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Dan-Jain

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(Heb. but once and with ה local appended, Da'nah Ya'an, דָּנָה יִעִן Sept. Δανιδὰν καὶ Οὐδάν v. r. Δανιαρὰν καὶ Ιουδάν; Vulg. Dan silvestria), a place named only in 2 Samuel 24:6 as one of the points visited by Joab in taking the census of the people. It occurs after Gilead, between "the land of Tahtimn-hodshi" and Zidon, and therefore may have been somewhere in the direction of Dan (Laish), at the sources of the Jordan. The reading of the Alexandrian Sept. and of the Vulg. was evidently דָּן יִעִר, Dan-jaar, the nearest translation of which is "Dan in the wood." This reading is approved by Gesenius (Thes. Heb. p. 336), and agrees with the well-wooded character of the country about Tel et-Kadi. (See DAPHNE).

Farst (Heb. Handwirterbuch, p. 303) compares Dan-jaan with Baal-jaan, a Phoenician divinity whose name is found on coins. Thenius suggests that Jaan was originally Laish, they having fallen away, and ען having been substituted for שׁ (Exeg. Hdbuch. on Sam. p. 257). There seems no reason for doubting that the well-known DAN, or Leshem, is intended. We have no record of any other Dan in the north, and even if this were not the case, Dan, as the accepted northern limit of the nation, was too important a place to escape mention in such a list as that in the text. Dr. Schultz, however, the late Prussian consul at Jerusalem, discovered an ancient site called Danian or Danyal, in the mountains above Khan en-Nakura, south of Tyre, which he proposes to identify with Danjaan (Van de Velde, Memoir, p. 306).