I keep attempting to write the final article in this series on God’s view of modern Israel, but friends and facts aren’t allowing it. This will be the sixth (and hopefully final) article.
The fourth article, titled “The Future Gathering of the Ten Lost Tribes,” sparked interest from readers who were not aware of the fact that the 20th- and 21st-century regathering of Jews from around the world to Israel has primarily consisted of descendants of the tribes of Judah and two tribes that assimilated into Judah—Benjamin and Levi. That fact is hidden in plain sight by the reality that all modern descendants of Israel/Jacob who consciously trace their ancestry back to him don’t generally refer to themselves as Israelites, but as Jews (although they are indeed Israelites, but from the tribe of Judah).
The original Hebrew word Yehudi referred specifically to a member of the tribe of Judah—one of Jacob/Israel’s twelve sons. Throughout most of the Old Testament, especially during the period of the divided kingdoms, the word “Jews” refers specifically to the people of Judah and does not designate the full twelve tribes of Israel. In fact, the earliest reference to Jews in the Bible is 2 Kings 16:5–6, where it specifically distinguishes the people of the southern Kingdom of Judah from the northern Kingdom of Israel, who at the time were at war with each other.
A Little History
Recall that the ancient nation of Israel split north and south after Solomon’s reign around 930 BC (see 1 Kings 12 and 2 Chronicles 10). It was a divine division according to 1 Kings 12:15, 24.
The Northern Kingdom consisted of ten tribes that together were called Israel or Ephraim (the dominant tribe). Their capital was Samaria. The Southern Kingdom consisted of two tribes that together were called Judah (the dominant tribe). Their capital was Jerusalem, which explains why the non-territorial priestly tribe of Levi was part of the Southern Kingdom, since Jerusalem was the center of spiritual life.[1]
God dealt with each kingdom separately, but both were held accountable to the same standards. Both failed and refused to heed the call of God’s prophets to repent, and both suffered the promised consequences. Each fell to foreign invaders and suffered deportation—first the Northern Kingdom and then the Southern.
More specifically, the Southern Kingdom fell to Babylon beginning in 597 BC, with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BC. Much of the population was deported to Babylon during those years (see 2 Kings 24–25 and 2 Chronicles 36).
When Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BC, he issued a decree allowing Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple (Ezra 1). Between 538 and 445 BC, a relatively small portion of the exiles returned in waves. Most remained in Babylon and other parts of the Persian Empire. Today, their descendants live primarily in the U.S. and Israel.
The Northern Kingdom, after a prolonged siege of Samaria, was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC, who deported most of its population to various places within the Assyrian empire:
Then the king of Assyria invaded the whole land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried Israel away into exile to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:5–6).
The places mentioned were located in a region that includes modern northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and northwestern Iran.
The Bible does not tell us the number of Israelites who were deported. Sargon II of Assyria recorded that he deported 27,290 people from Israel’s capital, Samaria. Earlier deportations under Tiglath-Pileser III would increase the total. Still, that total would not have represented all of the northern kingdom’s population. Some Israelites were not deported but remained in the land (2 Chron. 30:1–11, 18; 34:6–9). Some fled south to Judah before the Assyrian conquest (2 Chron. 15:9).
In any case, it is safe to say that 2,700 years ago roughly 27,000 descendants of Jacob/Israel were deported from Israel and resettled in a known region where they assimilated with the local populations. Their genealogical descendants live today among the general populations of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, the broader Middle East and Central Asia. Further migrations over the centuries carried some ancestry into other parts of the Islamic world, the Caucasus and, through later movements, into Europe and beyond. All of those people have Jacob/Israel as an ancestor.
Because of how human ancestry works over long periods, the number of living people who have at least one genealogical ancestor among those 27,000 deportees is immense. Realistic estimates by those who study such phenomena put the number in the tens, or hundreds, of millions of modern people.
Think about it: Tens or even hundreds of millions of ordinary people today—in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, neighboring regions, the wider Islamic world, the Caucasus, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the United States—possess genealogical descent from the deported Israelites from the northern tribes. That means they also descend from Jacob/Israel. These millions of people have no knowledge of any ancestral connection to the Ten Tribes or to Jacob, and that ancestry cannot be traced through DNA, as the shared genetic material after so many generations is vanishingly small. Commercial ancestry tests cannot identify or “prove” descent from the northern-tribe deportees.
Jacob lived at least 1,000 years before those 27,000 deportees/descendants, so his living descendants on the earth today no doubt number in the hundreds of millions. They could, in fact, even number a billion people, which would mean that one of every eight people on the planet has Jacob/Israel in their family tree.[2] You could be one of them. My own DNA shows that my ancestry is mostly found in Europe, but it also contains a trace from the modern region of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
The Ramifications
All of this raises questions for Christians who believe that modern political Israel is the continuing embodiment of biblical Israel, and/or that it enjoys divine favor over every other geopolitical nation, and/or that Christians have a moral and biblical responsibility to support it.
If you hold to any or all of those beliefs, and they hinge on the genealogical connection of modern Jews to ancient Jacob/Israel, you’ve got a problem. What are you going to do with the hundreds of millions of people who are equally genealogical descendants of Jacob/Israel who live in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey?
If having Jacob/Israel as an ancestor somehow gives people special favor with God, as many as one out of eight modern people deserve that favor. To be consistent, those who believe that modern Israel has that favor have to start looking at Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey just as they look at Israel, because they all include masses of people who have Jacob/Israel as an ancestor. That would be a challenging course to navigate, since relationships between Israel and those four nations are openly hostile. Which descendants of Jacob/Israel should we support? I’ve always affirmed that modern Jews are genuine descendants of Jacob/Israel. Why can’t my detractors affirm that millions of Muslims in the Middle East are also genuine descendants of Jacob/Israel?
I suspect that some readers may be struggling with cognitive dissonance as they scramble to think of a way to cling to the idea that the modern nation of Israel is special to God because of its citizens’ ancestral connection to Jacob/Israel. Here’s one objection that I anticipate:
“But the Jacob-origin DNA of the Ten Tribes descendants is more diluted than the Jacob-origin DNA of the Two Tribes descendants.”
Actually, after almost 3,700 years, no descendant of Jacob/Israel possesses any more than an undetectable, vanishing trace of his DNA. That is because each person inherits half their DNA from each parent, so the expected genetic contribution for one specific ancestor halves with each generation. After 100 generations (at 25 years per generation), a person will only have 0.0000000000000000000000000000789% of the DNA from an ancestor of 2,500 years ago. That is the approximate percentage of DNA possessed by the current descendants of all 12 tribes of Israel. Jews may have more DNA from the ancient Israel population because they traditionally married within their tribe, but they don’t have more of Jacob’s DNA.
Let me say it again: Descendants of Judah living today in Israel and the U.S. have no more DNA from Jacob/Israel than do descendants of Ephraim living in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. And of course, not only do they not possess a greater genetic ancestry to Jacob/Israel, neither do they possess a greater genealogical ancestry. He’s in the family tree of hundreds of millions of modern people.
In my fourth article, we looked at specific, clear prophecies that foretell of a regathering of, not just Judah, but Israel (see Is. 11:12; Jer. 23:6; Ezek. 37:15-28). Although one might claim that Judah has been regathered by God, no one can claim the same for the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. And if even half of Ten Tribes descendants believe in Jesus and repent at His return, it could be hundreds of millions of people whom God will regather to Israel. Perhaps that is why the New Jerusalem will need to be 1,500 miles wide, long and high (see Rev. 21:16). Perhaps it will accommodate hundreds of millions of people!
Here is another way of looking at it: If God requires at least 1% of Jacob/Israel’s DNA in everyone from Judah and Israel whom He gathers in the future as He has promised, He won’t gather anyone. In fact, if He requires at least 0.00000000000000000000000000008%, He won’t gather anyone.
“But the descendants of Jacob/Israel in modern Israel practice Judaism, unlike the descendants of Jacob/Israel in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Israel is a nation of Jews.”
So is God’s alleged favor then based on genealogy plus practicing Judaism? But don’t dispensationalists claim that God’s covenant with the descendants of Jacob/Israel was unconditional?
And are the people of Israel actually practicing Judaism?
19% of Israel’s population is Muslim. They certainly aren’t practicing Judaism. If you add all the people who live in Gaza and the West Bank (land that some evangelicals claim rightfully belongs to Jews), 46% of Israel’s population is Muslim. They certainly aren’t practicing Judaism.
41-44% of Israel’s Jews identify as “secular” (Hiloni) Jews. That is, they are not religiously observant. They generally do not follow traditional Jewish law in daily life. That is, they do not keep Shabbat strictly, do not observe most dietary laws rigorously, and rarely attend synagogue. Many are atheists or agnostics.
The truth is, no Jew has even been able to practice Judaism since the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Then the sacrificial system and much of the priestly role became impossible. The Pharisees’ approach (emphasizing Torah study, oral tradition, and adapting the law to daily life) evolved into Rabbinic Judaism.
Beyond all of those facts, for the most part, the modern citizens of Israel have rejected their Messiah. How can they possibly be said to be practicing Judaism, which finds its fulfillment in the Messiah whom they have rejected? They are no more in sync with God’s will than are the millions of Muslims in the region whose ancestry can also be traced back to Jacob/Israel.
From a Christian standpoint, it could certainly be said that Iran is much more in sync with God’s will than Israel is, as there are an estimated 800,000 Christians there, among what many missiologists believe is the world’s fastest growing church. (Yet many American Evangelical Christians are cheering on Israel’s current war against Iran, thinking that by doing so they are “on God’s side.”)
Finally, if descendants of Jacob/Israel through Judah have a divine right to the land of Palestine based on God’s alleged “unconditional” covenant with Abraham, wouldn’t that also mean that the descendants of Jacob/Israel through any of the other tribes also have a divine right to the land of Palestine?
I hope you are seeing that dispensational ideas about modern Israel contain more holes than Swiss cheese. God loves the descendants of Judah, Benjamin and Levi. He also loves the descendants of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, and Manasseh. God loves everyone. Jesus died for everyone. God “is not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). He’s not a racist. Neither should we be.
[1] Obviously, that adds up to 13, not 12, tribes in total. The reason is because the tribe of Joseph became two tribes: Ephraim and Manasseh.
[2] Please note the difference between genealogical ancestry (appearing in someone’s family tree) and genetic ancestry (detectable DNA contribution from an ancestor). The former is extremely widespread and the latter is vanishingly small in regard to Jacob/Israel and all ancient people.
