Omitted by Moses from the list of the blessed, and sentenced by his father to be “divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel,” Simeon occupied with Judah the extreme south; and in one generation after the exodus from Egypt to Canaan his posterity had decreased more than 37,000 souls.[37] Destined to rule rather than to serve, to be cunning rather than brave, “Dan shall judge his people; and he shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse-heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.”[38] Unable to subdue the Philistines, whose lands were allotted to them from the Hills of Judah to the Mediterranean, the Danites were compelled to conquer new territory for their rapidly increasing numbers. Described by Moses to be “a lion’s whelp,” and foretold by him that “Dan shall leap from Bashan,” a colony of the tribe passed northward to the sources of the Jordan, and, taking the city of Laish by surprise, 600 armed men, like a young lion pouncing upon its prey, “leaped from Bashan,” captured and burnt the town, and upon its ruins founded another city, calling it “after the name of Dan, their father.” Thus, while at a later period the southern branch of the tribe gave to the nation Samson, who “judged Israel twenty years,” the new colony stamped its tribal name upon the utmost limit of Palestine, which has since passed into the proverbial saying, “From Dan to Beersheba.”[39] Foretold that “his eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk,” to Judah fell that mountain region from Jerusalem southward to Arabia, and from the Dead Sea to the hills which overhang the Mediterranean, and which for vineyards and pasturage is unsurpassed in all the Holy Land. Here, in the days of his prosperity, he was seen “binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; and here he washed his garments in wine, and his cloths in the blood of grapes.” Selected to be the tribe whence the Messiah should come, “Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise.” Ordained to retain his tribeship, his ensigns, his government “until Shiloh come,” his home was amid the fastnesses of the Judean Hills, from which, till the appointed time, when God abandoned him to his enemies, he could not be dislodged. Ascending to his mountain lair from the swellings of Jordan, “Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up;” and after the Ten Tribes had been scattered, and the identity of Benjamin lost, and when the foe approached, the “Lion of the tribe of Judah,” confident of his security, “stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?”[40]