BAN băn (A, Βάν; B, Βαινάν). A KJV and ASV name found in 1 Esdras 5:37, amended to TOBIAH in the RSV. His descendants were among the returning exiles who could not prove that “they were of Israel.” The parallel passages, Ezra 2:60 and Nehemiah 7:62, have Tobiah.

BAN (verb) (חָרַמ֒, H3049, devote, consecrate to God, exterminate). The ban was a primitive religious institution, found among the Israelites and their Sem. neighbors, by which persons (and their posesssions) hostile to the deity were devoted to destruction. Among the Israelites the ban particularly concerned the Canaanites, who, because of their idolatry and shameful immorality, were to be utterly consumed (Exod 23:31, 32; 34:13; Deut 7:2; 20:16, 17). Thus Jericho suffered the ban (Josh 6:17, 21), as did also the household of Achan for violating its ban (Josh 7:25). The same fate was threatened against Israel if it turned aside from Jehovah (Deut 8:19, 20; Josh 23:15). Sometimes, however, the ban was less severe. On occasion only the inhabitants of a doomed city were destroyed (Deut 2:34ff.; Josh 11:14), or only the males were put to death (Deut 20:10ff.). Apparently the practice of the ban gradually ceased, and we read no more of it after David ordered two-thirds of some captured Moabites slain (2 Sam 8:2).

The Eng. word “ban” is found only in Ezra 10:8, as a tr. of בָּדַל, H976, (KJV separate). In this passage Ezra ordered all returned exiles to assemble in Jerusalem within three days and threatened that all who refused to do so would have their property confiscated and they themselves would be banned from the congregation of Israel. Some form of excommunication is evidently involved in this ban, but its exact form is unknown.

Bibliography J. Pedersen, Israel, Its Life and Culture III-IV (1947), 26-32; P. Heinisch, Theology of the Old Testament (1950), 198, 199; W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (1957), 279-281; W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, I (1961), 139-141; D. W. Thomas (Ed.), Documents from Old Testament Times (1962), 195-198.