The Tribe of Benjamin, The Tribe of Simeon and The Kingdom of Judah--Interesting Random Facts
I've told this story a couple times before (
here and
here), but when I was in 7th grade, I was taking
confirmation classes (
W) at my church, and as we worked through the Biblical narrative, we got to the split between Israel and Judah. The confirmation teacher summarized it like this. "There were 10 tribes that formed the northern Kingdom of Israel. The tribe of Judah in the South was left to become the Kingdom of Judah. And there was one tribe, the tribe of Benjamin, that was stuck in the middle between these two kingdoms."
This contradicted what I had learned in Bible class at
the Christian school I attended during the week. So I raised my hand and said, "No, that's wrong. The tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah."
The confirmation teacher didn't agree. "No, the tribe of Benjamin was in the middle," he said.
But I was sure I was right, so as the class moved on to other topics, I began flipping through my Bible to find proof that the tribe of Benjamin was definitely part of the Kingdom of Judah. Everyone in the confirmation class had copies of the NIV Student Bible, which contained boxes of explanatory text next to the Bible passages, and I found a text box in the Student Bible that clearly said the southern Kingdom of Judah consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. I tapped the teacher on the arm (we were all seated around a table, and I was sitting next to him), and showed him the passage. He stopped the class to issue a correction. "Okay, everyone, it looks like Joel was right. The tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah."
I was so proud of myself. I knew the Bible better than the teacher (or so I thought.) For years afterwards, this was a point of pride for me.
...until, of course, I eventually matured, and realized what an annoying little snot I must have been. "Ah, so that's why nobody liked me." (Nobody, after all, likes an annoying
pedant.) *
However, some 30+ years later, I think I'm beginning to realize that my confirmation teacher might actually have been right.
In my
re-readthrough of the Bible, I noticed that the historical books of
1st Kings and
2nd Kings often describes the Kingdom of Judah as just the tribe of Judah. The tribe of Benjamin is mentioned as joining up with Judah a couple of times, but only a couple of times.
Upon noticing this,
I went to Wikipedia to double check whether or not the tribe of Benjamin was actually part of the Kingdom of Judah. Wikipedia (at least as of this writing) appears to unambiguously classify Benjamin as part of the Southern Kingdom.
So, that settled my mind for a little while.
Shepherd of Israel, listen
you who lead Joseph like a flock;
enthroned on the cherubs, shine
on Ephraim, Benjamin and Mannesseh;
rouse your strength,
come to save us
The footnote in The Jerusalem Bible identifies "Ephriam, Benjamin and Mannesseh" as "The principle tribes of the North".
So, I crossed reference this with the notes for The NIV Study Bible, which goes into more detail:
It seems likely that "Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh" (v. 2) here represent the northern kingdom. If Jeroboam was indeed given ten tribes (see 1 Kings 11:29-36), leaving only one to Rehoboam–Judah (see 1 Kings 12:20), which was actually two tribes because Simeon was located within Judah–then Benjamin belonged to the northern kingdom. However, part of Benjamin must always have remained with the southern kingdom since its territory actually bordered on Jerusalem itself, and the southern kingdom continued to control Jerusalem’s environs (see 1 Kings 12:21). This suggests that the disaster suffered was the Assyrian campaign that swept the northern kingdom away (see 2 Kings 17:1-6).
(p.864 of NIV Study Bible).
Okay, time to Google for more information. I found
this website here on the Tribe of Benjamin, which goes into a lot more detail, and also seems to confirm that Benjamin was neither part of the Northern Kingdom nor the Southern Kingdom:
The northern border of Benjamin would come to constitute the northern frontier of the southern kingdom of Judah. It became the limit of the southern frontier of the northern kingdom of Israel. Simply put, the land of Benjamin was the frontier between Israel and Judah. It buffered the north from the south, and the Benjamite northern border was the very line of separation between the two kingdoms - much like the DMZ between North and South Korea today.
Consequently, the loyalties of the tribe of Benjamin were always divided, and many skirmishes were fought along this frontier over the course of its history. Only one major war was waged on the soil of Benjamin, though sporadic fighting occurred along the frontier, with both sides caught in a perpetual cycle of gaining, then subsequently losing, ground.
It would be nice to have more references here, so I could check the Bible myself, and find out what war and skirmishes are being referred to. (I don't remember skirmishes over the Tribe of Benjamin being mentioned a lot in 1st and 2nd Kings, but I could just be forgetting.) But the website sounds like it knows what it's talking about.
So how about that? I guess my confirmation teacher was right after all!
********************************************
On another note:
Speaking of the Kingdom of Judah, there's actually one more tribe in the mix:
the Tribe of Simeon. In my youth, both at my Christian school and at my Church don't ever remember the tribe of Simeon being discussed at all. It was always the 10 Northern Tribes of Israel, and Benjamin and Judah in the South. But I don't remember anyone mentioning the Tribe of Simeon.
But if you look on the map, it looks like the Tribe of Simeon was completely surrounded by the Tribe of Judah.
(I mentioned this before
in my review of Genesis. According to the Bible, it looks like Simeon was absorbed by Judah in response to the curse that Jacob put on Simeon and Levi for their attack on the Shechemites in Genesis 34.)
So that means there must have been at least 3 tribes in the Southern Kingdom: Judah, Benjamin (sort of) and Judah.
Notes
*Although actually, I think at the time, the urge to correct my confirmation teacher was less about wanting to prove I was smarter than the teacher, and more about trying to protect what I thought I already knew. Some children have a hard time tolerating ambiguity, and I was one of them. Having already learned the "fact" that the tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah, I didn't want to have to unlearn this, and accept that there was some confusion about the historical record. I had already learned this thing! Don't you dare tell me I have to learn it differently now.
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