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Saturday, January 19, 2019

Northern Tribal Areas of Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                             
                                                                     
                               Jacob and 1st wife Leah were parents of : Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah
                             Issachar, Jebulun and daughter, Dinah.
                              Jacob and 2nd wife, Rachel were parents of Joseph and Benjamin.
                              Jacob and Leah's handmaiden, Zilpah were parents of Gad and Asher.
                              Jacob and Rachel's handmaiden, Bilhah were parents of Dan and Naphtali.
                              Jacob, Leah and Rachel were 1st cousins.

     Leah and Rachel were sisters born in Aram.  Laben and his wife Adinahand were their parents.  Laben's father was Bethuel.
                        Bethuel's 2 children were Rebekah and Isaac.  Isaac was the father of Jacob.
                 
 Therefore, Jacob's uncle was Laben, and he had to work for 7 years to receive Rachel, his love, for his wife, but was tricked into marrying the older sister, Leah, first.  Then he had to work for
another 7 years to receive Rachel in marriage.
                                                                   
Tribal changes a little later  : under Joshua        
       10 tribes of Jacob (Israel) were attacked and taken from their homeland in 721 BCE by the Assyrians.  They were the northern tribes.  They evidently made their way eventually to today's Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India.
                                                                   
Judah taken by Babylonians 
 Judah and some of Benjamin were in the south, with Judah being the largest of all 12.  They were left, only to be taken away about 200 years later by the Babylonians to Babylon.  
                                                                           
Israel had left the union with Judah after King Solomon had died  in 920 BCE.  Judah's capital remained Jerusalem. 

 Israel took  Samaria as their capital in 890 BCE.   The northern tribes were led by the tribe, Ephraim.  Most of their future kings came from Ephraim.  The tribes with them were:
Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, Asher, Dan; and in the other side of the Jordan River lived Reuben, Gad, and part of Manasseh.  Their kingdom was much larger than Judah.  They had greater wealth and political importance.  Israel, standing alone this way, was born into violence and was in the state of constant revolution.  After King Solomon had died, they followed Jeroboam as king who was not the son of Solomon but one of his important men, the superintendant of forced labor.  He had led the revolt against the burden imposed on the people by the king.  He led the northern tribes and met with King Rehoboam, Solomon's son and heir.  They demanded changes in taxation and forced labor.  Rehoboam would not give in.  Israel declared their independence and broke away from Judah.  They then took Shechem as their 1st capital.  .  He was from the tribe of Ephraim.  

For these 210 years Israel had 19 kings that were part of 9 different dynasties.  The prophets Elijah and Elisha worked hard to check idolatry and social injustice with them.  Their last king was Hoshea from 730 to 721 BCE when the Assyrians attacked and ended it all.  
                                                     

The land lay for 2,000 years and turned into weeds and sand, swamps and mosquitoes,  and was called Palestine by the Romans to attacked Judah and burned down Jerusalem in 70 CE. Nobody lived there.  Bedouins rode camels through the land.  World War I in 1914 changed everything.  Jews, for the Judeans were called that, were promised to have a Jewish Homeland after 2,000 years of being homeless and suffering from anti-Semitism.  
                                                


The British then gave away 80% of the land to a Saudi Arabian prince and it is Jordan today.  

                                                                           
                                                   
On May 14, 1948, Israel was again born. It is our Jewish Homeland. The UN had decided to give half of our 20% to the Palestinian Arabs including Jerusalem, taking it away from the Jews!  By 1949 and the War of Independence that started in 1947, we got back Jerusalem.  The purple section is Jewish Israel.
                                                             

Israel has been attacked many times:  1948, 1956, 1967-a big war, 1972, and then in 1982, and lots of fights in between.  America's past president Obama wanted Israel to back to the pre-1967 War Armistice Lines, and Prime Minister Netanyahu explained that it is impossible to defend with those lines today.  

                                                      


Today's Israel looks like this: Our Israel is cut up and not very large.  Jordan named Judea and Samaria the West Bank.  The Arabs living in Judea and Samaria and Gaza govern themselves.  
                                                          

You can see how small Israel is.  It's about the size of New Jersey, USA, one of the smallest states of the 50.  
                                                    
                                                        


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