Battle of the Godless – Ch. 3 | KT OLLA

A SMALL tribe of Israel camped in their few thousands in the south side of the Land of Promise. That land was their nation’s conquered grounds which was once some Gentiles’.

It was the blossoming tribe of Dan spreading out their number across the towns of Zorah and Eshtaol. Yet those towns on Israel’s new soil weren’t theirs to own.

In those days, three centuries after the conquest of Canaan, the Danites were yet to claim a city for themselves in Israel. Their own lot hadn’t fallen to them in that land overflowing with honey.

So, the people of Dan camped with other peoples in towns they couldn’t call theirs. But the small tribe grew large and prosperous over those long years.

So much that two rented towns could no longer house them.

 In those long years, their houses multiplied beyond what their grounds could grow. Their harvests beyond what their barns could hold.

And their herds… they grew and prospered. So much that no fold or ranch could keep them.

Thus, the migrants started considering shifting base. They’d agreed over the years to move to a more spacious place and claim that land as theirs.

But the years had always rolled past with the Danites never moving an inch. Changing homes seems to be the hardest change, after all.

However, the elders of those clans woke up today and decided their change was happening now or never.

They gathered the people at the bank of the Dead Sea, further down on that southern region. There they talked about their biggest need. The need to find a home.

Two members of the council addressed the people in what looked like a sort of conversation.

They were a duo of great thinkers, Gomer and Hur. So they chose to give their talk in what appeared like an address and yet like a discussion.

The old men sat on a raised platform, each speaker holding a horn used as an amplifier of voice. And rather than face themselves as they reasoned, they faced the listening people.

Hur was the first to speak.

‘For about four hundred years,’ he intoned, ‘Dan has wandered through fields and towns that aren’t ours.

‘If these settlements have been our own place, we won’t be like strangers in this land promised to our fathers, would we?’

He repeated those words. ‘We won’t be this small among the tribes of our own people!’

Gomer looked at his hasty friend and felt dissatisfied.

For truly, Hur’s opening thought had just phased out into a conclusive end before any attempt to talk about it.

It was one conclusion that seemed to stem out of the lingering despair.

So Gomer was fast to hit back a word.

‘But those lands aren’t ours and can’t be. So we simply need to move on!’

‘To where then?’ retorted Hur. ‘To where, people of Dan?’

He faced his partner a small moment. ‘Every bird has found a nest in Israel and every man a home.

‘Only Dan’s children are left with no place to call theirs! Just us, you know?’

But Gomer was the settled one. So he insisted:

‘Then, do we just sit as guest in a home that ought to be ours?

‘No, think about it: do we sit and do nothing just because we weren’t given a place?’

Right then Hur bowed his head with a sigh.

But his mature partner was soon down with the burden, too.