven the Hyksos out of Egypt, but they continued their campaign into Canaan, where they were set on breaking the power of the Hyksos allies in the area. Coupled with this was a push to secure the old center of Asiatic trade.
In 1468 BC, this came to a climax at Megiddo, where the Egyptians defeated a large coalition of Canaanite cities. This allowed the Egyptians to effectively take control of Canaan, making Canaan something like a territory. Egyptian garrisons would continue to be stationed at key sites in northern Canaan to help repel potential invasions. And there would be a number of attempts at invasions, most notably by the Hittites.
This outside danger of invasion was coupled with revolts among the cities and tribes in Canaan. We know one of these troublesome cities was Laish, as it is mentioned among those cursed in the Egyptian Execration Texts, or Proscription Lists, which listed enemies of the Pharaoh.
The people of Laish had reason to be unfriendly to the Egyptians. When Thutmose III began his campaign to bring Canaan under Egyptian control, Laish was among the cities conquered by the Pharaoh. It appears they would continue to pose problems for Egypt, as they preferred their independence. That and they chose to ally themselves with the Sidonians, who were Phoenicians. As a note, it is possible that the people of Laish were not Canaanites, but Phoenicians.
Because of the danger posed to northern Canaan, where Laish was situated, both by the Egyptians and kingdoms like the Hittites, Laish found a reason to fortify themselves, and that led them to having a rather impressive defense system.
This is where the Tribe of Dan comes in. In Judges 18:1, we are told that the Tribe of Dan had no land of their own. Reading through Judges and Joshua, we know that this wasn’t always the case. The tribe once had a territory in the coastal lowlands near the towns of Zorah and Eshtaol. But they were forced out of that area by the Amorites, or Philistines. In fact, in the preceding narrative, we hear the story of Samson, a Danite, and see the ongoing struggle with the Philistines.
Being a conquered people, the Danites became a nomadic tribe, that was looking for a new home. The new land they found was Laish.
Laish was an ideal city for the Danites to conquer. Their closest allies were the Sidonians, but they were pretty isolated from them. They also had no allies among the local peoples, so attacking them would have been straightforward.
Now, the text does state that Laish was at peace and secure. That doesn’t imply they had done nothing wrong, though. They, after all, were seen as an enemy of Egypt and caused problems there. But right then, they weren’t at war with anyone else, largely because Egypt had secured some peace in the area through mutual respect and understanding with the Hittites.
Quick side step. So while the Hittites and Egyptians would wage war over Canaan, neither side would make massive gains. Instead, they would reach a stalemate, leading both sides to realize that a continued fight would be largely pointless and not worth the cost. They would remain allies until about 1200 BC, and shortly after that, Egypt would collapse in Asia.
It is during this same period, with the fall of the Egyptian Empire in the area and the Hittites, that the Tribe of Dan conquered the city of Laish. It wouldn’t be long after that that the Assyrians would then conquer the area. So yes, at that moment, Laish was at peace, but in the wider context, it was a short-lived peace.
Part of the reason the people of Laish felt at peace, though, comes down to their impressive defense system. They were no strangers to war, and because of that, they fortified themselves. They made them feel secure, which in turn made them drop their guard.
All of this made them the perfect target for an attack. We don’t really see a massacre being stated here, though. Instead, we have one army approaching a town that also had an army, and they had a battle with swords. Nothing really out of the ordinary here. There is a mention that the town was then burnt down, but archaeological records don’t support that. There is a clear change in occupation evident in the archaeological record, but that’s really it.
What Barker seems to take offense with is that God is said to have given His approval, but what is God supposedly approving of? It doesn’t appear to be a massacre, but instead an attempt to explore the land.
Chapter 8 begins with five Danite men being sent out to spy and explore the land. These five men meet a priest, and that’s when they ask him to pray to God for their journey’s success. That mission, or journey, was just to explore the land.
During that time, they do spot the city of Laish, but nowhere are we told that God approves of them then leading an army there to massacre them. Instead, we see the spies telling the Tribe of Dan how easy it will be to conquer them.
Now, sure, with their victory over Laish, the Tribe of Dan most likely saw God as having had a hand in it, but then again, they saw God having a hand in everything, including their previous downfall. But if we look at the text from a historical perspective, rather than taking a literal interpretation, we can see that what we have here is just a small narrative that fits into a much larger history of peoples being conquered in Canaan. That’s just the history of Canaan as a whole.
There is also a failure in the logic of the argument Barker portrays, though. If God wanted the Tribe of Dan to have a place to live, it would have been much easier to have just kept the Tribe in their original area, instead of having the Philistines push them out. The Danites were also a group of people who did nothing wrong, but were invaded and dispersed.
Just one final point, after looking at the text, there is no suggestion that the people of Laish were eliminated. They were conquered, but nothing is said of what happens to the people as a whole. On the other hand, we are told that the Tribe of Dan will be forced out of the area.
The issue here then is that Barker is taking a passage out of context, both the literary context and historical context, in order to portray God in one manner, when the passage as a whole is about what the Tribe of Dan is doing because they want to find a new home.