The 12 Tribes of Israel in the Bible [Whiteboard Bible Study]

[Music] hi I'm Jeffrey and right now we are going to look at the 12 tribes of Israel now if you're familiar with the Bible then you know that it falls into two large sections there's the Old Testament which looks at the relationship between ancient Israel and their God and then there's the New Testament which follows the life and teachings of Jesus and some of this close followers thereafter now if you read through the Bible you find the number 12 showing up over and over again and that number was very important to the nation of Israel because they saw their nation as a collection of 12 large families called tribes and these tribes show up over and over again throughout the Bible so let's get a high level overview of the twelve tribes of Israel now the 12 tribes of Israel come from 12 patriarchs Israel was not just the name of the nation but it was also the name of Jacob who was the father of the entire nation of Israel and so the 12 tribes of Israel come from the names of the 12 sons of Israel or the 12 patriarchs now you can find this list of Jacob's sons several times in Genesis some of the you can read some of the stories of how they were born in chapters 29 and 30 in chapter 35 you get a very succinct summary of the children of Israel and then in chapters 48 and 49 you see some of the prophetic blessings of the Jacob gives to his sons but for now what we want to do is just get a high level overview of who these people are there was a lot of drama in the original family of Israel so these twelve sons actually come from four different mothers you have six sons coming from the mother Leah and leah was Jacob's first wife but not his favorite that goes to Rachel Rachel is a second and the one that he loved the most so we have six sons of Leah Reuben Simeon Levi Judah Issachar Zebulun Jacob had two concubines as well these were the the servants of Leah and Rachel they wanted to have more children and so they had more children in those days through these concubine mothers so you have Billa which is where Dan and Naphtali come from and Zilpah which is where gad and ashur come from then rachel has some children of her own Joseph that's the very famous one with the with that colorful coat and joseph has two sons of his own Manasseh and Ephraim and then we have Benjamin who is the youngest of the original 12 these men all had families and at the end of the book of Genesis we see all of them journeying to the land of Egypt to avoid a famine and in an Egypt over the course of 400 years so the story of Genesis and Exodus goes these twelve families grow and multiply into twelve tribes and they become a mighty nation with these twelve families and clans that make them up now in the book of Exodus we find everyone in Egypt and then they start making their journey from Egypt to the land that God promised to Jacobs grandfather Abraham and on the way to to them actually getting those territories we see a few tribes emerge as more significant those tribes in Levi Judah and Ephraim now Levi is super important to understanding though the rest of what's going on in the Old Testament this is the tribe that Moses comes from and there's this moment a rather famous Bible story and when Moses goes up the mountain to meet with God and the rest of the nation is down at the foot of the mountain and the make of golden calf and start worshipping that well Moses isn't very happy about that he says who is for the Lord here and only the tribe of Levi responds with loyalty for for the God of Israel and so Levi is loyal when the rest of Israel is worshiping this golden calf and they are blessed for that loyalty to God similarly later on Moses sends one representative from each tribe into the Promised Land to explore and spy out the land the spies come back and of the twelve spies only to give a positive report only two of them believe that the people of Israel will be protected by God as they go into the Promised Land one of those two is Caleb and he represents the tribe of Judah caleb is loyal to God and to Moses the rest of the nation wants to kill Moses and his brother Aaron who is the high priest the tribe of Levi and go back to Egypt caleb resists this and he is blessed he lives to see the Promised Land which if you are familiar with the Book of Numbers you know that most people die out in the wilderness from Caleb's generation there's another exception to this rule and that's the representative from Ephraim Joshua Joshua is a very famous Bible character not only is he loyal to Moses during this incident but he has been serving Moses his entire life from when he was just a young person and God and Moses select Joshua to lead the people into the Promised Land and you can read all about that in the book that holds Joshua's name the particular Commission you can read that episode though in Deuteronomy chapter 31 now when we get to the book of Joshua we see the the 12 tribes getting twelve territories and this is where if they to get kind of interesting so Judah Benjamin Avraham Issachar it is entirely the Zebulun and Naphtali a share Simeon and Dan are all given territories west of the Jordan River in the Promised Land proper in in the land of Canaan before that happens the three tribes asked for the land that lies to the east of the Jordan River so it's not necessarily in the the promised land proper if you will it's not in the land of Canaan it's just across the river on the other side and Reuben GAD and Manasseh asked Moses if they can just inherit that land Moses says yes and so that's that's something that we see happening in the book of Deuteronomy and then also gets solidified in the book of Joshua a few caveats to to this story one is that the tribe of Dan doesn't like the land that Joshua gives them and so later on in the book of Judges in chapter 18 they abandon that land and move north and capture a new territory for their own and then also the tribe of Manasseh ends up straddling the river so they're given land on the east of the Jordan River by Moses and then Joshua gives them more land on the west side and land of Canaan you came to read about that in Joshua 22 7 now you'll notice that when I list this list of territories there's no Joseph and there's no Levi well there's no Joseph because Joseph being the firstborn of Israel's second wife she inherited the blessing that was forfeited by Reuben that is another story and it's not a very good one but Reuben forfeits his blessing Joseph gets the birth rate and so Joseph gets a double portion and so that's why we see not just a tribe of Joseph but both of Joseph's sons and manasseh have territories in the promised land so we see Joseph represented but what about Levi well Levi gets a special inheritance instead of inheriting a large territory of land they are given something even more important the responsibility for caring for God's temple and maintaining Israel's worship the Levites are responsible for sacrifices the Levites are responsible for conducting feasts the the tribe of Levi has a pivotal role in the Old Testament and it's crucial for helping the people of Israel continue to be loyal to God just as Levi was during the Golden Calf incident well if they don't have land then are they gonna feed themselves well that's provided for in Moses law the Levites and specifically the priests who are putting all their time into taking care of the temple they live off of offerings that the people provide to them so they get a portion of sacrifices and when the people of Israel are giving tithes and donating that's where that's where the tribe of Levi gets their sustenance from now when we fast-forward a bit in the Old Testament we start seeing these twelve tribes forming a nation a United Monarchy we see a little bit of that under the Benjamin I saw but things really start coming together under the famous King David so King David who's from the tribe of Judah unites the twelve tribes into one Kingdom and he establishes the political and religious capital in the town of Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the territory of Judah he Commission's the temple of God at Jerusalem so that's the main headquarters for the tribe of Levi as well and then God makes a special covenant he joins houses with David and says that there will be a son of David on the throne in God's kingdom forever so of course the the Christians have a pretty strong idea as to who that person will be and we say that very expressly in just a little bit but after things are going so well with David David's son Solomon does not remain as loyal to God and so the nation splits two generations later and we see the the twelve tribes of Israel fracturing into two different kingdoms one is called Israel sometimes it's called Samaria or if Ram or just limb northern kingdom and so they have a new king jeroboam that's from the tribe of Ephraim and I'm a new capital Samaria a new religion they eventually fall to the Assyrians you can read about that in second Kings chapter 17 and then the southern kingdom just goes by Judah that's the strongest tribe there they keep Benjamin from the outset they keep Levi because the new religion in Israel doesn't rely on Levitical priests and so the people of Levi tend to just move to Judah and serve in the religion that that is actually supporting them however and then other families from other tribes eventually defect back to Judah under the under the oversight of some of their good Kings later on though Judah eventually loses their way they are not loyal to God and they don't listen to his prophets and they fall to the Empire of Babylon you can read about that at the end of second chronicles you can read the entire story of how this fracture happens in first Kings 11 through 12 now let's fast-forward to the New Testament when we start seeing the the person of Jesus showing up now when Jesus arrives he announces a new kingdom and a very interesting thing that he does when he announces that New Kingdom is he selects his own set of twelve people to to begin this new movement and these twelve are known as the Twelve Apostles they represent the beginning of a new Israel that we see explained and unfolding in the rest of the New Testament and there's some really interesting things that are happening here so Jesus is the Messiah the heir of David and so the promises that God made to David and Judah the Christians believe apply to Jesus Jesus is that chosen one that is anointed by God to to bring about his kingdom we find out in the beginning of Luke's Gospel that Jesus is related to Aaron who was a Levite and later on in the New Testament we find that Jesus is referred to as the high priest of the Christian faith so not only do we find Jesus pointing the things that were important from the tribe of Judah but we also see Jesus pulling in things that were important from the tribe of Levi not so strong of a connection as the other two but Jesus in Hebrew actually is Joshua who was the most significant member of the tribe of Ephraim in the Bible so that's a pretty cool piece of trivia to bring into this and then later on Jesus followers are talking about the church the people that are following Jesus as this new Israel Paul who is an apostle calls those in Christ the Israel of God he says that if you have faith then you are a child of Abraham a true child of Abraham which is very very interesting there is this spiritual Israel that is that is open to people that aren't genetically Jewish Peter talks about the church that's a mix of both Jews and non-jews as a holy nation of royal priests see we have royal that which calls back to Judah we have priests which calls back to but Peters talking to people who aren't necessarily members of either of those tribes or even necessarily Jewish but he says that in Christ in this new kingdom in this new Israel everyone is holy everyone is a member of this royal priesthood and so we see these twelve tribes of Israel start to start to come together into Jesus's new kingdom Jesus is taking a lot of things that is the the people of his time the Jewish people of his time would have already known from the Old Testament this was already how people were thinking about a nation that belonged to God and Jesus is saying this isn't just about genes this isn't just about bloodlines Jesus is making a new Israel new people of God in which everyone can participate in enjoying and worshiping God that's a high level overview of the twelve tribes of Israel and why they're significant in both the Old Testament and the New Testament now if you want to know more about the history of Israel and the books of the Bible that tell this story you should check out my book it's called the beginner's guide to the Bible and it'll walk you through where the Bible came from what it's for and how all those individual books of the Bible fit together I used to Logos Bible Software to do the research that went into this and if you'd like to know what it's like to use that I have a review that you should check out and I can link to that in the description here and then of course if you want to see more videos like this you should subscribe to this channel that way I can notify you just as soon as the next one goes live again I'm Jeffrey with overby Bible I hope this was helpful thank you for watching you

Channel: OverviewBible

Views: 306,173

Keywords: israel, bible study, old testament, ancient israel, tribes of israel, jesus, 12 apostles, judah, divided kingdom, levi, ephraim

Id: KP-EXMy4Xas

Length: 17min 15sec (1035 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020