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Judah
- Twelve Tribes of Israel
 The Tribe of Judah
(Hebrew: יְהוּדָה, "Praise"; Standard Hebrew Yahuda,
Tiberian Hebrew Yahudah) is one of the Hebrew tribes,
founded by Judah, son of Jacob.
Together with the Tribe of Benjamin, Judah formed the
Southern Kingdom, also known confusingly as the Kingdom
of Judah, when the kingdom was divided. These two tribes
were thus not carried into captivity with the ten tribes
of the Northern Kingdom, also known confusingly as the
Kingdom of Israel, when it fell. This started the
tradition (some say myth) of the Ten Lost Tribes of
Israel.
As Benjamin was always very much the minor partner, in
time the tribe of Judah became identified with the
entire Israelite nation, and even the entire Hebrew
nation, and gave their name to the Jews, see Jews as
Israelites.
This entry incorporates text from Easton's Bible
Dictionary, 1897, with some modernization.
Tribe of Judah - Judah and his three surviving sons went
down with Jacob into Egypt (Gen. 46:12; Ex. 1:2). At the
time of the Exodus, when we meet with the family of
Judah again, they have increased to the number of 74,000
males (Num. 1:26, 27).
Its number increased in
the wilderness (26:22). Caleb, the son of Jephunneh,
represented the tribe as one of the spies (13:6; 34:19).
This tribe marched at the van on the east of the
tabernacle (Num. 2:3-9; 10:14), its standard, as is
supposed, being a lion's whelp. Under Caleb, during the
wars of conquest, they conquered that portion of the
country which was afterwards assigned to them as their
inheritance. This was the only case in which any tribe
had its inheritance thus determined (Josh. 14:6-15;
15:13-19). The
inheritance of the tribe of Judah was at first fully
one-third of the whole country west of Jordan, in all
about 2,300 square miles (Josh. 15). But there was a
second distribution, when Simeon received an allotment,
about 1,000 square miles, out of the portion of Judah
(Josh. 19:9). That which remained to Judah was still
very large in proportion to the inheritance of the other
tribes. The boundaries of the territory are described in
Josh. 15:20-63. |
