The 12 Tribes Of Israel (And Their Histories)

The households of 12 brothers would be enslaved, freed by Moses, and led into the land of Canaan promised to their ancestor Abraham. These are the 12 tribes of Israel.

Judah

Jacob’s fourth son by Leah, Judah stops his brothers from killing the favorite Joseph, instead suggesting they sell their brother to a passing caravan as a slave. Judah would become the father to the tribe of Judah, the kingly tribe producing David, Solomon and eventually, of course, Jesus. Perhaps remorseful for selling Joseph, Judah pleads for Benjamin’s life in Egypt. His tribe would receive the blessing of Reuben to be the rulers of his brothers, and be established in the south, with large pasturing lands, agricultural space and the wilderness by the Dead Sea.

Dan

Commonly seen as the “black sheep” of Jacobs’s sons, Dan was born of Bilhah, the handmaid of Jacob’s favored wife Rachel (Rachel, not able to bear children early in her marriage, offered her handmaid as a way to get children over her sister Leah). The tribe was given an allotment in the northern edge of Canaan, exposed to Assyria and Aram, and the very last to receive its territory. The famous Samson came from the tribe of Dan. In John’s Revelation, he does not count the tribe of Dan among the sealed – perhaps as a judgment?
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