I hope this will become a fairly long-term, drawing-room kind of conversation. No pressure. "Just" a relaxed and thoughtful interchange.
So this one struck me a few days ago.
As I was finishing my second annual complete read-through of the Bible, I hit Revelation 7:4-8.
Standard way of "reading" a passage like this:
And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:--Move on. [In the back of our minds: "'Twelve tribes . . . 12,000 each: 144,000 total.'" And we tend to think mildly critically of the author for boring us: "Why this ridiculous repetition of the same verbiage twelve times over?" And we keep going.]
12,000 from the tribe of _____ were sealed,
12,000 from _____,
12,000 . . . ,
12,000 . . . ,
. . . [they] were [all] sealed.
But I wanted to really read the passage and not just skim it.
So I read it. In detail.
And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:If you pay close attention, something should feel not quite right about the list.
12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed,
12,000 from the tribe of Reuben,
12,000 from the tribe of Gad,
12,000 from the tribe of Asher,
12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali,
12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh,
12,000 from the tribe of Simeon,
12,000 from the tribe of Levi,
12,000 from the tribe of Issachar,
12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun,
12,000 from the tribe of Joseph,
12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.--ESV
It certainly didn't feel right to me!
If nothing else, it struck me that the order of the tribes is different from the song my mom taught me back when I was about five or six years old. (She taught us songs for all the books of the Bible and for the sons [eventually tribes] of Israel.)
The words to the song I learned were these:
Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,Even as I write this post, I will confess I haven't done the research to find out whether the song's name order matches anything in the Bible (birth order? a list somewhere?) or whether the lyricist rearranged a couple of names to create that nice meter and rhyme.
Zebulun, Issachar and Gad.
Dan and Asher, Naphtali, Joseph,
Benjamin: Jacob was their dad.
But I knew that the list in Revelation 7 didn't match my mental list. Its order was definitely different. But were the actual names different as well?
So I decided to do a "match":
Reuben --> Reuben.
Simeon --> Simeon.
Levi --> Levi.
Judah -->
Yep. Everything went fine until . . . "Wait a second! There's no Dan!"
I double-checked it. Nope. No Dan in Revelation 7.
And more than that . . . "Where's Manasseh come from?"
(I know Manasseh was one of the two "half"-tribes created from the "full" tribe of Joseph. But/and/so why are both Joseph and his son Manasseh listed in Revelation 7, but Joseph's other son, Ephraim, is not? Kinda weird, isn't it? Especially when the list is preceded by the (at least implicit) claim that it includes "every tribe of the sons of Israel"!
So where did Dan go? And why is Manasseh included but not Ephraim? And/or, if the author is going to include Manasseh, why does he also include Joseph? Why both father and son, but not the other son?
I'm not going to take this one any further today.
I just want to note that you'll find some really strange things like this if you read the Bible and pay attention to the details.
If you read it quickly or casually or go for the "general flow," you'll never notice. But if you start digging deeper, you may find some--actually, quite a lot of--things that should probably bother you.
And if you read at that level, what are you supposed to do with the strangenesses?
Ignore them? Pretend they don't exist, because they will only sidetrack you from "deeper" truths? Don't "bother your pretty little head" with the details?
Personally, I think we should "bother our pretty little heads." At least if we claim to be "people of the Book," people for whom--as, again, I was taught as a child--the B-I-B-L-E is "the book for me," the book on which we wish to "stand alone."
Sometimes such assiduous scholarship will pay off.
Too often, it seems, it leads to a blank wall.
And frustration.
I just don't let it bug me.
ReplyDeleteHow come I never learned that song??? I only learned the books..
ReplyDeleteI like your questions... even appreciate them... they take time and energy to struggle through though and not everyone has the time (and some not the interest) for that. I believe Ephraim was another name for Isreal in the old testament... Didn't God often complain about Israels wayward ways when calling it Ephraim???
Interesting question... seems to fit into the realm of "why were they so dang imprecise back then?"
ReplyDeleteIt was common to do such lists in such a way that the purpose of the list was more important than accuracy. E.g. a genealogy would simply list the "most important" people from generation to generation.
So, in that light, perhaps the below comment makes some sense (from Bible Knowledge Commentary). I dunno...
Blessings,
Pete
Much speculation has arisen about why the tribe of Dan is omitted. Joseph and one of his two sons, Manasseh, are listed, but Ephraim, Joseph’s other son, is omitted. Thus if Dan were included, there would have been 13 tribes. According to J.B. Smith, Scripture contains 29 lists of the tribes of Israel in the Old and New Testaments and in no case are more than 12 tribes mentioned (A Revelation of Jesus Christ, p. 130). The tribe omitted was usually Levi, from which the priesthood came. Inasmuch as it is normal to have only 12 and not 13 tribes, the omission of Dan is not significant. Perhaps Dan was omitted here because it was one of the first tribes to go into idolatry (Jud. 18:30; cf. 1 Kings 12:28-29). However, Dan is mentioned in Ezekiel 48:2 in the millennial land distribution.
The most important fact taught here is that God continues to watch over Israel even in the time of Israel’s great distress. There is no justification whatever for spiritualizing either the number or the names of the tribes in this passage, to make them represent the church.