Dan's naviphobia: The Sequel

At long last, I can make this long-awaited post to properly explain Schnitzer's view on Dan's fear of boats (not prophets!).

Shortly after making the first post, I reread Schnitzer's essay שבט דן והים (The Tribe of Dan and the Sea) and somewhat unsurprisingly, it turned out that I had been in such a hurry to share Schnitzer's chiddush on understanding the term "יגור" that I had dived head-first into a case of mistaken identity. In the previous post, I had written that the Danites had feared the sea-faring Sidonians and so they decided to relocate to northern Israel which bordered on non-sea-faring Sidonian territory. However, this is not what Schnitzer actually wrote. He opined that at the time, the Sidonians had yet to conquer the coastal region. Rather, the terrors of the sea at the time were...the Sea People! The Sea People, for those who don't know, were a mix of different ethnic groups, mostly Aegean in origin but not limited to and included also Anatolian and northern Canaanite people, who began their migration from the Aegean Sea area eastwards towards what is now Lebanon, then northern Canaan, stomping any kingdom that got in their way. This group was comprised of different sub-groups. The most famous one was the Plishtim (Philistines), who had the gall to head southwards and do battle with the Egyptians. The Egyptians, over a period of several decades, managed to beat them back, until finally they allotted to them the area in south-west Canaan that became Eretz Pleshet, the Land of the Plishtim.

But there were other groups as well, such as the Shekelesh and Wehesh (see the list here). Some of these groups stuck to the northern part of Canaan and/or to the coastal region of the land. Evidently, some of these people were basically pirates or stormin' vikings or something like that, and they terrorized the Danites, and probably the Sidonians as well.

Interesting to note is that Cyprian and Plishtite ceramics were found in many Israelite Galilean and coastal sites. We find that several of the various coastal and Galilean tribes (Dan, Asher, Yissachar, possibly Menashe) came into contact with these foreigners. Some were lauded by Devorah for holding their own (such as Asher - Shoftim 5:17) while Dan was apparently rebuked (ibid.).

Questions and comments welcome as usual.

Shabbat Shalom!

(The ship part of a drawing of Yonah and the fish I made a few years back.
Other than being a boat in water and the sailor not being Jewish (until moments later),
this is also related in that Yonah came from Gat Hachefer
which is thought to have been in the north and not too far from the coast.
Copyright of this picture belongs to me, myself and I)


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