I would strongly encourage you to read, or possibly re-read, the introduction to this Substack before continuing with this. This piece will challenge and possibly offend some as it will be blatantly challenging common knowledge in the search for Truth. Assuming that you believe in God and believe the Bible, you will be challenged with how big your God is.
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”
― Mark Twain
In our time, post 1948, it is common when we hear or read the word “Israel” to think of that tiny, New Jersey size, strip of land on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. That word is also associated with the Jewish people, the Jews, that live in the land today. With the Jews living in Israel today we tend to conflate those two terms, Israel and Jews. Conflating these two terms leads to terrible misunderstandings. Let’s investigate the word, Israel.
The first occurrence of Israel in the Bible is in Genesis 32:28 where Jacob is told, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.” Here we get the meaning of the word, “struggles with God.” Jacob is the son of Isaac who is the son of Abraham. Jacob/Israel goes on to have twelve sons as described in my piece on the Tribes. One of Jacob/Israel’s sons is Judah, the name from which the word Jew derives from. Judah is just one of the twelve sons of Israel.
Moving forward in time, as Jacob/Israel is about to die, he blesses each of his sons. The first to receive a blessing was Joseph, but not really Joseph directly but his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh. Genesis 48 is an important chapter in understanding who Israel is going forward. In the culture of that day, the eldest son received the birthright inheritance, a double portion. That blessing should have gone to Jacob/Israel’s oldest son Reuben, but Reuben forfeited that when he slept with his father’s concubine. Jacob/Israel then transferred that birthright blessing and inheritance, the double portion, to Joseph, the oldest son of his favorite wife, Rachel. In verse 5, Jacob/Israel declares that Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, “shall be reckoned as mine,” “just as Reuben and Simeon are.” Here is the blessing in verses 15 & 16, “May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all harm—may He bless these boys. And may they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they grow into a multitude upon the earth.” Here, Jacob/Israel says that the name Israel (along with Abraham and Isaac) will most specifically refer to Ephraim and Manasseh and their descendants. This is critical to understand. Joseph is their father and Judah, who the Jews descend from, is Joseph’s brother. Yes, the Jews are Israelites, but they were not conferred the name Israel! In verse 20 we are also told that even though Manasseh is the older of the two that Ephraim would be greater. In verse 18 we learn that Manasseh “shall become a people,” but that Ephraim “shall become a multitude of nations.” Look back at verse 16, they will be a “multitude upon the earth.”
Judah was also given a blessing, in Genesis 49:8-12, “Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the necks of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down to you. Judah is a young lion—my son, you return from the prey. Like a lion he crouches and lies down; like a lioness, who dares to rouse him? The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes and the allegiance of the nations is his. He ties his donkey to the vine, his colt to the choicest branch. He washes his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk.” Judah will be strong. The scepter is the sign of a king, signifying that a line of kings will descend from Judah. This is the tribe that King David and his sons, the kings of Judah, are in and ultimately that leads to Messiah Yeshua! Nowhere in that blessing do we see the name Israel.
We must be careful about that word Israel and be very discerning about the context in which it is used. Early in the Bible, especially before the kingdoms split after Solomon’s reign, the name Israel frequently referred to the patriarch Jacob/Israel and all his descendants. King Sha’ul (Saul), of the tribe of Benjamin, ruled over all the tribes of Israel. After King Sha’ul’s death, his son Ish-Bosheth succeeded him on the throne. The tribe of Judah seceded and made David king over them, ruling from Hebron for seven years. After Ish-Bosheth was killed David become king over all Israel moving the capital to Jerusalem. David’s son Solomon succeeded him on the throne of the united kingdom of Israel. Because of Solomon’s sin, the kingdom was split in two after his death with Jeroboam ruling over the northern kingdom of Israel and Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, ruling over Judah. From this point forward, Judah and Israel refer to two specific nations or people groups.
Reading through all the kings of Israel, there never was a righteous king in Israel. Because of this, Yehovah God brought Assyria against Israel several times. Each time was a warning, think of curses from Leviticus 26, for not keeping the covenant. The intent was correction, to get them to return to the covenant. When that failed, Yehovah’s patience ran out and Assyria was sent a last time in 701 B.C.E. by God to take Israel away into a diaspora that continues to this day.
Most of Judah’s kings were wicked, but occasionally, a righteous king arose like Josiah and Hezekiah. We learned above that Judah would have a line of kings, which we see from David through Zedekiah. In Psalm 89:3-4 David is promised that he would have a descendant on the throne in every generation. Judah knew how God handled Israel and how he scattered them to the nations because of disobedience but Judah failed to heed the warning and in 586 B.C.E. Judah was taken to Babylon. Zedekiah was the last king to sit on the throne of Judah. Because he didn’t listen, the last thing he saw was all his sons executed before his eyes were put out and he was taken captive to Babylon, never to return. Is Yehovah God a liar? David was promised a descendant to sit on the throne in every generation. That appears to have ended in 586 B.C.E. Christians might argue that Yeshua (Jesus) fulfills that as he is now the eternal king. The Psalm says every generation. How many generations are there between 586 B.C.E. and when Yeshua is born in 3 B.C.E? Besides that, Yeshua didn’t come as a king the first time, He came as The Prophet from Deuteronomy 18:18-19. He will be returning as The King, in the near future, but that only adds to the problem as two thousand more years have elapsed and still, we see no king on the throne fulfilling the promise made to David. Either Yehovah God is a liar or there is more to the story. I know there is more to the story and Yehovah God has been faithful to his promise to David. Judah was allowed to return to the land after they served the seventy-year sentence in Babylon.
So, Israel, the northern kingdom, is still scattered among the nations to this day; they are frequently referred to as “the lost tribes of Israel.” Judah, the Jews, were allowed to return to the land, rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple and continue but without a king on the throne. Most people know that it has been a very turbulent ride for them in that the Greeks came and ruled, then Romans after that, then the Jews were exiled from the land, but they never lost their identity as they were scattered among the nations of the world. They have always been the visible portion of the House of Israel. Just like most of an iceberg is below the surface, not visible, the same is true of the Israelites. The Jews, Judah, are the visible portion but Israel is the much larger portion hidden below the surface.
In Genesis 15:5, Yehovah made a promise to Abram (later to be renamed Abraham), “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” This promise was made to Abraham more than once; at this point, Abraham was childless and very old, as was his wife Sarai (later called Sarah). Since they were old and God seemed to be slow, they decided to take matters in their own hands and Abraham produced a son, Ishmael, with Sarah’s handmaiden Hagar (Genesis 16). Abraham asked God to fulfill his promise to be as numerous as the stars in the sky through Ishmael, but God said that was not to be. In Genesis 17:19-21 Yehovah confirms to Abraham that His everlasting covenant would be with Isaac, whom Sarah would bear about a year later. At the same time, Yehovah God promised that Ishmael would be great as well, would have twelve sons and be a great nation but that His promise to Abraham would be fulfilled through Isaac. Ishmael is the father of the Arabs. Do a search and ask how many Arabs there are. I found there are over 473,000,000 as of 2023. Ishmael’s descendants are over 473 million people! I also did a search asking how many Jews there are and the answer I found was 16,783,105 as of 2023. That is more that 27 times more Arabs than Jews. I will ask again, is God a liar? Did He lie to Abraham? He told Abraham that his descendants, through Isaac, would be innumerable, definitely more than the descendants of Ishmael. In Genesis 32:12, Yehovah confirms that promise will be fulfilled through Jacob/Israel, son of Isaac. All of this is to say that Israel should be significantly more numerous than Ishmael, if we can trust God’s promises.
Back to 701 B.C.E. Over the course of several decades before this, Israel was moving out of the promised land. Some were forced out by the Assyrians, others by drought and famine (1 Kings 17:1). They migrated in all directions in waves, not as a single block. They were scattered. Over time, they lost their identity and blended in with the populations that they were living with. In the long run, they forgot who they were. We know that Yehovah has not lost track of them; they are still with us (Revelation 7, Tribes). There were two kingdoms, the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel. The kingdom of Judah was composed of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and probably most of the Levites. The kingdom of Israel was the rest of the tribes including Ephraim and Manasseh, the ones that carried the name of Israel. Over time, these lost tribes migrated up into Europe and over to the new world.
There are four books that I highly recommend that will detail all of this. The Origins and Empire of Ancient Israel (The Lost Tribes of Israel), Israel's Lost Empires (The Lost Tribes of Israel, 2), Parthia: The Forgotten Ancient "Superpower" and Its Role in Biblical History (The Lost Tribes of Israel, 3), and Israel’s Tribes Today. These four books will unpack the history of ancient Israel and the migrations of the tribes into modern day. So, who is Israel today? Remember that that name refers to Ephraim and Manasseh. Ephraim would be many nations, Manasseh a great nation. Ephraim in the modern world is Great Britain and Manasseh is the United States of America. Great Britain is many nations: England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. It was an empire on which the sun never set. The United States was only ever a single nation. That correlates well with the blessings/prophecies of Jacob/Israel of who these two tribes would become. These two nations are blessed and power centers of the modern world. The other tribes are mostly scattered through the nations of Europe. I am not saying that everyone in each of these nations is a literal descendant of those patriarchs. I am saying that the mass of those tribes are in those nations and those nations are blessed because of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Keep in mind, that doesn’t mean that those people can do whatever they want and expect the blessings to continue. Since they are supposed to be in a covenant with Yehovah, they are expected to act like it. When they don’t keep the covenant they can expect the curses again, just like the curses that ancient Israel received (Leviticus 26).
In Matthew 15:24, Yeshua said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” He didn’t say he was sent to the Catholics, the Pentecostals or the Baptists or, more generally, “the Church.” Read it again, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Yeshua’s words, not mine. He didn’t come to start a church. In the Brit Chadashah, (New Testament) the word we find translated as church is frequently ekklesia in Greek. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Tanakh (Old Testament), we find the Hebrew word qahel (קָהָל) translated to Greek as ekklesia. Qahel means assembly, congregation or gathering. That becomes ekkelsia in Greek. Why do English translations of Greek New Testament manuscripts translate ekklesia to church and not assembly, congregation or gathering? There was an assembly, a qahel, an ekklesia at the foot of Mt. Sinai in Exodus. Who was this assembly? It was Israel, all the tribes.
I think we tend to over spiritualize Israel today when there is a literal people Israel, and I don’t mean those currently living in the land having that name today. Consider Sha’ul’s (Paul’s) words in Ephesians 2:11-13, “Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles in the flesh and called uncircumcised by the so-called circumcision (that done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.” Interesting how Sha’ul says that separate from Christ you are alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and that through the blood of Christ you are brought near. Near to what? Israel and the covenants. Again, he didn’t say the church! He is speaking to Gentiles here. He is letting us know that anyone can be grafted in. Grafted into what? Again, Israel. This isn’t a New Testament thing. Consider Ruth, a Moabitess, a Gentile. She showed us how to be grafted in saying in Ruth 1:16, “For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” She assimilated, she was grafted in.
Let’s look at Sha’ul again in Romans 11, “Now if some branches have been broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others to share in the nourishment of the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, remember this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’ That is correct: They were broken off because of unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He will certainly not spare you either. Take notice, therefore, of the kindness and severity of God: severity to those who fell, but kindness to you, if you continue in His kindness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut from a wild olive tree, and contrary to nature were grafted into one that is cultivated, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!” Who are the branches that have been broken off? They are Israel in the diaspora, circa 721 B.C.E. and Judah in 586 B.C.E. They were broken off for unbelief; they didn’t believe the covenant and didn’t keep it, so Yehovah scattered them. He says that they are the natural branches and if they repent, they can be grafted back in, into their own olive tree, Israel! But the Gentiles, the branches from a wild olive tree, can also be grafted in, into Israel.
Yehovah made his covenant with Israel. It’s always been Israel. Anyone can become part of Israel just as Ruth and Rahab did. I didn’t say that Yehovah made his covenant with the Jews, I said Israel. Yehovah made a marriage covenant with Israel at Mt. Sinai. The assembly, Israel, is the Bride. Always will be. The Church likes to say it is the bride, but Yehovah chose Israel; you want to be part of Israel. The Church trying to take the role of the bride is what could be termed “replacement theology.” That’s from the Christian side. From the Jewish side, they are just as guilty of “replacement theology.” The Jews are just as confused as the rest of Israel is as to who they are. The Jews will tell you that Abraham was the first Jew. That is just not so. Judah was Abraham’s great-grandson. Abraham was a Hebrew, the first Hebrew. The Jews are confused because they are the visible part of this and don’t see the rest of Israel that are still scattered. They don’t recognize the followers of Yeshua that are grafted in. We’re all confused. We have an identity crisis!
Let’s get back to the question of, “Is God a liar?” Yehovah told Abraham that his descendants through Isaac would be more than through Ishmael. Is that true? If it is, it would need to, at a minimum, exceed 470 million. David ruled Israel over 3,000 years ago. Israel entered the Promised Land about 3,400 years ago. Israel has been on the planet as long as China and India. Each of those nations has about 1.5 billion people today. Seems to me that God’s promise to the Patriarchs would mean that their descendants should outnumber them so I would expect that Israel may number more than two billion people today; they just don’t know who they are. Luckily, Yehovah knows! That would mean that one out of four people alive today are Israel, literal descendants of Jacob/Israel. Not all of them are grafted back in but they could be.
Did God lie to David? What happened after 586 B.C.E.? As shown above, Zedekiah’s sons were all killed, and Zedekiah deported to Babylon. There was another king previously sent to Babylon, King Jehoiachin. This king found favor and was released and lived well. If you read the books recommended above, you will find that the descendants of Jehoiachin (also known as Coniah) were kings ruling over small kingdoms as time went on. This does not conflict with Jeremiah 22:30 because his descendants never again ruled in Judah. Also, Zedekiah had daughters that survived, and the Prophet Jeremiah took at least one of them to the British Isles where at least one was married to royalty there and that line continues in the monarchy to this day. Yeshua will ultimately fulfill this when He returns soon to rule for one thousand years and then on into eternity! He kept his promise.
America, being literal Israel, is expected to keep the covenant made at Mt. Sinai. I think we are failing at that. Most Christians don’t think that covenant, the Torah, the law applies to them. Once you realize that following Yeshua, Jesus means that you are either grafted or re-grafted into Israel, that he didn’t come to start a church but came as The Prophet spoken of by Moses to call his people back to God (that’s what prophets do) you should realize that He is calling you back to the marriage covenant made at Mt. Sinai. He came to be an example of how to live that covenant. We, collectively, fail miserably at that. When we fail to keep the covenant, the curses of Leviticus 26 are poured out trying to get our attention, so we will repent. America, being Israel, is being cursed. It happens over a long period of time, so we don’t really realize that is what is happening, but that is the truth. The window is closing on our opportunity to repent and come back to following His Torah, His instructions. I expand on this in my piece on Trump; you might want to consider that as well.
Christians say they are living under the new covenant. That is written in Hebrews 8 but that is actually quoting Jeremiah 33. He says that that covenant is made with both “the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” two distinct peoples. Let’s look at those two in Ezekiel 37:15-28. It speaks of two sticks, one for Ephraim and the Israelites with him and another for Judah and the Israelites with him. Yehovah says that, in the future, he will join these two together to be one people. That has not happened yet. He says he will gather them from where he scattered them and bring them all back to the land that he gave to Jacob/Israel and when He does that, David will be king over them and they will follow his Torah, his Law. This is written by Ezekiel who lived over a century after Israel was scattered and he is writing about both houses. This is still a future event for us. Yes, He has brought Judah back into the land, at least some of them, but Israel is still not there. This new covenant is not here yet.
Revelation 12:9 tells us that Satan deceives the whole world. Most of us are so deceived that we don’t even know who we are. Maybe this helps to open your eyes. I hope that you will be a Berean, study the scriptures and see if what was presented is true!
New here? Consider reading the introduction here.