The Ten Lost Tribes?

Where did the ten lost tribes of Israel go? An enormous amount has been written and speculated about that question. The ten tribes are said to have disappeared after being carried away by the Assyrians, lost their identity, and, after all kinds of wanderings, eventually ended up elsewhere in the world. Entire theories exist in which present-day peoples are identified with individual tribes of Israel. There is no shortage of stories. But before asking where those ten tribes supposedly went, there is a much more fundamental question that must be asked first: does the Bible actually know anything like the ten lost tribes? The expression has become so familiar that it is almost automatically assumed that Scripture also knows this concept. But the term “the ten lost tribes” does not occur in the Bible. In fact, even the expression “the ten tribes” occurs nowhere in the New Testament. That in itself proves nothing, of course, but it is remarkable. For when we then examine how the New Testament speaks about Israel and the tribes, a very different picture emerges.

ten tribes and two tribes

Israel originally consisted of twelve tribes, descended from the sons of Jacob. David reigned over all Israel, and the same was true of his son Solomon. After Solomon, however, the kingdom split in two. The northern kingdom consisted of ten tribes and, to distinguish it from Judah, was generally called Israel; in the prophets it is also frequently referred to as Ephraim. The southern kingdom consisted mainly of Judah and Benjamin, together with the Levites, and was called Judah. The northern kingdom was eventually carried into exile by Assyria and ceased to exist as an independent kingdom. About 130 years later, Judah underwent a similar exile: Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed by the Babylonians, and the population was carried away to Babylon.

Later, the situation changed. The Babylonian Empire gave way to the Persian Empire, and under King Cyrus the exiles were permitted to return. Jerusalem was rebuilt and the temple was restored. This is precisely where the issue of the so-called ten lost tribes arises. The usual idea is that Judah and Benjamin returned and that we later encounter their descendants as “Jews,” while the ten tribes of the former northern kingdom did not return and eventually lost their identity. Hence the familiar division: the Jews represent the two tribes, while the other ten tribes must be distinguished from them. But is that really the picture Scripture gives us?

our twelve tribes

One of the clearest indications is found centuries later in Acts 26. Paul is standing before King Agrippa, defending himself against the accusations brought against him by the Jews. He declares that he is standing trial because of his expectation of “the promise which came by God to our fathers” and then continues:

… to which our twelve-tribed people, earnestly offering divine service night and day, is expecting to attain.
–Acts 26:7–

That is an extraordinarily significant formulation. Paul does not speak of “our two tribes,” while somewhere else ten lost tribes supposedly exist. He simply speaks of “our twelve-tribed people.” Moreover, he is not speaking about twelve tribes that once existed, but in the present tense. They are expecting to attain the promise to the fathers and are offering divine service night and day. That does not fit the idea of ten tribes that have completely lost their identity, no longer know who they are, and as such have disappeared from view.

There is something else as well. Paul says this to Agrippa, whom he had just explicitly addressed as someone familiar with “all the customs and questions among the Jews.” Now that Paul is about to defend himself, this is certainly not the moment to introduce, without further explanation, a controversial view concerning the identity of Israel. Yet he does not need to explain a single word when he speaks about “our twelve-tribed people.” He uses the designation as something already understood. And we find the same with James, who simply addresses his letter “to the twelve tribes in the dispersion” (James 1:1). Here too there is no trace of the idea that ten tribes had become untraceable and no longer knew who they were. The question therefore turns around: how can the New Testament speak so naturally about the twelve tribes if ten of them had been lost centuries earlier?

the return applied to all Israel

The answer becomes clear when we look more carefully at the return from exile. In Ezra 1, the decree of Cyrus is recorded:

Anyone among you of all His people, may his Elohim be with him. Let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and let him rebuild the house of YHWH Elohim of Israel.
– Ezra 1:3 –

The wording is important. Cyrus does not say: whoever among you is from Judah and Benjamin. His call applies to all the people. Everyone who belongs to the people of Israel’s God may go up to Jerusalem. That Judah and Benjamin were dominant in that return is beyond dispute. They had been carried away from their territory only about seventy years earlier, while the tribes of the northern kingdom had already been outside the land much longer. Moreover, Jerusalem was in Judah. It is therefore entirely understandable that Judah and Benjamin took the lead in the return. But it certainly does not follow that only these two tribes returned. Cyrus’s decree explicitly says otherwise: the call applied to all His people.

This matters because the fact that Judah and Benjamin are prominently mentioned in connection with the return is often immediately taken to mean that only those two tribes returned. But prominent is not the same as exclusive. The question is not which tribes formed the numerical majority among those who returned, but how Scripture itself designates the returned community. And on precisely that point, several remarkably clear things are said.

Judahites — and Israelites

We see this especially clearly in 1 Chronicles 9. There we first read that “the Judahites were deported to Babylon because of their unfaithfulness” (verse 1). The designation is clear: it concerns the Judahites. But as soon as the writer then speaks about those who settled in the land again, he uses another name: “The first to settle on their holdings in their cities were … Israelites” (verse 2).

That distinction is significant. When the writer means those carried away from Judah, he calls them Judahites, but when he subsequently describes the returned community, he speaks of Israelites. That is exactly what we would expect on the basis of Cyrus’s decree. His call was not limited to Judah and Benjamin but applied to everyone from “all His people.” In the following verse, among those who settled in Jerusalem, Ephraim and Manasseh are mentioned in addition to Judah and Benjamin (verse 3).

all Israel

That designation does not stand alone. In Ezra 2:70 we then read that “all Israel” was dwelling in its cities. That is remarkable, precisely because during the period of the divided kingdom the distinction between Judah and Israel had been so clear. Judah was the designation of the southern kingdom, while Israel was the name of the northern kingdom and, in its original and broader sense, of the entire people. After the return, Ezra does not speak of “all Judah,” but of “all Israel.” If the returned community had merely been a continuation of the former two-tribe kingdom, the designation Judah would have been the obvious one. But after the return Scripture speaks instead of Israel, and even of “all Israel.”

At the dedication of the rebuilt temple, this becomes even more explicit. They offer “as a sin offering for all Israel, twelve he-goats of the goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel” (Ezra 6:17). The text itself therefore explains why there are twelve: Israel is reckoned according to its twelve tribes. In Ezra 8:35 we find the same thing again when the returned exiles offer twelve young bulls on behalf of all Israel and twelve he-goats as a sin offering. Whatever the numerical proportions among the tribes in the actual return may have been, Scripture reckons the returned community as all Israel, according to the number of the twelve tribes.

This also explains why Paul, centuries later before Agrippa, can speak without any explanation about “our twelve-tribed people.” It connects directly with the way Scripture itself designates the people after the exile: Israelites, all Israel, and reckoned according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

but why are they called Jews then?

The fact that the returned community later came to be generally designated as “the Jews” changes nothing about this. The word is indeed connected with Judah, but it does not follow that the Jews necessarily represent only two tribes. The center of the returned community was in Judah and especially in Jerusalem, where the temple stood. Hence the designation.

The ten tribes did not return as an independent northern kingdom to their former tribal territories. That kingdom had disappeared. But it does not follow that after the exile the ten tribes were no longer part of Israel. After the return Scripture does not speak merely of Judahites, but of Israelites and “all Israel,” and it explicitly reckons that Israel according to the twelve tribes. That is the decisive distinction. The ten-tribe kingdom was not restored as a separate kingdom, but that does not mean that from then on Israel consisted only of Judah and Benjamin.

are the ten tribes lost?

Are the ten tribes lost, then? If by that we mean that the northern ten-tribe kingdom disappeared as an independent kingdom after the Assyrian exile, the answer is yes. But that is something quite different from the idea that after the exile a lasting division existed between, on the one hand, the Jews as representatives of only two tribes and, on the other hand, ten tribes that continued to exist separately but lost their identity.

Scripture knows no such division. When the people are permitted to return under Cyrus, the call applies to all the people. The first who settle again in the land are called Israelites. The returned community is called “all Israel” and is explicitly reckoned according to the twelve tribes of Israel. James writes to “the twelve tribes in the dispersion,” and Paul in his day simply speaks about “our twelve-tribed people,” who know of the promises to the fathers and expect to attain them.

The answer to the question with which we began is therefore clear as well. The Bible does know a ten-tribe kingdom that was carried away by Assyria and disappeared as an independent kingdom, but it does not know the idea that afterward only two tribes remained recognizable as Israel while the other ten continued somewhere out of sight as a separate but identity-less people. Not only is that division nowhere taught, it is also incompatible with the way Scripture speaks about Israel after the exile. The returned people are called Israelites and “all Israel,” and they are reckoned according to the twelve tribes. In the New Testament as well, James and Paul speak without any further explanation about those twelve tribes. The Jewish people in Scripture therefore do not stand over against Israel but are designated as Israel. And with that, the basis disappears for the idea that alongside the Jews there must still exist a separate Israel consisting of ten lost tribes.

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