Joshua 19:47

Ver. 47. And the coast of the children of Dan went out too little for them: therefore, &c.— The words too little, are neither in the Hebrew, the LXX, nor the Vulgate. The text literally is, And the country of the children of Dan went cut from them. Now the phrase, went out from them, is naturally explained here by the manner in which it is used, Leviticus 25:28.; where, speaking of the year of jubilee, Moses says, that the estates went out from those who had acquired them, because they then passed into other hands; namely, of the proprietors who had alienated them to that period. In this place, therefore, in like manner, to say that the coast of the Danites went out from them, is saying that it passed partly into other hands than their own, or, in a word, was taken from them. In fact, their formidable neighbours, the Amorites, forced the Danites into the mountains, and would not suffer them to come down to the valley. See Judges 1:34. The city of Leshem (called in Judges 18:29. Laish,) was not far from Jordan. The Danites gave it their name after they had conquered it. In after-times, when it fell into the hands of the Romans, they called it Paneas, and made it the metropolis of Iturea and Trachonitis. Philip, the son of Herod the Great, afterwards repaired it, and, in compliment to Tiberius Caesar, gave it the name of Cesarea Philippi. This expedition against Leshem was made after the death of Joshua. For more respecting it, see on Judges 18.; where there is an account of the whole expedition. From this, as some insist, it appears, that this book was not written by Joshua; whereas no more can be inferred from it, than that in after-times this passage might be here inserted by Samuel or Ezra, or some other inspired writer, in order to complete the account of the Danites' possessions. It is very evident, that the present verse is not by the same pen with the rest of the book. But as the learned Bishop Huet observes, were the whole verse taken away, all that is said of this tribe would be perfectly coherent, and leave no breach at all in the context.