A separate kingdom from that which the Lord established in Jerusalem, comprising ten of the twelve tribes, was set up under Jeroboam in bc 975 and its whole history of 250 years is one long, dark tale, unrelieved by the occasional gracious visitations of national revival which light up the annals of Judah. After many warnings the northern kingdom was overthrown in bc 721, when Samaria was destroyed, and the bulk of the people carried captive by the Assyrians. But please notice:
1. The kingdom of Judah after the schism consisted not only of Judah and Benjamin, but also of the Levites who remained faithful to the House of David and the theocratic center. Even those in the northern cities forsook all in order to come to Jerusalem (2 Chron. 11:14).
2. Apart from Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, there were in the southern kingdom after the schism many out of the other ten tribes whose hearts clung to Jehovah. We read that “after them” (following the example of the Levites) “out of all the tribes of Israel, such as set their hearts to seek Jehovah, the God of Israel, came to Jerusalem” (2 Chron. 11:16).
As well, numbers of the more spiritual of the Ten Tribes must have joined Judah, especially during the revivals in the south. For instance, we read of Asa, that “he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, with the strangers with them out of Ephraim and Manasseh, and out of Simeon for they fell to him out of all Israel in abundance, when they saw that Jehovah his God was with him” (2 Chron. 15:9-15).
3. When the final overthrow of the northern kingdom took place in bc 721, we are not to understand that the land was cleared of all the people. There were, no doubt, many of the people left in the land; even as was the case after the overthrow of the southern kingdom by the Babylonians later (2 Ki. 25:12). About a century after the fall of Samaria, we find in the reign of Josiah some of Manasseh and Ephraim, “and a remnant of all Israel,” in the land, who contributed to the collection made for the repair of the house of the Lord.
Jerusalem was finally taken in bc 588 by Nebuchadnezzar. Meanwhile the Babylonian empire succeeded the Assyrian. The exact location of the exiles of the southern kingdom we are not told, beyond the statements that those carried off by Nebuchadnezzar were taken “to Babylon” (2 Ki. 24 & 25; Dan. 1).
Now Babylon stands for the whole land in which the Assyrian Empire and the colonies of exiles from the northern kingdom of Israel were included. Thus, for instance, we find Ezekiel, one of the exiles carried off by Nebuchadnezzar, by the river Chebar in the district of Gozan–one of the very parts where the exiles of the Ten Tribes were settled by the Assyrians more than a century before.
With the captivity the rivalry between Judah and Israel ended, and all the tribes who looked for a national future were conscious not only of a common destiny, but that that destiny was bound up with the promises to the House of David, with Jerusalem as center.
The most striking prophecy in relation to this subject is Ezekiel 37: “Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land…so shall they be My people, and I will be their God.”
These prophecies set forth not one single event, but a process which commencing with the prophet’s own time, extends into the distant future, and ends in the final goal of the blessed condition of Israel under Messiah’s reign in the millennial period.
Daniel also, towards the end of the seventy years’ captivity, includes not only the men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem in his intercessory prayer, but ” all Israel that are near, or far off, from all the countries whither Thou hast driven them.”
Now let us go a step farther. Just seventy years after the first captives were carried away to Babylon in bc 606, Cyrus, king of Persia, issued a proclamation to rebuild “a house at Jerusalem.” This proclamation, in reference to all the people “of the Lord God of heaven,” was promulgated “throughout all his kingdom,” the same as that over which Nebuchadnezzar and his successors reigned before him. Indeed, Cyrus and Darius I are called indifferently by the sacred historians by the title of”King of Persia” (Ezra 4:5), “King of Babylon” (Ezra 5:13), and “King of Assyria” (Ezra 6:22).
The first response to this proclamation was a caravan of more than 42,000. They are no longer counted after their tribe, but after the cities to which they originally belonged, which, for the most part, are not easy to identify; hence it is difficult to say how many belonged to “Judah,” and how many to “Israel.” But that there were a good many who belonged to the northern kingdom is incidentally brought out by the mention of 223 men of Ai and Bethel. Bethel was the very center of the rival idolatrous worship instituted by Jeroboam, and belonged to Ephraim.
In bc 458, Ezra, responding to the decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus, organized another caravan of those willing to return; and as a result, “Ezra went up from Babylon…and there went up of the children of Israel…unto Jerusalem” (Ezra 7:7). This consisted of about 1,800 families from all parts of “Babylon,” or Assyria, now under the Medo-Persians.
There is not the least doubt that many of the settlements of the Diaspora in the time of our Lord were made up of those who had never returned to the land of their fathers since the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles, and who were of all the twelve tribes scattered abroad (Jas. 1:1).
In the last words of the last of the post-exilic prophets we have the expression “all Israel” addressed to the people in the land; and then the long period of silence sets in, lasting about four centuries, during parts of which Jewish national history is lost somewhat in obscurity. When the threads of that history are taken up again in the New Testament, what do we find? Is there one hint to an Israel apart from “that nation” of the “Jews,” to whom, and of whom, the Lord and His apostles speak? There is, indeed, mention of “the dispersed among the Gentiles” (Jn. 7:35), but wherever they were, they are all interchangeably called “Jews,” or “Israelites,” who regarded Jerusalem, with which they were in constant communication, as the center.
But let me give you a few definite passages from the New Testament in justification of my statement that the Lord Jesus and the apostles regarded the “Jews” as representatives of “all Israel.”
In Matthew 10 we have the record of the first commission given to the apostles. “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This journey of the twelve did not extend beyond the limits of Palestine but the “Jews” dwelling in it are regarded as the house of Israel.
In this charge of the Lord to the apostles, we see also, by the way, in what sense Israel is regarded as “lost.” The ten tribes, like the other two, were, in the time of Christ, even as they still are, “lost”; not because they have forgotten their national or tribal identity, but because they “all like sheep have gone astray, and have turned every one to his own way.”
On the day of Pentecost, Peter addressed the great multitude as “Ye men of Israel,” and wound up his powerful speech with the words: “Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know assuredly that God hath made Him both Lord and Christ–this Jesus whom ye crucified” (Acts 2:14, 36; see also Acts 3:12).
From Acts 13 onward we find Paul among the “Jews” in the Dispersion; and how does he address them? “Men of Israel…the God of this people Israel chose our fathers” (Acts 13:16-17); and when he was at last brought to Rome “and gathered the chief of the Jews” in that city, he assured them that he had neither done anything “against the people, or the customs of our fathers,” but “because of the hope of Israel am I bound by this chain,” namely, “the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers…unto which our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day hope to attain” (Acts 28:17-20; 26:6-7).
As it is in the Gospels and in the Acts, so also in the Epistles. It would be easy to multiply passages, but I have given you a summary of the true history of the tribes, which I trust may prove helpful to you in the study of God’s Word–and the conclusion at which you and every unbiased person must arrive on a careful examination of the facts is, that the whole supposition of “lost tribes” is a fancy which originated in ignorance; and that “the Jews” are the whole and only national Israel, representing not two, but all twelve tribes who were “scattered abroad.”
This article was excerpted from David Baron’s helpful book, The History of the Ten “Lost” Tribes.