Decline (Hastings' Dictionary)

In A V to ' decline ' is always (except Ps 1U2" 1U9-') used in the original but now obsolete sense of 'turn aside.' Thus, Job 23" 'His way have I kept, and not declined ' (RV ' turned not aside'); Ps liy" 'yet have I not declined from thy law' (RV 'swerved'; so 119'"); Pr 7" 'Let not thine heart decline to her ways ' (so RV).

In Ps 102" ' Mj' days are like a shadow that de- olineth,' and 109'-^, the image is of the shadow which lengthens as the sun goes down, till at last It vanishes into night. RV adds Jg 19' ' until the day declineth ' (see A Vm), 2 K 20'° ' It i« • light thins for the shadow to decline ten steps ' ( AV ' go down '), and Jer 6* ' the day declineth (AV 'goeth away'). Tennyson combines both meanings {Locksley HcUl, 1.

43) — * HaviD£: known me, to decline Od a nng^e of lower feellngB and a narrower heart than mine.' J. Hastings. DEDAN, ]-n, LXX AaSdv, AeSiv (in Is, Jer, Ezk, AaiSiv), according to Gn 10', a son of Raamah, one of the sons of Cush. In Gn 25' he is named along with Sheba, as in Gn 10', but ia represented, not as a Cushite, but as a Keturtean. Dedan is in this latter passage a son of Jokshan, son of Abraham by Keturah ; but according to Josephus {Ant. I. xv.

1) he was the son of Shuah (or Sous), another of Keturah's sons. The Shuhitea were neighbours of the Temanites (Job 2") in North-Western Arabia. There are traces still of the ruins of a city Daidan in that region, and the Sab:ean inscriptions mention the Dedanites as a tribe in that neighbourhood. The Dedanites are represented as an important commercial people, carrying on an extensive cara- van trade with Damascus and Tyre.

They fre- quented the highway that ran through the Arabian desert as they journeyed northward with their wares, and when driven back by a hostile force they were thro^vn upon the charity of their southern neighbours of Tema (Is 21'*). Accord- ing to Jeremiah (25^) they formed an Arabian tribe alongside of Tema and Buz, and were accustomed on their business journeys to pass through the land of Edom. The Dedanites share in the judgments which fall upon the Edomites and upon the kings of Arabia.

In all these pro- phetic passages, as in the OT generally, Arabia designates, not tha whole of the peninsula now known by that name, but merely the northern part, colonized by the Ishmaelite and Ketursean descendants of Abraham. In Jer 25^ the refer- ence to Dedan follows immediately upon th*" men- tion of the kings of Tyre and Sidon, and the coast beyond the sea. This does not seem to require the locating of Dedan by the sea-coast.

The connexion with 'Tyre is quite suiiicient to justify such an arrangement. Besides, the order in which the countries and peoples are named in w. ■"'"'' is evidently in a broad way from west to east, with an excursion midway northward and then south- ward, from Edom to Tyre and back again to Arabia. In Ezk 25" Dedan is described as form- ing the extreme south of Edom, as Teman repre- sents the farthest north.

This may only mean that the country of the Dedanites constituted the southern frontier of Edom. Tlie destruction of all Edom is described as a desolation extending from Teman to Dedan. In Ezk 27-" Dedan is spoken of as carrying to the market of the wealthy and luxurious Tyre precious cloths for chariots or saddle cloths for riding. From the place which it occupies in this passage, it is evidently to be regarded as a country of Northern Arabia.

If we accept the correction of some of the ablest modern critics in the readinjr of v.", we find the mention of Dedan preceded oy a reference to Southern Arabia ; wliile v.'" names Arabia, in the narrower acceptation of Northern Arabia, and the princes of Kedar. This precisely suits the locality assigned in other passages to the Ketursean Dedanites. Considerable diliioulty has arisen over the only other allusion to Dedan in the OT, to wliich we have not yet referred.

In Ezk 27'' we read : ' The men of Dedan were thy traffickers ; many isles were the mart of thine band : they brought thee in exchange horns of ivory and ebony.' The ivory and ebony are represented as tribute due to the supreme importance of Tyre as mistress of the DEDICATION DEEM 585 commercial world. There is no reason why the Dedanit€8 of Northern Arabia should not have acted as intermediaries in transporting to the western markets the products of the far East.

But the men- tion of the isles is supposed to make the assumption of a Dedanite people on the sea necessary. The LXX reads lihodians, R (i) and D (i) in the wTiting of Heb. being easily mistaken for one another. In this case, however, it has all the appearance of a correction made by the Gr. translators, so as to make the whole verse refer to islands and islanders. But the order in which the names are given in this passage seems unfavourable to such a view.

The list of those who brought their goods to the market of Tyre begins witli Tarshish in the far West, passing on to Javan, Tubal, Meshech (Asia Minor and the coasts of the Black Sea), Togarmah (Armenia). With Dedan there is clearly a fresh start made, whether we understand it of Rhodes or of a part of North- Western Arabia. But if in V." we read Edom instead of Aram (Syria), where again only the interchange of R and D is required, we have in w.'

^"'* the order from south to north (Edom, Judah, Damascus). Seeing, then, that Dedan lay south of Edom, it would form the appropriate starting-point for this second list. Thus in all the prophetic passages the only theory that easily and naturally tits mto the text is tliat wliich places Dedan on the south border of Edom, and regards the Dedanites as a Keturaean tribe, occupying a position alongside of other allied tribes in the north-west of Arabia.

The only trace, therefore, that we have of a Cushite Dedan is in Gn 10'. It is quite impossible to conjecture with any confidence now it came about that both Shel>a and Dedan should be names recurring in two families so far removed from one anotlier as that of the Cushite Kaamah and that of the Keturican Jokshan.

Possibly, a branch of the Keturajan Dedanites may have settled among Cushites near the Persian Gulf, and, while retain- ing their ancestral name, may have been included in the genealogy with their Cushite neighbours. It is, however, difficult to assume that the same had happened with respect to the sons of Sheba.

The Dedan of the Edomite border is placed by Eusebius in the neighbourhood of Phana on the east of Mount Seir, between I'etra and Zoar, the ancient Punon or Phunon, at which the Israelites encamped during their wanderings (Nu 33'"'-). LrrrBATtiRC.— Besidea Dillmann and Delitzsch on On and la. and Davidnon on Ezk, see Winer. Re^VwifTUfbuch,^ 203 f., whoM article is much more Batiafactory than tliose of Sterner (Schenkel, BiMi«xvv)n, I. 59i f.) and Kautzsch (Riehm, Hand- wAr(«r6ucA, 2C6).

See also Hommel, Anc. tlffi. Trad. 23y f. J. MACrHEIlSON.