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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Judges 18:27 - 18:27
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And they (the Danites) had taken what Micah had made, i.e., his idols and his priest, and they fell upon Laish (עַל כֹּוא, to come over a person, to fall upon him, as in Gen 34:25), a people living quietly and free from care (vid., Jdg 18:7), smote them with the edge of the sword (see at Gen 34:26), and burned down the city (cf. Jos 6:24), as it had no deliverer in its isolated condition (Jdg 18:28; cf. Jdg 18:7). It was situated “in the valley which stretches to Beth-rehob.” This valley is the upper part of the Huleh lowland, through which the central source of the Jordan (Leddan) flows, and by which Laish-Dan, the present Tell el Kadi, stood (see at Jos 19:47). Beth-rehob is most probably the same place as the Rehob mentioned in Num 13:21, and the Beth-rehob of 2Sa 10:6, which is there used to designate a part of Syria, and for which Rehob only is also used in Jdg 18:8. Robinson (Bibl. Res. pp. 371ff.) supposes it to be the castle of Hunin or Honin, on the south-west of Tell el Kadi; but this is hardly correct (see the remarks on Num 13:21, Pent. p. 709). The city, which lay in ashes, was afterwards rebuilt by the Danites, and called Dan, from the name of the founder of their tribe; and the ruins are still to be seen, as already affirmed, on the southern slope of the Tell el Kadi (see Rob. Bibl. Res. pp. 391-2, and the comm. on Jos 19:47).