For the tribe of Dan we are sadly told that they failed to take possession of their territory and instead went up to attack Leshem in the north (see Judges 1:34; Judges 18:1). The ideal is contrasted with the real.¹ As a result this tribe was unique amongst all the tribes of Israel since it forsook the inheritance that the Lord had given to them. The city of Leshem, renamed Dan, would become a marker of the northern extreme of the land, exemplified by the phrase from Dan to Beersheba (see Judges 20:1; 1 Samuel 3:20; 1 Kings 4:25). It was one of the cities where Jeroboam would erect a golden calf (1 Kings 12:29–30).²