Dens

Dens are the hollows of the earth — caves, holes, lairs in the mountains — where beasts withdraw and where people hide when the open ground turns dangerous. Scripture uses the word for animal habitation, for human refuge under threat, and figuratively for a corrupted house and for the place where Daniel was thrown.

The lairs of beasts

The natural sense is the wild animal's hole. When the storm closes in, "the beasts go into coverts, And stay in their dens" (Job 37:8).

Refuge under oppression

When Midian overran Israel under the judges, the sons of Israel withdrew into the rough country: "And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel; and because of Midian the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which are in the mountains, and the caves, and the strongholds" (Jdg 6:2). The same flight underlies the catalogue of the faithful in Hebrews — those "(of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth" (Heb 11:38). Under the sixth seal in the Apocalypse, the same instinct gathers all ranks together: "And the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the generals, and the rich, and the strong, and all--slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains" (Rev 6:15).

The den of lions

The word names a specific place of execution in Daniel. The conspiracy against Daniel works through a royal statute: "All the presidents of the kingdom, the deputies and the satraps, the counselors and the governors, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a strong interdict, that whoever will ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days, except of you, O king, he will be cast into the den of lions" (Dan 6:7).

A house turned into a den

Jeremiah turns the figure against the temple itself, charging that worshipers have made the sanctuary into the kind of hollow where robbers shelter between raids: "Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your⁺ eyes? Look, I, even I, have seen it, says Yahweh" (Jer 7:11).