Deuteronomy 33:22

22  And of Dan he said:

Dan, a whelp of a lion,

He leaps from Bashán.

22. The situation assigned is that northern one, to which the tribe migrated from their earlier seat in the South (Judges 18:7). They settled at Laish (a poetical term for lion) or Leshem, thereafter called Dan, which is usually identified with Tell-el-Ḳadi (Ḳadi = Dan) in the valley of Jordan below Ḥermon. But because of the military weakness of this site and the impossibility of holding the valley the main northern avenue into Palestine except from the heights above the neighbouring Banias, on which stand the ruins of the Crusaders" Castle, eṣ-Ṣubeibeh, the present writer has argued (HGHL, 473, 479 ff.) that the site of Laish or Dan must have been on these heights. This is confirmed by the present v. he leaps from Bashán, a name which never covers the Jordan valley where Tell-el-Ḳadi lies, but is applicable to the heights to the E. of it. The oracle in Genesis 49:16 f. reflects this post of vantage over the entrance of invaders from the N.