Disobedient Dominion: The Cautionary Tale of Dan Text: Joshua 19:40-48
Introduction: The John Wayne Gospel
We live in an age that loves the idea of a bespoke gospel. We want a faith that fits our personality, our comfort level, our peculiar set of anxieties. We want a Jesus who will co-sign all our life plans, especially the ones that involve avoiding anything difficult. We want to be spiritual entrepreneurs, picking our own battles, defining our own victories, and then slapping a "To God Be the Glory" sticker on the whole enterprise. We want the inheritance without the fight, the crown without the cross, and the promised land without the giants.
This is what you might call the John Wayne Gospel, but without any of the grit. It's the part where he rides off into the sunset, but we edit out the part where he had to fight dirty to win. We want to be conquerors, but only if the enemy is half our size and preferably asleep. When God assigns us a difficult patch of ground, a piece of territory crawling with Philistines and Amorites, we check our maps for an easier assignment. We look for a quiet, secure town somewhere up north that won't put up much of a fuss.
The book of Joshua is a book about inheritance. It is about God giving His people a good land, a place to dwell, a place to build a civilization to His glory. But this inheritance is not delivered by a celestial courier service. It must be taken. God gives the victory, but the people must supply the fighting. Faith is not a passive affair; it is a verb. It swings a sword. It tears down high places. It drives out the enemy. But what happens when faith grows soft? What happens when God's people decide His plan is too hard, His enemies too strong, and His calling too uncomfortable? What happens when they abandon their assigned post and go looking for an easier fight? The tribe of Dan provides us with the unfortunate, and therefore instructive, answer.
This passage is not just a dusty record of ancient boundary lines. It is a stark warning against the temptation of disobedient dominion. It is a cautionary tale about the kind of self-willed spiritual freelancing that always ends in idolatry and ruin. It shows us that a victory won outside the will of God is no victory at all.
The Text
The seventh lot came out for the tribe of the sons of Dan according to their families. And the territory of their inheritance was Zorah and Eshtaol and Ir-shemesh, and Shaalabbin and Aijalon and Ithlah, and Elon and Timnah and Ekron, and Eltekeh and Gibbethon and Baalath, and Jehud and Bene-berak and Gath-rimmon, and Me-jarkon and Rakkon, with the territory over against Joppa. And the territory of the sons of Dan went out from them; for the sons of Dan went up and fought with Leshem and captured it. Then they struck it with the edge of the sword and possessed it and settled in it; and they called Leshem Dan after the name of Dan their father. This was the inheritance of the tribe of the sons of Dan according to their families, these cities with their villages.
(Joshua 19:40-48 LSB)
God's Good and Hard Provision (vv. 40-46)
We begin with the casting of the lot and the description of the land God assigned to Dan.
"The seventh lot came out for the tribe of the sons of Dan according to their families. And the territory of their inheritance was Zorah and Eshtaol and Ir-shemesh, and Shaalabbin and Aijalon and Ithlah, and Elon and Timnah and Ekron, and Eltekeh and Gibbethon and Baalath, and Jehud and Bene-berak and Gath-rimmon, and Me-jarkon and Rakkon, with the territory over against Joppa." (Joshua 19:40-46)
The lot falls, and God speaks. This is not a random roll of the dice; it is a divine appointment. God, in His meticulous sovereignty, assigns to the tribe of Dan a specific portion of the promised land. This is their post, their station, their God-given task. The list of cities is a roll call of divine provision. This land was coastal plain, fertile and strategic. It bordered the territory of the Philistines, a formidable and pagan enemy. This was not an oversight. God does not make mistakes in His assignments.
Notice the names. Zorah and Eshtaol would later be the stomping grounds of Samson, a Danite judge. This was a place of conflict, a frontier. God was calling the tribe of Dan to be a bulwark, a front-line defense against one of Israel's most persistent enemies. He was giving them a place of high honor and high danger. This is how God's blessings often come packaged. He gives us a gift, and that gift is a difficult and glorious calling. He gives us a family to lead, a business to run, a church to serve, a neighborhood to evangelize. These are our allotted territories. And they are never without their giants.
God's provision is always sufficient for His calling. He does not give a command without also providing the grace and strength to obey it. The Danites were not tasked with fighting the Philistines in their own strength. They were tasked with fighting in the strength that God supplies. Their inheritance was not just the dirt and the cities; their inheritance was the promise of God's presence and power in the fight for that dirt and those cities.
The Inheritance Forfeited (v. 47a)
But then we come to the pivotal and tragic phrase in verse 47.
"And the territory of the sons of Dan went out from them..." (Joshua 19:47a LSB)
Some translations soften this, suggesting the territory was "too little for them." But the Hebrew is more direct. It "went out from them." It slipped through their fingers. They lost it. This was not God's failure. This was not a miscalculation in the divine real estate office. This was Dan's failure. The book of Judges fills in the unfortunate details: "Then the Amorites forced the sons of Dan into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the valley" (Judges 1:34).
They were given the fertile plains, but the Amorites were fierce. The fight was hard. And so the Danites retreated. They gave up the ground God had given them. They lacked the faith, the backbone, the sheer grit to take what was theirs by divine decree. The promise of God was not nullified by the presence of the enemy; it was meant to be realized through the defeat of the enemy. But the Danites flinched. They valued their immediate comfort and security more than God's long-term promise. And so the land "went out from them."
This is a perpetual temptation for the people of God. We are given a commission to disciple the nations, and we find that the nations are hostile. We are called to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and we find that the culture is a ravenous wolf. We are called to mortify the sin in our own hearts, and we find that the sin is stubborn and deeply entrenched. And so, we are tempted to retreat. We are tempted to let the inheritance go, to cede the territory to the enemy and find a more peaceable corner to practice a quieter, less demanding faith. But this is the path of disobedience. It is the way of forfeiture.
The Coward's Conquest (v. 47b)
Having failed in their assigned task, the Danites do not repent. Instead, they redirect their energies into a project of their own devising.
"...for the sons of Dan went up and fought with Leshem and captured it. Then they struck it with the edge of the sword and possessed it and settled in it; and they called Leshem Dan after the name of Dan their father." (Joshua 19:47b LSB)
This looks like a victory, does it not? They went up, they fought, they captured, they possessed. They even named the city after their patriarch. It has all the outward marks of a successful military campaign. But it was an act of profound disobedience. Judges 18 tells us this city of Leshem, also called Laish, was "a people quiet and secure," living a great distance from any potential allies. In other words, they were a soft target.
The Danites abandoned the hard war God commanded for an easy war He did not. They substituted their own mission for God's mission. This is disobedient dominion. It is using God-given strength to pursue man-made ambitions. They wanted the thrill of conquest without the risk of failure. They wanted to plant their flag, but on a hill of their own choosing. So they found an unsuspecting, peaceful city, slaughtered its inhabitants, and called it a victory for the tribe of Dan.
The modern church is rife with this kind of thing. We shy away from the hard, confrontational work of preaching the whole counsel of God to a hostile culture. We avoid the messy, difficult work of church discipline. We neglect the costly, uncomfortable work of evangelizing our pagan neighbors. And instead, we busy ourselves with all manner of impressive-looking projects that don't actually challenge the enemy's grip on the territory God has assigned to us. We build bigger programs, run slicker services, and create comfortable Christian enclaves, all while the Amorites control the valley. We conquer Leshem, while Aijalon is lost.
An Inheritance of Idolatry (v. 48)
The passage concludes by formally recognizing this new, self-acquired territory as Dan's inheritance.
"This was the inheritance of the tribe of the sons of Dan according to their families, these cities with their villages." (Joshua 19:48 LSB)
This is a statement of tragic fact, not divine approval. This became their inheritance. And what kind of inheritance was it? The story in Judges 18 reveals the rotten fruit of this expedition. On their way to conquer Leshem, the Danite army stole idols and a priest from a man named Micah. And upon conquering the city, the very first thing they did was set up a graven image. The city of Dan, born of disobedience and cowardice, became one of the great centers of idolatry in Israel. It was at Dan that Jeroboam would later set up one of his golden calves, leading the northern kingdom into apostasy (1 Kings 12:28-30).
This is where disobedient dominion always leads. When we reject God's hard calling for our easy project, we inevitably begin to worship the works of our own hands. We set up idols in the cities we build for ourselves. The inheritance they grasped for themselves became a snare and a curse. It is no wonder that when the tribes of Israel are listed in the book of Revelation, the tribe of Dan is conspicuously missing (Revelation 7:4-8). Their self-chosen inheritance led to them being written out of the final inheritance.
The Greater Joshua, The True Inheritance
The story of Dan is a grim picture of our own natural tendencies. Left to ourselves, we are all Danites. We are spiritual cowards. We shrink back from the fight God has given us. We trade the glorious, difficult calling of God for the cheap, manageable satisfaction of our own projects. We fail to take our inheritance.
The first Joshua, the son of Nun, led the people into the land. He allotted them their inheritance. But he could not give them a new heart. He could not give them the faith and courage to actually possess what God had promised. For that, we need a greater Joshua. We need the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the one who fights the truly hard fight. He did not shy away from the cross. He faced the full force of God's wrath against our sin, against our cowardice, against our idolatry. He conquered sin, death, and the devil, not by finding an easy target, but by taking on the ultimate enemy. He secured for us an inheritance that is "incorruptible and undefiled and will not fade away" (1 Peter 1:4).
But He does more than that. Through His Spirit, He gives us new hearts. He writes His law upon them. He gives us the faith and courage to take up our own cross and follow Him into the territory He has assigned to us. He does not call us to conquer a new Leshem. He calls us, by the power of the gospel, to take back the very territory we forfeited. He calls us to engage the culture, to raise godly families, to build faithful churches, to speak the truth in love, and to drive out the darkness from the piece of the valley He has placed us in.
The failure of Dan is a warning to us. Do not abandon your post. Do not trade God's war for a war of your own making. The fight is hard, the enemies are real, and the valley is contested. But the first Joshua gave the land, and the second Joshua gives the victory. Therefore, be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.