All about the ancient tribes
Tribal territory The Book of Joshua records that the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh were allocated land by Moses on the eastern side of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea (Joshua 13:15–23).
The tribe of Reuben apparently settled east of the Dead Sea in the same general area occupied by the tribe of Gad and played a secondary role in the history of the Jewish people.
The tribe of Dan settled land on the East bank of the Jordan River. David’s character is highlighted in that he refuses to kill Saul. This shows his respect for the office of king and the significance of God’s anointing. Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin and not Judah.
Nevertheless, when Tiglath-Pileser III annexed the kingdom of Israel in about 733-731 BC, Gad also fell victim to the actions of the Assyrians, and the tribe were exiled; in the Talmud, it is Gad, along with the tribe of Reuben, that are portrayed as being the first victims of this fate.
In Matthew 1:1–6 and Luke 3:31–34 of the New Testament, Jesus is described as a member of the tribe of Judah by lineage. Revelation 5:5 also mentions an apocalyptic vision of the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
Conquered by the Assyrian King Shalmaneser V, they were exiled to upper Mesopotamia and Medes, today modern Syria and Iraq. The Ten Tribes of Israel have never been seen since.
When Joshua led the Israelites into the land of Canaan the Levites were the only Israelite tribe that received cities but were not allowed to be landowners, because “the Lord God of Israel is their inheritance, as he said to them” (Book of Joshua, Joshua 13:33).
Each was the father of a tribe, though Levi’s descendants (among whom were Moses and Aaron), the priests and temple functionaries, were dispersed among the other tribes and received no tribal land of their own. Two other tribes, Gad and Asher, were named after sons born to Jacob and Zilpah, Leah’s maidservant.
Responding to a growing threat from Philistine incursions, the Israelite tribes formed a strong, centralised monarchy during the eleventh century BC. The first king of this new entity was Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin (1 Samuel 9:1–2), which at the time was the smallest of the tribes.
Book of Revelation The selection of the twelve tribes does not include the names of Ephraim and Dan, although their names were used for the twelve tribes that settled in the Promised Land. It has been suggested that this could be because of their pagan practices.
One understanding is that the 144,000 are recently converted Jewish evangelists sent out to bring sinners to Jesus Christ during the seven year tribulation period. Preterists believe they are Jewish Christians, sealed for deliverance from the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
Dan, one of the 12 tribes of Israel that in biblical times comprised the people of Israel who later became the Jewish people. The tribe was named after the first of two sons born to Jacob (also called Israel) and Bilhah, the maidservant of Jacob’s second wife, Rachel.
Gad is mentioned a final time in the Books of Samuel in 2 Samuel 24:18, coming to David and telling him to build an altar to God after God stops the plague that David had chosen as punishment. The place indicated by Gad for the altar is “in the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite”.
At its height, the territory Manasseh occupied spanned the Jordan River, forming two “half-tribes”, one on each side; the eastern half-tribe was, by most accounts, almost entirely discontiguous with the western half-tribe, only slightly touching at one corner – the southwest of East Manasseh and the northeast of West
Jericho is famous in biblical history as the first town attacked by the Israelites under Joshua after they crossed the Jordan River (Joshua 6).