LOST TRIBES
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THE SPLIT
AHOLA and AHOLIBAH
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By way of introduction, for those of you who might not have been listening earlier, some of the other shows. This is a continuing study, which is exposing the historical roots of the Celtic nations. Now, they seem to appear out of thin air around anywhere from 650 to 700 B. C. Take your pick. That happens somewhere around near the Black Sea, up near Black Sea.
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They’re called various different names, Samarians, Scythians, a few other names like that. But it’s really interesting that they didn’t seem to be any war or big confrontation recorded in history in that area about that time between two very large population groups. History records that the Celts are a very large population group and as I said, they seem to start right around the Black Sea, a little bit north and east of the Black Sea in history but that’s traditionally, at least, where they seem to appear out of nowhere. But it’s a large population group. Well, coincidentally, history also records a lot more recent history records that the exact same location and the exact same time was where and when the lost tribes of Israel were placed by the conquering Assyrian empire. So now, notice I didn’t say that the Bible records this because you don’t find this in the Bible. All you find is that the account that Assyrian came, conquered the northern tribes of Israel, the kingdom of Israel or the house of Israel – we went into in detail last week, all the different names that were involved there – and relocated them. Just picked them up en masse. Five million plus people and put ‘em up between them and the Medes which is modern Iran and made them a buffer state between the Medes and themselves because the Medes were their enemies. And then within 50 years, the history – not the Bible, but the history of the Assyrians and the Persians records that they left that area. Most of them went north. Well, like I said, there was either the most incredibly collision in history between these two large population groups of the Celts and the lost tribes of Israel, lost tribes of the house of Israel, the kingdom of Israel or there was this war that nobody’s ever reported or they’re the same people.
Now, we saw last week how the birthright of Jacob, the patriarch, who had the 12 sons which became the heads of the ten tribes of Israel, the whole nation of Israel. When it came time for him to pass along the birthright, he did that, however, he didn’t do that according to the law of primogenitor, which says that the firstborn gets everything, – the right to rule the family, all the cattle, all the money, all the possessions, the right to make up the rules for everything and all the promises and blessings which came from his father. Well, this didn’t happen in the normal manner because Jacob passed along the birthright not to his firstborn, but to his 11th born son Joseph. He got all the cattle. He got all the land. He got all the blessings, all the promises, all the prophecies, which had been passed to Jacob from Abraham and Isaac and a few other people. He got everything. Joseph got everything with two very small exceptions, the exception being that his brother Judah, his older brother Judah, which was the fourth born son of Jacob, received the right to rule the family and the right to maybe up all the rules for the family. Everything else went to Joseph. He was the favorite son. Some of the things that went to Joseph that were passed down from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were that the descendants of that line would become so numerable that in the first place you wouldn’t be able to count them, they’d be like the stars of the heaven and the sand of the sea. Another place says that the dust of the earth. That’s a lot of people. Another prophecy says that they’d about me a world empire. Another one says that they’d be a multitude of kings. Multiplied kings would come out of those, that of that line of descendancy. Also that people would be colonizers. They’d push the other people to the ends of the earth. All that stuff went to Joseph. The birthright was split when Jacob passed down all his birthright stuff. It split and Joseph got almost everything and Judah got the chance to rule and make the laws.
Now, Joseph was the ten tribes. His son, Ephraim was the one that took over from him. Joseph passed his birthright stuff to Ephraim, the younger son. We went into that story also but we won’t go into that this week. He received all the birthright promises. Now, the ten tribes have a multitude of names. We talked about that at length last week. The house of Joseph is one name. Several times it’s listed as the house of Joseph in different places in the Bible. The house of Israel. The house of Israel because Jacob when he passed down the birthright, he adopted the two sons of Jacob, and he said they’ll be called by my name, which was Israel. Jacob’s name was really Israel at that time. It got changed from Jacob to Israel for he said, “They’ll be called by my name. For they’re called the house of Israel.“ Sometimes they’re called the kingdom of Israel,” not the kingdom of Judah, not the southern kingdom. I think I have to keep harping on that because it’s one of the biggest stumbling points that people can, that people get messed up on it and confused about with this Bible study stuff because the house of Israel is the northern kingdom of ten tribes. And the southern kingdom of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, is the house of Judah. Okay. Israel is this word that takes on a meaning into today’s frame of reference that these are all like Israel today. It’s Jewish nation and they’re over there, and it’s all one. That’s not true. It’s two completely separate kingdoms that was separated for more that 200 years and still lived in the same areas. And they went to war and all that. We’re gonna get into some of that a little bit later today. They’re called the house of Israel, the kingdom of Israel, the house of Ephraim, or just Ephraim. They’re called Samaria. They’re called Omri or the house of Omri. Lot of different names. Well, all the traits of those promises of the stars and the sand and the world empire and the kings and the colonizer and possessing the gates of their enemies and all those promises that we went into a couple of weeks ago. All those traits should be found in Joseph’s descendants, in other words, the ten tribes of Israel. Not the southern two tribes of the kingdom of Judah but the ten tribes of Israel, Joseph’s descendants. That’s if the blessings and the prophecies had been fulfilled, then we should be able to find somewhere in history these traits of the promises and the blessings and theirs will be the descendants of Joseph. This week what we’ll try and do is lock down the concept and background of the split of the kingdoms all the way from Egypt in 1453. That is the date of the exodus to the Assyrian captivity in 721. Now, the 721 date is – it can vary for, five, six years on either side of the street. Most of the dates that you come up in Bible study are only very approximate. I should say very approximate because they are pretty close but you can’t pin it down and say, oh throw the baby out with the bathwater because you’re off by one year. Just as an example, they’ve done recent studies of astronomy. Astronomy has shown that the eclipse that many of the old time historians based his dating system on has proved to be a couple of years off. And thereby, instead of the birth of Christ being 4 B. C., it was really 2 B. C. So a lot of stuff enters into this and our calendars have changed so much through the years that it’s hard to pin down some dates. Some dates I don’t think are approximate, like the 1453 date of Egypt from the exodus. I don’t think that’s approximate. I don’t think that’s exactly right on as the year and it don’t vary one day, or one year either way. The main reason that I believe that is because that’s the date that the great pyramid of Giza, sometimes called the Cheops pyramid, that’s the date that the Cheops pyramid pinpoints for the exodus out of Egypt. Now, anybody’s who studies the pyramid at all knows that it never was a tomb. It wasn’t built by Cheops. It wasn’t built by the Egyptians, had nothing to do with the Egyptians until they came along and Cheops had something to do with the pyramids but the pyramid didn’t have anything to do with him. He glommed on to the pyramid and made it his pillar of, grandeur by building on a temple and so forth onto the right in the same area as the great pyramid. And so they linked together and that’s a long story that I can’t get into right now. But that date of 1453 is in my opinion exactly right. 721 might 722. For the Assyrian captivity it might be 725, 720 it might be 718. Who knows?
You might want to get that Bible now and turn to Ezekiel chapter 23. We’re gonna spend a lot of time in Ezekiel 23 today. Now, sometimes it’s easy to get confused with this whole chapter, Ezekiel 23 because after a while it starts to sound like a lot of other chapters in the Bible and it sounds like prophecy. Now, it’s not really prophecy at all. It’s history. Okay. Give you a little background on Ezekiel. Ezekiel wrote his book somewhere near 595 B. C. That was after Nebuchadnezzer had come and conquered Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah and taken away, the same as the Assyrians did to the Israelites, took them away to Babylon in captivity except a very few have-nots and a few that escaped to the hills. All the craftsmen, all the statesmen, the poets, the artists and anybody who could be of any worth at all to the Babylonian empire was carried bodily over to Babylon and relocated. This happened before Ezekiel was writing. He wrote after that happened so this is really history because he talks a lot about things that happened in Egypt when the tribes were in Egypt, before they even came out, before the exodus. So it is history, but sometimes it sounds like prophecy. So, once upon a time, verse one, “The Word of the Lord came again and said unto me, ‘Son of Man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother, and they committed whoredoms in Egypt. They committed whoredoms in their youth and their breasts were pressed and there they bruised the teats of their virginity.” How’s that for graphic language? Well, he’s got [too garbled]. “And the names of them were Ahola, the elder, and Aholibah, her sister and they were mine.” Interesting phrase. God talking through Ezekiel, if we are to believe the Bible. “And they were mine.” He says, “And they bear sons and daughters and Ahola played the harlot when she was mine and she doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians, her neighbors, which were clothed with blue and captains and rulers. All of them desirable young men, horse men riding on the horses.” It goes on to say, “thus, she committed her whoredoms with them, with all them that were the chosen men of Assyria and with all on whom she doted, with all their idols she defiled herself. Neither left she her whoredoms brought from Egypt.” Okay. She was doing the same thing in Egypt, in other words, “for in her youth, they lay with her and they bruised the breasts of her virginity and poured whoredom upon her.” Whoa. “ Wherefore, I have delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians on whom she doted. These discovered.” In other words, uncovered – “these discovered her nakedness and took her sons and her daughters and slew her with the sword and she became famous.” Actually notorious “among women for they had executed judgment upon her.” That’s some pretty bad stuff there, sounds like.
Okay. Let’s go to her sister, find out what happened to her. Aholibah. And when her sister, Aholibah, saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love that she and in her whoredoms than her sister in her whoredoms.” And verse 12 through 16 goes on to say pretty much the same thing that Ahola did you know in committing her whoredoms. And we’ll pick it up at 18 “so she discovered her whoredoms.” Uncovered rather, “and discovered her nakedness. Then my mind was alienated from her.” God talking there. “Like as my mind was alienated from her sister, Ahola.” ”Yet she multiplied her whoredoms and called into remembrance the days of her youth where in she played the harlot in the land of Egypt.” Back to Egypt. “For she doted upon their paramours whose flesh is as the flesh of asses and whose issue is like the issue of horses.” Interesting phrase there. “Thus thou callest to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth in bruising the teats of the Egyptians.” No, I am sorry. it says, “in bruising thy teats, by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth.” Pretty good. Now, in verse 20, does that mean the flesh of asses and whose issue is the issue of horses “, that seems to me to refer to the same kind of thing when we cross a jackass with a horse we get a mule. Okay. In other words, this very likely is a reference or an implication that the kind of off spring when you do your whoredoms, in other words, is infertile. It goes nowhere. It can’t re produce. Now, the whoredoms they’re talking about --well, we’ll get into it a just a minute.
Next, skip down to verse 32 “Thus saith the Lord God, ‘Thou shalt drink thy–.” Still talking to Aholibah “thou shall drink of thy sister’s cup deep and large. Thou shalt be left to scorn and in derision and had derision and it containeth much.” The cup containeth much. “Thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and sorrow with a cup of astonishment and desolation with the cup of thy sister Samaria, thou shalt even drink it and suck it out and thou shalt break the sherds thereof pluck off thine own breasts for I have spoken it. Saith the Lord God. ” Judgment’s on the Way.
Well, I have to back up and reread verse 4 because I left out a little something. That was so I could prove this point. Verse 4, remember it said, “and the names of them were Ahola, the elder, and Aholibah, her sister. And they were mine.” They were God’s. “And they bear sons and daughters.” Now, here’s the part I left out. “Thus were their names Samaria”, the northern ten tribed kingdom is Ahola. “And Jerusalem”, the southern two tribed kingdom is Aholibah. In other words, the northwestern tribes of Israel, the kingdom of Israel is called Ahola. This is all an analogy. That’s all it is. It’s not about two women. It’s about the two separate kingdoms. Okay. Now, let’s go back to the text and go to verse 37. And this is what they actually did, not the whoredom part. There was a little bit of that in – this is what they really did. “That they have committed adultery and blood is on their hands and with their idols.” That’s the key word there. It’s all idol worship.
That’s what God’s talking about here, all idol worship. “They committed whoredoms with other gods, in other words, see.
He always in these parables, in these analogies, God almost always assigns, the marriage context to these stories and in the marriage context, he’s the husband and the nation of Israel or the southern kingdom of Judah or the southern kingdom of Israel, whoever’s being talking about at the time becomes, plays the role of the wife or the wives. God’s got two wives here. He’s got two wives going. In this place he calls them sisters. That’s another thing that they’re called, but he uses this wife and husband context as far as the terminology is concerned and if you’re supposed to be worshiping God and he takes the role of the husband, if you go to another god and worship that god instead, and it’s the same as committing adultery or whoredoms or however it’s listed in the passage. So that’s what all it is about. And this is what they did when they were down there in Egypt. The blood is in their hands and with their idols, they have committed adultery. So, you don’t commit adultery with idols. I hear that little loophole in there but let’s go by that. “And have also caused their sons whom they bear unto me.” There are kids borne unto me is what he’s saying there. “To pass through them through the fire to devour them.” Now, what does that mean? Well, that means the ancient pagan religious right of passing a kid through the fire. They threw them through the fire and sometimes they don’t live. A lot of times they don’t live, they get burned up. And the reason behind that rite is so that the kid would be purified. It’s an ancient rite that comes straight out of Babylon, the old Babylon, not Nebuchadnezzer’s Babylon now. The old Babylonian empire from Nimrod and Semiramis and Tammuz, way before the Egyptians got big in the world. The very first empire after the flood. Okay.
Let’s go on with the reading. This still, the things that they were doing that’s talked about as whoredoms, the actual things “For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to perform it. And lo, thus they had done in – they had done in the midst of mine house. And furthermore, that they had sent for men to come from afar unto whom a messenger was sent and lo, they came for whom thou did washed thy self, paintest thy eyes and decked thy self with ornaments and satest” – this language is a little [different] here “and satest upon the stately bed and the table for where upon thou has set mine incense and mine oil and a voice of a multitude being at ease with her. And with the men of the common sort were brought, Sabeans, from the wilderness.” Sabeans signifies drunkards “which put bracelets upon their hands and beautiful crowns upon their heads. Then I said to her that was old in adulteries, ‘will they now commit whoredoms with her and she with them,’ yet they went in unto her as they go in unto a women a women that playeth the harlot.” So, went they unto Ahola and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.” In other words, they went to idol worship pretty badly.
Now, most of this stuff that he’s talking about happens in Egypt. Some of it happens afterwards, you know. The Assyrians were in there and the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, but most of it is history, see. For what reason? Well to outline, you know, the sins of the two kingdoms. You don’t worship idols is the gestalt message there. You don’t worship idols.
Another one, it helps to clarify the separation between the two kingdoms because it shows clearly that from the time that Jacob split the birthright down in Egypt, way, way before they were in any kind of bondage and in trouble with the Egyptians, 200, 300 years before they were in any kind of trouble with the Egyptians as slaves and working in the brick pits and all that stuff that we reads about in other places. Way before that ever happened, this split as far as God is concerned, because he’s talking here through Ezekiel saying, “I saw these people as two separate entities, one sister named Ahola and the other sister Aholibah.” All the way back in Egypt. 300 years before the exodus. So it really clarifies and locks down this separation thing.
It’s also interesting that Ahola means, “His tabernacle.” Now, Ahola is the northern kingdom, right. “His Tabernacle.” So, let me go on with Aholibah. Aholibah means, “His Tabernacle in her,” which is an interesting way to put it. And here’s my hypothesis: God shows with the names his tabernacle and his tabernacle in her, the relative importance that Israel and Judah will play in the plan that he’s got for history. See, Israel shall accomplish more for God than Judah. Now, from my study, what it shows that Judah was meant to do was to be an anchor sort of an anchor to God, God’s anchor, okay, anchors God in that frame. And also it maintains an Old Testament connection while Israel, the ten tribed kingdom is charged with evangelizing the world. So in that sense the northern ten tribed kingdom has more of the responsibility in the working out of God’s over all plan of history than the southern kingdom of Judah, which is the Jews. It’s kind of like the old and New Testament working together.
Okay. So the split was in effect even down in Egypt 500 years before the next part of the story. Next part of the story takes place in the book of Kings. That’s up front in the Bible, maybe three quarters of an inch from the front. We’re going to I Kings 11, chapter 11. Spend a little time in 11, and 12 is involved in this too. Okay. Verse 26 says – this is all about Jeroboam and this is what I talked about at the beginning of the show called the, it’s a strip act, that’s good. It’s not very dirty though. But it’s very interesting. “And Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite, of Zereda, Solomon’s servant.” Okay. Jeroboam is Solomon’s servant. You kind of get lost in some of the names there whose mother’s name was Zeruah, a widow women, even he lifted up his hand against the king.” Okay. What happens is Jeroboam is high up in the hierarchy of Solomon’s court. And he’s put in charge in the next few versus, he’s put in charge of all of the things of the House of Joseph, interestingly enough.
And then we pick it up at 29, “and it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem“, he’s going to go on a little trip here, “that the prophet Ahijah, the Shilonite, found him in the way. And he had clad himself,” this is Jeroboam.” He clad himself with a new garment.” He had a brand-new robe on. “And they two were alone in the field.” Okay. They were alone in the field. Jeroboam’s taking this little walk going wherever it is. He didn’t say exactly where. And the prophet, Ahijah, meets him and they’re alone. They’re on the field. Now comes the interesting part. “And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him and rent it in twelve pieces.” Ripped it off his back! “Oh, hello, Jeroboam. (Rip) Oh, here’s your coat.” Wait a minute. Forgot. Wait. It’s too much. He rips it off, right off his back. So, Jeroboam’s standing there, I don’t know maybe naked. Who knows? “And he said to Jeroboam,” verse 31, “take thee ten pieces” see he ripped his coat up or his robe whatever it was in twelve pieces. Right. “Take thee ten pieces, for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘behold I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give ten tribes to thee.” Wow. Ahijah meets him on the road, rips off his clothes, tears ‘em up in ten pieces and says, here’s ten of them, your gonna be the king over ten tribes of Israel. Verse 32, “but he shall have” – that’s Solomon - “but he shall have one tribe for my servant David’s sake and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel because that they have forsaken me and have worshiped Ashtoreth, Ashtoreth, rather, the goddess of the Zidonians.
Now, who’s Ashtoreth? Ashtoreth is the same as Ishtar, is the same as Ashtarte or Astarte, which is the same as Semiramis. We talked about this as far as the pagan religion is concerned. Semiramis by all those other names also and Nimrod were the king and queen of that Babylonian empire just after the flood and Tammuz was their son and between the three of them, they started up the whole of the mystery religions of Babylon which is the pagan religion which traveled from there into Egypt, the Egyptian empire then over into Assyria, and Greece and Rome, all those places were you get all of the mythology and all the paganism comes from, started in Babylon with these three people. “And they also worshiped,” to go on in verse 33, “Chemosh, the god of the Moabites and Milcom, the god of the children of Ammon and have not walked in my ways to do that which is right in mine eyes and to keep my statues and my judgments as David, their father.”
Okay. What happened with David was that God said, “Hey, David, you’re such a good guy. I tell you what I’m going to do. Your kingdom’s gonna last forever and your house, your rulership will be a dynasty. It will be great. And your son will rule and no matter what he does, I like you so much, no matter what he does, I’m not gonna touch him. Everything’s gonna go right for him. And also some descendant of yours will always rule over Israel, some part of Israel.” Now, I slipped that in because in the next passage, 34 through 36, that’s somewhat out – okay, verse 34, “How be it I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand, out of Solomon’s hand, but I will make him a prince all the days of his life for David my servant’s sake whom I chose.” God chose David “because he kept my commandments and statues, but I will take the kingdom out of his son’s hands” Solomon’s son hand “and I will give it unto thee even ten tribes, and unto his son” it’s a little addendum “that unto your son, I will give one tribe that David my servant might have a light alway before me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen to put my name here.” He’s gonna set up a split. He’s gonna split the kingdom in half and let it go its way, but he’s not going to break his promise to David about Solomon. Solomon’s gonna live to a ripe old age and do whatever he wants. I mean the guy had almost a thousand wives. He was the richest man in history and all that stuff see. But for all of his apostasy and everything, God never did anything bad to him because of his promise to David, and Solomon’s son, because of the promise to David that somebody would always rule out of his descendancy will become the king of the of the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which become the kingdom of Judah. Okay so that’s what that says.
He goes on to say in the next passage 37 to 39 or so, that if you do, Jeroboam, if you do, you know, what David did and you lived by my commands and all that stuff, I’ll make you a wonderful kingdom too.“ But he screws up and we’ll see about that in a minute.
Have to jump to verse 40 here. “Solomon sought therefore,” because he heard about this prophecy, “ to kill Jeroboam and Jeroboam arose and fled to Egypt until Shishak, the king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of Solomon.” They didn’t take any chances in those days see? They hear some prophecy that some guy’s gonna come and take over the throne, they get him killed as soon as they can. Okay.
I’m not gonna read all of chapter 12, but just to summarize it to go on with the story, Jeroboam flees to Egypt like we said, Solomon dies and Rehoboam is crowned king of all Israel, all of Israel, all twelve tribes. But, he puts some heavy taxes and burdens on the populace and as a result Israel, the ten tribed kingdom revolts and becomes the ten tribed kingdom. Well, Rehoboam isn’t gonna have any of that and he calls a out a big army you know with hundreds of thousands of men and gets them together and he’s gonna get up there to the northern geographical area and whip those guys into shape, but the prophet, Shemaiah says “hey, you can’t do that. God just talked to me and he said, “You don’t do that. This is the way I want it. So don’t go up there and make war against these guys.” So, for some reason unbeknownst to me, Rehoboam says okay, I guess I better not do that.” And he doesn’t go.
So Jeroboam takes over the northern kingdom. He starts ruling. He builds the city of Shechem and people are still going down to Jerusalem to worship, see. And he says, “Well, I am kind of afraid that the kingdom’s gonna reunite because of this religious tie that we have with each other.“ Well, what he does is, he says, “oh listen, you guys are – I know it’s really hard for you to go all the way down there, all those many miles to Jerusalem and do your worship and all that. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll put temples here at Dan and Bethel and you can just worship here. It’ll be fine, you know. You don’t have to go all that way.” Well, he does that and the Levites, who’ve been chosen by God to serve as priests all of the nation of Israel, all the twelve tribes, they get disgruntled and they start to leave and all go down to Jerusalem. Well, not all of them, a lot of them. Okay. Now, that’s basically what’s happens in Chapter 12.
Now, we have to jump over to II Kings. II Kings 16. Chapter 16 of II Kings. Now, this is a long period of time has elapsed between that initial split that we just talked about and this passage here. Okay. 16, “In the 17th year of Pekah,” now, that’s the king of Israel at that time, “the son of Remaliah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign.” So Ahaz is now ruling over the kingdom of Judah and Pekah is ruling over the kingdom of Israel up north. “22 years old was Ahaz when he began to reign and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem and did not that which was right here in the sight of the Lord like his father, David.” He was screwing up too, but what did he do? “He walked in the way of the kings of Israel.” The kings of Israel, not the kings of Judah. This great apostasy thing that’s happening up in northern Israel, he did the same thing, in other words. “Yea and made his son to pass through the fire.” There we get that fire worship purification thing again, ”according to the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel.” That’s what the Canaanites were doing when Israel got there. The Israelites got to the Promised Land and fought with them and kicked them all out. “And he sacrificed and burned incense in high places and on the hills under every green tree.” He was a bad guy. Didn’t do what he was supposed to do, this, this Ahaz of the southern kingdom of Judah.
“Then Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to war.” Pekah was making war with Syria against the kingdom of Judah. “And they besieged Ahaz but could not overcome him. At that time, Rezin king of Israel recovered Elath to Syria.” That was a territory that had been taken away from them, and in this war, they recovered that area. “And the Syrians came to Elath and dwelt there and dwelt there to this day.” Verses 7 through 10 talks about how Assyria helps Judah. Judah sends up to Assyria and says, “Hey, come on over here and help us. We’re having trouble with this war here” so they do and this Rezin the king of Assyria is slain in that war.
Okay now, this is 200 years have gone by since the initial split. 17 kings have reigned over the northern kingdom of Israel, 17 of them. Twelve kings have reigned over Judah. That’s between the time of kings of I Kings twelve, chapter twelve that we just read about and II Kings 16 where this war occurs. 200 years have gone by, as long as this country has been in existence. A lot of people are there. A lot of people. A lot of things have gone by the board. These kingdoms have been split for 200 years. They’re like the United States and England. It’s almost exactly the same trip, only they’re not on very friendly terms. Okay well, we haven’t been on friendly terms with England the whole time either, but that’s another story. Okay.
I’m losing my place here. Now, what we have to do is read verse 16, verse 6. Ah here, yes, sir, verse six “And at that time,” maybe you didn’t hear this the first time “At that time Rezin, the king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria and drove the Jews to Elath and the Syrians came to Elath and dwelt there to this day.” You notice the word “Jews” in there, the word “Jews?” That’s the very first time that Jews, the word “Jews,” is used in the Bible. Actually, it’s the word Yehudies. Okay. Yehudies. Jehudites, in other words, people who populate the southern kingdom of Judah. Judahites. That’s the very first time that it’s ever used in the Bible. Now, let me explain this part.
The two kings books, I Kings and II Kings; they’re the history of the Israelite nation, all the tribes of Israel. They’re the history according to the northern kingdom. So there’s these, you know, the king’s historians – they’re doing their, their usual thing and they’re writing the history of the whole nation of Israel up there in the capital of the northern kingdom. So the historians were writing the book the of kings, the books of kings. The book of Chronicles, first and second Chronicles are the same history as viewed by the southern kingdom of Judah. They had there their historians at the court and they were setting down the history of the whole nation of Israel even the split and all the wars and things like that from their point of view. So in Kings they talk about Jews. In Chronicles, you don’t find Jews, you’ll find a bare mention about the split and that’s all. They don’t say anything about Jews. They were the Jews. When this war happened is the very first time, 200 years after the split, was the very first time anybody ever talked about being a Jew or those Jews or whatever. And my understanding is just the contraction of Judahite. Okay.
Well, let’s go back to the riddle, the little riddle that we were trying to solve earlier. The riddle – I’ll repeat it for you. What did these people have in common? Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Samson, David and me? And maybe you figured it out by now. None of those people that I just named, none of those people happened to be Jews. None of them. Abraham was not a Jew. Judah, who was the patriarch of the southern kingdom of Judah, is not a Jew. Samson wasn’t a Jew. King David who ruled for seventy years [I misspoke here. It’s really 40 years] over the whole nation of Israel was not a Jew. Solomon, his son, wasn’t a Jew. The first 16 kings of the kingdom of Israel weren’t Jews. The first 11 kings of the southern kingdom of Judah were never Jews. Nobody was a Jew until this war happened. Now, this war happened somewhere around 700 B. C. All right.
The whole nation of Israel came out of Egypt as one nation. They crossed the wilderness for 40 years as one nation. They all look like one people. They crossed the river Jordan as one people. They marched all around Jericho and shouted at the walls and they all fell down, which is a really interesting story too because in 1936 when they did you go up the walls, the archeologists were very surprised to find that the walls, unlike every other city they have uncovered, fell the wrong way. Now, you have to look it up to find out whether the right way is in or out. I think I remember that walls of cities always fall in and these walls fell out.
They were one people when they marched around that city and shouted at the walls and they came down. They were one people as they went into the Promised Land. They were one people. They set up their king, Saul. And it was one nation. For all intents and purposes, they looked like one nation. For four or 500 years, they went along as one nation. And then this split occurs but in actuality, as we seen from the split of the birthright way, way back in Egypt, centuries before, they were viewed in God’s plan as revealed in the Bible, as two separate people. You gotta keep that in mind. And the northern kingdom was never is never, has never been, never will be known as Jews. Never were.
And I think it’s really interesting in light of some recent local events that we find that the northern kingdom, which I say became the Celts and recipients of all those promises and prophecies in the Bible, they were never known as the Jews. Okay. None of these people are Jews right. Hey, Jacob wasn’t a Jew. That’s great.
There’s one last rule, one little footnote to the story of the split there.
It just so happens if you were, if you remember, Joseph was the guy who was in charge of the ten tribes, so to speak. His descendancy, his house. He passed that along to his birthright recipient, Ephraim, who happened to be the younger brother but it was still the same trip.
[I’m gonna lose connection here with the wire.] Okay.
Ephraim then is the house or the tribe that’s gonna to rule over the northern kingdom, and it just so happens that this guy named Jeroboam that we’ve been talking about, he – if you jump back, if you want to jump back to I Kings 11:26 – in 26, it says, “Jeroboam, the Ephrathite”, which means from the tribe of Ephraim. And it just so happens that when a new king and the kingdom is split, and God chooses through this prophet Ahijah a king from the northern tribes, it happens to be somebody from Ephraim. See. Joseph is an Ephraimite. Well, to better understand the link up of the lost tribes and the Celts, we’re gonna really have to look a lot more closely at the House of Israel’s history. The northern kingdom, the House of Israel, not the Jews, right. I hope that that’s being dinned into your brain, that the northern ten tribes were never Jews, were never called Jews and that’s it. But we have to look at their history a little more closely, not just the history in the Bible. The Assyrian version of how they conquered the kingdom of Israel is one of the places we have to look real closely.
Oh I didn’t see the phone ring. Just a second. We have a number here. Excuse me. Yeah. I don’t know who this is, I’m sorry.
Okay we have to get on here. The Assyrian version is what we really want to look at. There’s a couple other things we’ll look at in the weeks to come, Behistun rock figures in very heavily on this, in this history of what happened to the northern kingdom of Israel. So let’s take a look at that and what the Assyrians did to the house of Israel.
(Announcement.)
How could we have possibly missed this huge chunk of history? That’s one question that comes to me all the time when I start to talk to people about the lost tribes. How come we never knew about it before? You know how come we never heard about the Indians and the settlers. How come we didn’t how we wiped out, massacred and pushed those Indians to the end of the, to the end of the country where they had no other place to go. How come we don’t here that stuff? You know, because people who write history don’t write history, you know, they write their own little story rather than what they what they really know a lot of times and other things that happened throughout historical writings, but you know. But are the Celts really the lost tribes” Who knows? Are they really the lost tribes maybe not. Maybe so. And if they are, how can a descendant of David according to what God promised to David, how could a descendant of David become their ruler, when a 120 years after Assyria conquers Israel, Nebuchadnezzer takes Judah, the kingdom of Judah captive and wipes out the king’s line? The bloodline is wiped out. He wipes out all the male heirs to the kingdom, puts out the king’s eyes and takes him off to Babylon. What a problem. Well, stay with us as we weave this most incredible history tapestry. That’s what I like to call it, a tapestry, a historical tapestry that fulfills the biblical prophecies concerning the descendants of Abraham.
And you might want to tune in tomorrow night also for believe it or not –-
In the meantime, tune in next week and stretch with Jack on philosophy and history of the Bible.
Lost Tribes series index page.
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