The Ten Lost Tribes Were Not Jews King Solomon had taxed the nation of Israel heavily, placing oppressive burdens on the citizens of this tiny country while he and his ever-extending household lived in unbelievable palatial splendor. To make matters worse, Solomon had strayed from God, bowing to the idols of his many wives and breaking the Sabbath that God had commanded be kept holy. God had appeared unto him twice and commanded him concerning this thing. Now, an angry Lord God of Israel appears a third time… "Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou has not kept my covenant and my statues, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend (tear away) the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant. Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one tribe to thy son for David my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake which I have chosen" (1 Kings 11:11-13). Then God raised up adversaries of Solomon. Even Jeroboam, the son of Nebat and servant to Solomon, raised up his hand against Solomon. And this was the reason he did so: Solomon had made Jeroboam, a descendant of Ephraim and a man of valor, to be ruler over all the labor force of the house of Joseph. And as Jeroboam was leaving Jerusalem to begin his new duties, the prophet Ahijah met him in the field. Ahijah reached out and grabbed the new garment that Jeroboam was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces. Then he said to Jeroboam: “Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee. But he shall have one tribe for my servant David’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel.” Then Ahijah went on to encourage Jeroboam to follow the Lord God of Israel with strict obedience, telling him in many words that if he will keep God’s statues and judgments as David had done, God would give him the ten tribes. Solomon heard about this and threatened to kill Jeroboam so Jeroboam fled to Egypt where he stayed until the death of Solomon. At that time, the children of the northern kingdoms sent word to him to return post haste and claim his throne. Jeroboam returned at once to journey with the northern tribes to Shechem where Rehoboam came to be made their king. The children of the northern tribes had made Jeroboam their representative and speaker so he stood before the children of Israel and said to Rehoboam: “Your father made our yoke grievous: now therefore, make this grievous service and heavy yoke lighter and we will serve you.” Rehoboam requested three days to consider the matter. When they reconvened three days later Rehoboam had this to say to Jeroboam and the children of the ten northern tribes: "If you think my father's yoke was heavy, just wait - my yoke will be even heavier. My father chastised you with whips but I will chastise you with scorpions (multi-tailed whips with barbed points and hooks attached)." God had hardened Rehoboam's already hard and conceited heart that He might perform His Word that He had spoken to Solomon, to Ahijah and to Jeroboam. But Jeroboam lifted his voice in the peoples’ rebellion and rejected Rehoboam as their king: “What portion have we in David? Neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents O Israel,” then his final word to Rehoboam, “now see to thine own house, David.” When Rehoboam sent his tax collector to the northern tribes to collect their tribute, they stoned him until he was dead and Rehoboam fled for his life back to Jerusalem to rule over the tribe of Judah. The neighboring tribe of Benjamin, most of the Levites and the children of Israel that lived in Judea joined themselves to the larger tribe of Judah and they became one tribe under the rule of Rehoboam, son of Solomon and grandson of David. In order to preserve the throne and lineage of David, Rehoboam had to secede from Israel, dividing the one nation into two kingdoms – Israel and Judah. God had torn the kingdom from his hands just as He had told Solomon He would do, but He would leave the tribe of Judah with a throne and a king in every generation, just as He had promised his servant David He would do. Now, just as God had warned Solomon, Ahijah and Jeroboam, none served the house of David but Judah only. In all this, God did not break His word to David. Solomon deserved punishment, the tribe of Judah deserved punishment, and punishment was meted out in the rending of the kingdom. Note that God had said He would rend (tear apart) the “kingdom” which incorporated all the tribes, and that is what He did. He tore it apart and left one part and one part only to the dynasty of David. Note that God had said He would keep “a part” – not for Solomon’s sake – but for David’s sake. His Covenant with David would remain intact. Meanwhile, Jeroboam began to consider his own role as king of the ten northern tribes with pride and a growing concern that if the children of Israel went to Jerusalem every year for the Feast of Tabernacles, they might be tempted by the glory of the Temple to attach themselves to Rehoboam and stay there. If that happened, he could very easily lose his own kingdom. So Jeroboam made two golden calves, established a feast day to rival the Feast of Tabernacles, establishing it on the eighth day (the first day of the week) instead of on the Sabbath, and attracted Israel’s loyalties with paganism and idolatries. Jeroboam had forgotten the words of the Living God, spoken through Ahijah, and he did not follow the ways of the Lord. In time, the Lord would have to smite Israel because of their sins that Jeroboam made them to sin. Rehoboam likewise did evil in the sight of the Lord and made all of Judea to sin. In addition, there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of their reigns even though the Lord had warned Rehoboam not to go to war against his brothers, for the rending of the kingdom was of the Lord and not of men. First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles tell the story of their reigns and the many kings that followed them. So the nation of Israel was divided into two kingdoms, the northern kingdom (Israel) with Samaria as it's capital, and the southern kingdom (Judah) with Jerusalem as it's capital. The Levites were divided as well, living in one kingdom or the other. But Second Chronicles 11:13-17 relates that Jeroboam's spiritual reforms in Israel, including the institution of a non-Levitical priesthood, gave rise to a great exodus of Levite priests and believers who left their northern tribes and joined themselves to the southern kingdom of Judah. Solomon died in the year 975 B.C. In 722 B.C. the ten northern tribes of Israel fell to the king of Assyria who carried Israel away into Assyria and placed them in various cities, even the cities of the Medes. Then the king of Assyria brought peoples from the cities of Assyria and settled them in the cities of Samaria to replace the children of Israel. Thereafter they possessed Samaria. However, these pagans from Assyria, from the lands we know today as Syria and Iraq, north to the Caspian Sea and west to the cities of the Medes, did not fear the Lord so the God of Israel sent lions among them and slew some of them. When the king of Assyria heard about this, he commanded his men to bring back one of the Israelite priests they had taken to Assyria so he might live among these new Samaritans and teach them the manner of the God in the land. When they brought him, he dwelled in Bethel (where Jacob had dreamed and built an altar to God) and he taught them how they should fear the Lord. It had precious little effect for they continued to do their own thing, make their own gods and worship the same idols they had worshipped in Babylon, Nineveh, Cuthah and Hamath, combining their state religion of the Chaldean mystery religion with the teachings of the priest of Israel. The result was a mixture of Israel’s corrupted religion and the Babylonian paganism they had always known. And, as it always happens when east meets west, they intermarried with the few Israelites that had escaped slavery, and became a new people known as the Samaritans. They could have called themselves whatever they pleased - the children of Judah still rejected both the Samaritans and their religion. These were the foreigners that lived in Samaria in the days when Jesus Christ journeyed to Sychar in Samaria and met the woman at the well. These are those whom the New Testament Gospels call Samaritans… During the 253 years that passed between the death of Solomon and the carrying away of Israel, there were nineteen generations of wicked kings building on the wickedness of Jeroboam, God had sent word by his servants the prophets again and again, pleading with His people to turn from their wicked ways and repent. But they would not – they did not – and now, time had run out. The Mighty God of Israel, the God who had brought their fathers up out of the land of Egypt, fed, clothed and guarded them for forty years, gave them victory after victory in Canaan and a new land flowing with milk and honey, “removed the children of Israel out of His sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only” (11 Kings 17:18). The ten northern tribes were not Jews. They were Israelites – they were the children of Jacob (Israel), as was Judah, but only the descendants of the kingdom of Judah were called Jews. As the children of Jacob, the Jews were also Israelites, but the Israelites of Judah’s brotherly tribes were never called Jews. The Jews are the children and descendants of Judah – and those that have joined themselves to Judah. It is not known who first called them Jew (or Ju) – a short nickname for Judah - but the first Biblical use of that nickname is in 11 Kings 16: 6 when Rezin, king of Syria, failed to conquer King Ahaz in an attack on Jerusalem, but went on to recover Elath (Large Tree) and “drove the Jews from Elath” (KJV). No…a thousand times no…Moses was not a Jew – he was a Levite. Joseph was not a Jew – he was an Israelite (son of Jacob). Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not Jews. They were not even Israelites. Jacob became the first and father of the Israelites when God changed his name to Israel, Prince of God, in Genesis 32:28. But they were all Hebrews, descendants of Heber (Eber) and were called Hebrews until Exodus 9:7 when God sent the plague on the cattle of Egypt, which reads: “…there was not one of the cattle of the Israelites dead.” Moses recorded the first five books of the Old Testament under the anointing of the Holy Spirit and with the records of Abraham at his disposal, so it is not surprising that Moses referred to them as “the Israelites” which included himself, his brother Aaron and his sister, Miriam as the children of Levi – an Israelite. In Exodus 32:13 Moses prays that God will remember “Abraham, Isaac and Israel…” and His promises to them. The next time they are called Israelites as a nation is when God refers to them as such in Leviticus 23:42 (“…all that are Israelites born…”). Then in Numbers 25:14 (“the name of the Israelite that was slain”) and no more from then until Joshua 3:17 when “all the Israelites passed over on dry ground…” At that time they were crossing Jordan to enter into the Promised Land after their forty years trek in the wilderness. They left Egypt as a nation of Israelites and entered Canaan as the nation of Israel. The name “Jew” or “Jews” did not appear until the ten northern tribes were removed from the land of Israel and all that remained was the kingdom of Judah. Following the references in 11 Kings 16:6 and 11 Kings 25:25, there is no reference to the Jews until Ezra 4:12 when the Jews returned from Babylon to rebuild the city and the Temple at Jerusalem. This followed the seventy years of captivity under Nebuchadnezzar at which time only the children of the kingdom of Judah were taken. Israel had long been removed from the land by the king of Assyria and had not returned. By the time of Esther 2:5 they were called Jews – Esther was a Jew, Mordecai was a Jew – the descendants of Judah. Even today, the Jews of the Holy Land are so-called because the ten northern tribes have never returned and it still assumed that all that remains is the tribe of Judah with the tribes of Benjamin and Levi under its wing. Consider it! It was Israel that was removed from the land with all the birthright promises, the first part of which was the land itself. Now they were cast out of the land and the rest of the birthright promises were gone with them – all but one – they would become a great multitude, which began in Israel. Manasseh would become a “great people (nation)” and Ephraim “a multitude of nations” (Genesis 48:19). If all Israel is to be saved, then they are not lost – they are misplaced. They are hidden to the world, hidden to themselves and to each other, but not to God. In captivity, then scattered among the nations throughout the world, the kingdom of Israel lost its identity, its language, its religion, its land and its name. In the second generation their children would speak a new language, have a new identity, a new homeland and a new religion. They had multiplied to such strength of numbers by the time of the Judges that they became the tribal leaders of all the other tribes. However, a few generations into captivity they had lost all remembrance of who they were and whose they were. Neither did the world care… They were assimilated into the cultures of the nations they lived in. In time they would migrate – north and northwest – into the lands of Europe and beyond the great sea to the isles. The third and fourth generations regarded themselves as Gentiles and the world regarded them as Gentiles. They were the ten scattered tribes of Israel and by the time anyone cared enough to search for them, they could not be found as nations, tribes or isolated communities. But it will not be forever. God has promised they will return. He knows where the descendants are, where every bloodline flows rich and pure, and He knows the name and address of every child of Israel. When God calls them forth, most of them unaware they are Israelites, they will return home to the land of Israel and to their God. Today, after 1,900 years of worldwide dispersion of the Jews, there is a new nation of Israel. The Jews are coming home. We are acquainted with the Jews for they have never been lost to the world. God had promised through His servant Jacob that, “the sceptor will not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his knees until Shiloh (Christ) comes.” In all generations to come, the throne of David would never be without a king until Messiah, son of David, comes to claim it forever. But the ten tribes of the northern kingdom, the children of Israel and brothers of Judah, have not come home. When they do, the world will be tempted, but we may not call them Jews. They are Israelites and they will tell us so… So what became of the promise made to David that his throne would be occupied in every generation? Who are these “multitude of nations” of Ephraim’s seed? Who is this “great nation” of Manasseh? Who is the “lawgiver” that serves David’s throne between his knees? What did happen to the ten tribes of Israel? We will explore these questions further next week. Meanwhile, remember God’s promise to Abraham, “I will bless those that bless you, and I will curse those that curse you.” And remember the commandment of Jesus Christ, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Then look at your neighbors, your enemies, and your own children and ask yourself, “Is it possible – could they be descendants of the lost tribes of Israel? Could I be???” Then resolve to bless and not curse, to love and not hate… Joan Krempel
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