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Saturday, September 1, 2018

What Israelite Tribes Did Pathans Come From?

Nadene Goldfoot                                               
Fraternal twins, Esau, born 1st  and Jacob.
Jacob is wearing the blue turban and coat.
Jacob had to cheat Esau out of Isaac's 1st son's right to the  dying blessing, which Esau held against him, but this blessing would have given him responsibilities he was not interested in doing, and Rebecca, their mother, knew this and actually helped Jacob to trick Esau. 
This is the story of a family;  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  
Our Israelite history really starts with Abraham and Sarah, his wife who were Ivrim.  They had one son who was Isaac and his son was Jacob.    Jacob is the center of our history.  Jacob was a twin.  The other twin was Esau.They were very different.   Jacob had fallen in love with beautiful Rachel, but her father tricked Jacob into marrying his older daughter, Leah, first.  Leah had 6 sons and Rachel had 2.  Each maid had 2 each, making 12 sons for Jacob.  Leah also had a daughter, Dinah that her brothers loved. 
                                                               
Jacob had 12 sons by 2 wives and the wives'2  handmaidens.
                                                                       
Jacob is standing with Rachel and baby Benjamin.
Leah was the 1st wife and her sons were: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and  Zebulun
Her sister, Rachel, had Joseph and later on, Benjamin, and then she died.
Leah's maid, Zilpah, had 2 sons;  Gad and Asher.
Rachel's maid, Bilhah, had Dan and Naphtali.

Jacob's name was changed to Israel on the trip home with all his children and sheep after being gone for 20 years and had a vivid experience of wrestling with an angel and winning; meaning he had overcome a large problem as he had left when his father, Isaac, had died and Jacob had had words with Esau. He returned and settled in Canaan, his old homeland.  Joseph disappeared and Jacob didn't get over it as he had been his favorite son.  To make a long story short, Joseph shows up later in Egypt and had become the Pharaoh's chief minister.  Jacob met him again on his trip to Egypt.  Finally, Jacob was able to see and touch his favorite son before he died. As Jacob lay dying, he told each son his future and about himself, his attributes and his faults.  This seems to have determined what did happen to them and their tribes.   Jacob was buried in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron of Judah which is only 18 miles south of  Jerusalem.   Hebron has been taken over by the Palestinians because it has been allocated in the West Bank (Judea-Samaria to Jews).  

In 1929, the Arabs massacred many of the 700 Jews of this town and the survivors fled.  Some returned in 1931. By 1967 there were 38,310 Arabs living here.  After 1967 Jews returned, establishing Kiryat Arba east of the city and by 1988 there were 3,700 Jews there. Today there are much less.  The Arab population in 2010 was 600,364.   It had been one of the 4 sacred towns of the Jews;  Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed were the others.  
                                                                     
Manasseh, Gad and Reuben's land allocation are in today's Jordan.
Much later after being in Egypt for 400 years as slaves, Moses at age 80 had freed them, and at 120 brought them on back on a 40 year trek to Canaan, where they had come from.  He had Joshua be in charge who saw to it that they were to live in the land Moses had chosen for them. Notice where
Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and  Zebulun were to liveGad and Asher were separated by land.  So was Dan and Naphtali.  It's interesting that the division was not keeping full brothers always together, which was good if there was to be a lot of intermarriage between these particular tribes.

I note that in Moses' scroll of Deuteronomy 27:12 when Moses was commanded to bless all 12 tribes before entering THE LAND at the end of their 40 year Exodus,  the tribes were to stand together in their tribal group to receive it.  They would cross the Jordan River and the following tribes were to stand on Mount Gerizim:  Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar-- 4 of Leah's sons and  Joseph and Benjamin--Rachel's sons.  That was an equal division of the 12 tribes to be on this mountain.

The other 6 tribes were to stand on Mount Ebal and were:  Reuben-Leach's 1st son, Gad and Asher-Zilpah's 2 sons, Zebulun-Leah's son, Dan and Naphtali-Bilhah's 2 sons.   Joseph, Jacob's 11th son,  was in Egypt with grazing land in Goshen, and his wife was Asenath who gave him 2 sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.    Jacob had blessed Joseph's 2 sons of which Manasseh was the 1st.  Each got equal portions of land as their uncles did.  Manasseh divided into 7 families, Machir and the other 6 were kinsmen  with Gilead.  1/2 of the tribe with Reuben and Gad asked for territory in Transjordania and that's what they got.  After Canaan was conquered, the other half got territory in the west around the Valley of Jezreel, both very fertile lands.  Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon exiled much of the population from both sections but part stayed there.  A Jewish population, mostly descendants from Simeon, still was in existence in the Western Manasseh area in the earlier 2nd Temple Period.

The Ark, the Kohanim(descendants of Aaron of the tribe of Levi)and the elders of the Levites-of the tribe of Levi but not the direct descendants of Aaron were to stand in the valley between the 2 mountains, Gerizim and Ebal.
                                                                                       
The 1st king of Israel was Saul from the tribe of Benjamin.  Up to then, they had no kings.  He was selected by Samuel, the Prophet at a grave time when the Philistines were attacking them all.
                                       
                                 
The 2nd king was David who was from the tribe of Judah.
Here he is as a young man, fighting for Saul.  Prophecy is that
the Messiah will come from the family line of David.  What we know of today is that the Jews are made up mostly of the tribe of Judah, and that most of the tribe of Benjamin had joined them when King Solomon had died in 920 BCE.  Also they had absorbed the tribe of Simeon which was in the extreme South near Judah.   There were also the Kohanim (today's Cohens) as the tribe of Levi was scattered among all the 12 tribes teaching.  Representatives from each tribe would have met and talked with each other 3 times a year in Jerusalem. So Judah would have been made up of the tribe of Judah, most of Benjamin, Simeon  and some Levites The  other tribes were part of the northern tribal coalition  and had been taken away by Assyrians. Notice that Levi had not been given any land.  They were intermingled with all the tribes, so many would have been included in the northern tribes and been captives as well.

Therefore, the Pashtos are the descendants of Reuben, Issachar, Zebulun, Gad, Asher, Dan, Naphtali, Levi and Joseph's 2 children, Manassah and Ephraim and some of Benjamin that weren't in Judah at the time.   

At the time of the Assyrian attack on the northern tribes in 721 BCE, 27,290 northern Israelites were taken away by them to Assyria and Media.  This is who the Pathans come from.   Judah was busy fighting them off, too, and Ashdod revolted with the support of King Hezekiah of Judah which was stopped in 715 BCE.  Sennacherib, Sargon's son and the next  King of Assyria, (705-681 BCE)  marched south, took Phoenician cities, defeated the Egyptians in 701 BCE, then took Ascalon(Ashkelon)  and Joppa(Jaffa), sacked Lachish and invaded Jerusalem in 700 BCE.  Judah was ravaged, but king Hezekiah was able to hold out by paying tribute and ceding land to them.

                                                                   
Sennacherib-the enemy, was then hit with a plague in his army and had to leave and go home.   

The Assyrians were stopped at the walls of Jerusalem in 701 BCE, only to be overwhelmed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and almost all were deported then to Babylonia.  All the wealth of Israel when a whole country of the North and the South had been in the North.  The South had no normal access to the sea which was the great trade route, so they had less trade and were much poorer.
                                                                               
 They had Jerusalem, the religious center with the Temple.  Judah was also just 1/3 the size of Israel of the North.  It was poor and unimportant to invaders, they thought.  The South, Judah, had this reminder of their religion.

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/09/death-bed-prophecy-for-jacobs.html
Tanakh, the Stone Edition

1 comment:

  1. Good article Nadene Goldfoot. Thank you..

    ReplyDelete