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Transcript 010B — Why is the Tribe of Dan Missing in Revelation 7?
CALLER: Good evening, Mr. Camping. My question deals with the twelve tribes of Israel, as originally named in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 8. My question concerns Chapter 7 of the Book of Revelation, where it speaks of the twelve,000 representing each of the twelve tribes, with the exclusion of Dan and the inclusion of Manasseh, which differs from the original twelve. I was just wondering what happened to Dan, and why is Manasseh substituted?
HC: And you might ask one other question: Why is Ephraim not named, and Joseph is named instead of Ephraim?
CALLER: Well, I was going back to the original. Joseph was one of the original twelve, and at one point Ephraim and Manasseh were mentioned. Levi was left out because he became a priest and he was restored back in Revelation. But the only difference in Revelation 7, from the tabulation in Genesis, is Manasseh in place of Dan. And so I know there have been these changes along, and I was wondering what happened to Dan.
HC: Well, let me say this. First of all, in every naming of the tribes, you will always find that one is not named. Sometimes it will be the tribe of Simeon that's not named. Sometimes it's the tribe of Levi that's not named. In this case it's the tribe of Dan that's not named. And the reason for this is that there were actually thirteen tribes. The half-tribe of Ephraim and the half-tribe of Manasseh eventually become noted as full tribes, but God is constantly emphasizing the number twelve. And therefore, in every enumeration you'll find twelve tribes named. That's the first reason, because God is focusing on the number twelve, which is a symbolical number to indicate the fullness of God's people, or the fullness of the church, even as in the New Testament we have twelve apostles.
Now secondly, both the tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of Dan (and Dan especially, which I'll speak more about in a moment), but in one sense Ephraim and Dan were twins, in that they were the locations of the original worship of other gods.
When the ten tribes separated from the tribe of Judah in 931 BC, upon the death of Solomon, then wicked Jeroboam was their king. He raised up altars at Bethel, which was in the area of the tribe of Ephraim, and at Dan, which was in the area of the tribe of Dan. And this was a grievous sin in the eyes of God. Jeroboam is faulted again and again in the Bible for this. And so these two tribes became notorious for the fact that they were the locations of this original worshipping of other gods, or of false worship, actually.
Now Dan is especially emphasized in the Bible as a figure of Satan himself, very surprisingly. And I don't know why Dan was named in this way, but it's interesting that in the twelve apostles there was one who was a servant of Satan, and that was Judas. And so it was in the Old Testament that God, for His own particular purposes, provided a figure of Satan amongst the tribes. And we find in Genesis 49:17, "Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path." Now a serpent or a viper (that's a figure of Satan himself) "that bites the horse's heels so that its rider falls backward." I suppose that Dan, or Judas, in a real sense is a figure of any false prophets that come out of the church. They were amongst us, and then they came out and began to inveigle the congregation into trying to get them to accept another gospel. And this is where the greatest deceit comes from, right out of the body of believers.