Calves at Dan

When Jeroboam I split the northern tribes from the house of David, he secured the unity of his area by establishing shrines for golden calf worship at the northern and southern borders of his territory—at Dan and Bethel respectively.

Both were obvious choices. Bethel had been a holy place since the theophany to Jacob (Genesis 28) and Dan had been a center of idolatry for centuries. Judges 17-18 gives an etiology of Danite idolatry, telling the story of the Danites taking household gods, an ephod, molten images, and graven images (4fold idolatry) from the house of Micah up to the north, where these became the gods of the city of Dan. 

They also took a Levite with them who was willing to lead the Danites in idolatrous worship if they “filled his hand” with silver (a play on the Hebrew phrase for ordination—“to fill the hand”). It’s not til the end of the story in Judges that we find the depths of this tragedy. In 18:30, the young Levite is identified as “Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Manasseh.” Some texts have “Moses” instead of Manasseh, and that reading certainly fulfills in spades the text critical criterion of being the lectio difficilior. It would mean that Moses’ own grandson was the first to establish a permanent place of idolatry in the land. 

Even if Manasseh is the correct reading, the implication is clearly that the Danites made idolatry their established religion early on in Israel’s occupation of the land (that would make Jonathan the grandson of Manasseh, presumably son of Joseph). From the very beginning of Israel’s occupation, at least one tribe officially established non-Yahwish worship, and we know from the rest of the book of Judges that other tribes regularly fell into idolatry. 

Jeroboam’s calves, then, would have seemed quite in keeping with Danite tradition. And—more importantly—the patience of Yahweh with Israel stands out in even greater relief.