Why will Dan not be in heaven? What did he do worse than his brethren?

Question

The entire tribe of Dan is absent from the list of those tribes which are to be found in heaven.

Here is the list given in Revelation 7.

And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel. (Revelation 7:4, KJV)

Of the tribe of Juda were sealed twelve thousand.
Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand.
Of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand. (7:5)
Of the tribe of Aser were sealed twelve thousand.
Of the tribe of Nephthalim were sealed twelve thousand.
Of the tribe of Manasses were sealed twelve thousand. (7:6)
Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed twelve thousand.
Of the tribe of Levi were sealed twelve thousand.
Of the tribe of Issachar were sealed twelve thousand. (7:7)
Of the tribe of Zabulon were sealed twelve thousand.
Of the tribe of Joseph were sealed twelve thousand.
Of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand. (7:8)

Dan is not listed (neither is Ephraim--but the focus for this question is Dan). But Dan was clearly a son of Jacob (Israel), and among the tribes in the wilderness. As of the time when they sent spies into Canaan and selected a representative from each tribe, we see the following:

¹ And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, ² Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel: of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them. ³ And Moses by the commandment of the LORD sent them from the wilderness of Paran: all those men were heads of the children of Israel.

⁴ And these were their names:
of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur.
⁵ Of the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori.
⁶ Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh.
⁷ Of the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph.
⁸ Of the tribe of Ephraim, Oshea the son of Nun.
⁹ Of the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu.
¹⁰ Of the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi.
¹¹ Of the tribe of Joseph, namely, of the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi.
¹² Of the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli.
¹³ Of the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael.
¹⁴ Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi.
¹⁵ Of the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi.

¹⁶ These are the names of the men which Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Oshea the son of Nun Jehoshua. (Numbers 13:1-16, KJV)

Dan was the eldest son of Rachel's maid Bilhah--the first of the maids to be given to Jacob by his two wives.

¹ And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. ² And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? ³ And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. ⁴ And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her. ⁵ And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son. ⁶ And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan. (Genesis 30:1-6, KJV)

Dan is Rachel's eldest surrogate son: Why is he not listed among those in heaven?

Answer 1

The real key is that TWO names are missing from the list of territorial tribes and have been replaced. We need to watch these names, because they point us towards the symbolic meaning of the list. I believe they are absent for the same reason.

First, let's note the difference between the territorial list and the original list of sons. The list of sons, as found in Genesis ch30 and ch31, includes Joseph and Levi. In the territorial list (e.g. Numbers ch2) Joseph is divided between Ephraim and Manasseh, and Levi is omitted, as non-territorial, to keep the total at twelve.

In the Revelation list there is a further change. The two names Ephraim and Dan have been omitted. The two names Joseph and Levi have returned to take their places. What is the significance of this?

Well, Ephraim and Dan are notorious in OT history as the two tribes which housed the two calves of Jereboam (1 KIngs ch12 v30, Bethel being a town in Ephraim). In other words, both names are "unfaithful". Joseph is well-known for his faithfulness in the affair of Potiphar's wife (Genesis ch39). Through the person of Phinehas, Levi is commended for his "jealousy" (that is, his faithfulness towards the Lord) in the affair at Shittim (Numbers ch25 vv10-11). Phinehas thus obtained the "covenant of peace" which Jeremiah later associates with Levi (ch33 v21). In other words, both names are "faithful".

So the effect of the double change is that two unfaithful names have been replaced by two faithful names.

If we are allowed to go by a symbolic interpretation instead of by a literal interpretation, the message in this list is not that a particular tribe will be absent from heaven, but that "the unfaithful" will be absent from heaven. Just as "the faithless" are near the top of the list of absentees from the new Jerusalem (Revelation ch21 v8). This is part of the basic, fundamental message of Revelation, that in the face of the oncoming crisis we must KEEP faith in God, and keep being faithful to God, trusting that he is faithful to us.

Answer 2

Not just Dan was not on the list, the sequence was not orderly arranged too. Also Manasseh was part of Joseph's tribe. So the list reveals something unusual. If we reviewed the meaning of the names according the order Rev 7 given, we may see something

1 - Judah - the 4th son - meaning "I will praise the Lord" (Gen 29:35)

2 - Reuben - the 1st son - meaning "The Lord has looked on me" (Gen 29:32)

3 - Gad - the 7th son - meaning "good fortune" (Gen 30:11)

4 - Asher - the 8th son - meaning "How happy I am" (Gen 30:13)

5 - Naphtali - the 6th son - meaning "won a great struggle" (Gen 30:8)

6 - Manasseh - Joseph son - meaning "make me to forget" (Gen 41:51)

7 - Simeon - the 2nd son - meaning "the Lord heard me" (Gen 29:33)

8 - Levi - the 3rd son - meaning "attached to me" (Gen 29:34)

9 - Issachar - the 9th son - meaning "reward me" (Gen 30:18)

10- Zebulun - the 10th son - meaning "honor" (Gen 30:20)

11- Joseph - the 11th son - meaning "taken away my disgrace, may he add" (Gen 30:23)

12- Benjamin - the 12th son - meaning "son of my right hand" (Gen 35:18)

Using the meaning of their names and arrange them orderly, if forms a message something like this;

I will praise the Lord for He has looked on me and give me good fortune. How happy I am, because I won a great struggle, God make me to forget. He hears me and is attached to me. He rewards me with honor and take away my disgrace, and may He add to me the son of His right hand.

It is possible that the twelve tribes in Rev 7 is a message of the Gospel, that has nothing to do with Dan.

Addendum

Dan - the 5th son - meaning "God has vindicated me" (Gen 30:6 NIV)

Ephraim - the 2nd son of Joseph - meaning "fruitful" (Gen 41:52 NIV)

Answer 3

Their priests fell by the sword, but their widows did not weep. But then the Lord awoke from his sleep; he was like a warrior in a drunken rage. He drove his enemies back; he made them a permanent target for insults. He rejected the tent of Joseph; he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim. (Ps. 78:64-67 NET)

At the time of Genesis, the change described in the Scepter prophecy was perplexing:

Judah, your brothers will praise you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies, your father's sons will bow down before you. You are a lion's cub, Judah, from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches and lies down like a lion; like a lioness– who will rouse him? The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs; the nations will obey him. Binding his foal to the vine, and his colt to the choicest vine, he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes will be dark from wine, and his teeth white from milk. (Gen. 49:8-12 NET)

As Israel's system was based on 14 νομός, nomós, "district" of Egypt, also seen in the family divisions of the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Dividing by 12 fulfills Genesis 49:10 in the person of David and Jesus Christ and this new adequacy actually removed the "infidels" Ephraim and Dan, who sheltered the calves of idolatry in 1 Kings 12:28, however, the main reason for exclusion of Dan from the list in Revelation 7:4-8 is related to the invasion and advance of the Babylonian troops against the Holy Temple in Jerusalem narrated in Jeremiah 4 :15:

For messengers are coming, heralding disaster, from the city of Dan and from the hills of Ephraim. NET Jeremiah 4:15

The snorting of the enemy's horses is already being heard in the city of Dan. The sound of the neighing of their stallions causes the whole land to tremble with fear. They are coming to destroy the land and everything in it! They are coming to destroy the cities and everyone who lives in them!" NET Jeremiah 8:16

In the new configuration described in Revelation, the new Jerusalem has no cities that are lenient with the enemy. There are no breaches in the wall.

Answer 4

I consider @Stephen Disraeli's answer adequate but since the OP asks us to focus on Dan let me do so and add a bit of additional historical rationale.

The tribe of Dan was held in ill repute going back to the book of Judges. Judges 18:1 states "In those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking a place of their own where they might settle, because they had not yet come into an inheritance among the tribes of Israel." Judges 18:27 says that they unjustly conquered Laish, a city which consisted of "a people at peace and secure. They attacked them with the sword and burned down their city." Dan then became the center of biblically unacceptable worship led by a descendant of Gershom, son of Moses:

The Danites rebuilt the city (Laish) and settled there. They named it Dan after their ancestor Dan, who was born to Israel—though the city used to be called Laish. There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land. They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh.(Judges 18:28-31)

Dan later became a member of the northern Israelite federation under Jeroboam I, who established an important temple in Dan, featuring a statue of a golden bull calf. Like its counterpart at Bethel, this shrine was considered idolatrous by the priests and scribes of Judah who wrote the Bible.

The above may be one of the reasons the author of Revelation did not include Dan in his list of Jewish tribes. Another factor may be that by the time Revelation was written, the people of Dan had pretty much lost their identity as such and survived only as members of the Samaritan nation.

Answer 5

Firstly, the belief that people go to heaven after death is unbiblical nonsense. "No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man". God is going to restore what He started in Genesis 1&2. On the earth. Heaven, the New Jerusalem, the garden city, is coming down here to the earth. We are going to work and keep it like Adam and Eve were supposed to.

As for the tribe of Dan, Vincent Wong already told us that there is a hidden message in the list of the tribes. A second thing to consider is the fact that the name Dan means "judgment". Through the forty years in the wilderness, the Israelites always traveled in that particular order. The divisions of the camp of Judah went at the front and the divisions of the camp of Dan as the rear guard (Numbers 10). The same order is repeated in the book of Judges. The first judge was from the tribe of Judah (Otniel), and the last one was a Danite (Samson). Judah means "praise of the LORD". For the people of God, the praise of the LORD always come first and the judgment last.

In Revelation 7 Dan is not mentioned because there will be no judgment for the sealed 144000. Instead, at the end is Jesus, "the Son of the right hand". Jesus took the judgment away.

Dan has not been rejected, either. Can't be. There will be a gate with Dan's name in the New Jerusalem:

having a great and high wall, having twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names having been inscribed which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. (Revelation 21:12)

The traditional interpretation that Ephraim and Dan are missing from the list because they were rejected is nonsense. Nowhere in the OT, the tribes were judged separately. They were all judged as a nation. It also contradicts the prophecies like Ezekiel 16:

⁵⁹ This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. ⁶⁰ Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. ⁶¹ Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your sisters, both those who are older than you and those who are younger. I will give them to you as daughters, but not on the basis of my covenant with you. ⁶² So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the LORD. ⁶³ Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign LORD. (Ezekiel 16:59-63)

And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from EVERY tribe of the sons of Israel. (Revelation 7:4)

The list in chapter 7 doesn't give all the names of the tribes. Also Joseph=Manasseh+Ephraim. So technically Ephraim is a part of the list and Manasseh is counted twice. It all has to be symbolic.

Additionally the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21 uses the imagery of the New Jerusalem from the book of Ezekiel which has the gate of Dan:

³⁰ These will be the exits of the city: Beginning on the north side, which is 4,500 cubits long, ³¹ the gates of the city will be named after the tribes of Israel. The three gates on the north side will be the gate of Reuben, the gate of Judah and the gate of Levi. ³² On the east side, which is 4,500 cubits long, will be three gates: the gate of Joseph, the gate of Benjamin and the gate of DAN. ³³ On the south side, which measures 4,500 cubits, will be three gates: the gate of Simeon, the gate of Issachar and the gate of Zebulun. ³⁴ On the west side, which is 4,500 cubits long, will be three gates: the gate of Gad, the gate of Asher and the gate of Naphtali. ³⁵ The distance all around will be 18,000 cubits. “And the name of the city from that time on will be: the Lord is there. (Ezekiel 48:30-35)