Zorah,Eshtaol,Beth-Shemesh and Dan's Migration to the South: A Region and its Traditions in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages ∗

Abstract

Khirbet er-Rumele was known as Sarha in the Late Bronze Age (EA 273.21) but in the Iron Age its name was changed to that of its shrine—Beth-Shemesh. Zorah (Tell Sar'a), offshoot settlement of Beth-Shemesh, continued to use the name of the mother city. Perhaps it served as refuge for Beth-Shemesh, producing the fictitious fortress of Rehoboam (2 Chron. 11.10), but pottery findings can not be dated to before Iron Age IIB (900/850 BCE). Eshtaol (= Išwa') was an offshoot settlement of Zorah (Iron Age HC). The Danites did not migrate to the north (twelfth, eleventh or tenth century BCE) leaving the Samson-clan in the south (Judg. 13–18). Rather, they came south following the campaigns by Tiglat Pileser III against Israel, settling first near Kiriath-jearim and then in the Zorah-Eshtaol region. They legitimized their claim by ‘Danitizing’ the local hero Samson and through the fictional northward migration which allowed the portrayal of the current settlement as a return to ancestral grounds.