Jacob blesses his twelve sons, Pieter Tanjé, 1791. Rijksmuseum.nl
Did Israel Always Have Twelve Tribes?
The Bible presents Israel as having twelve tribes from both northern Israel and southern Judah. In older northern lists, however, the southern tribes do not appear, and the full list seems to have developed in Judah, after the destruction of Israel. Moreover, the idea that the tribes are descended from Jacob developed even later.
Published: January 7, 2020
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
Genesis 29:32-30:24, 35:16-18; 35:22-26; 46:8-27, 49:1-27; Exodus 1:1-6; Num 1:5-15; 1:20-43; 2:3-33; 7:12-83; 10:14-27; 13:4-15; 26:5-62; 34:14-28; Deut 27:12-13; 33:1-29; Josh 13:15-19:48; 21:4-40, Judg 1:1-36; 5:14-23; 1 Chron 2:1-2; 2:3-9:1a; 6:40-48; 6:49-66; 12:25-38; 27:16-22; Ezek 48:1-28; 48:31-4. Counting tribal lists requires a lot of judgment calls about what counts as a list, where there are two lists in the same chapter, and where there is only one. See Andrew Tobolowsky, The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles: The History of the Tribal System and the Organization of Biblical Identity, Forschungen Zum Alten Testament 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 43. Kallai, with a slightly looser definition, comes up with a count of 30; Zecharia Kallai, “The Twelve-Tribe Systems of Israel,” Vetus Testamentum 47, no. 1 (1997): 53–90; Zecharia Kallai, “A Note on the Twelve-Tribe Systems of Israel,” Vetus Testamentum 49, no. 1 (1999): 125–27.
The most influential historical reconstruction of a twelve tribe league or amphictyony can be found in Martin Noth, Das System der zwölf Stämme Israels (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1930). Throughout the twentieth century, this league was not only considered the origins of Israelite identity, but of the basic form of the pentateuchal tradition. See C.H.J. De Geus, The Tribes of Israel, Studia Semitica Neerlandica 18 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), 69.
Nadav Na’aman, “The Jacob Story and the Formation of Biblical Israel,” Tel Aviv 41, no. 1 (2014): 95–125; Daniel Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 5, 80; Lauren A. S. Monroe and Daniel Fleming, “Earliest Israel in Highland Company,” Near Eastern Archaeology 82, no. 1 (2019): 16–23; Israel Finkelstein, The Forgotten Kingdom, Ancient Near East Monographs 5 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 153.
This idea was largely originated in the work of Philip Davies, especially in Philip R Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel”: A Study in Biblical Origins, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 148 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992); Philip R Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel”: A Study in Biblical Origins, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2004). Today, it has been embraced by a number of scholars, including those mentioned in the previous note.
The lateness of most of the tribal lists was often dismissed as unimportant since, for much of the twentieth century, scholars saw in tribal traditions the codified oral literature of a very early age. As a result, the difference between early and late tribal lists was hardly a difference at all – they were all early tribal lists, only some had been written down in later periods than others. See, for example, Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, trans. B.W. Anderson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972), 2; John Bright, A History of Israel, 4th ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 18.
For recent defenses of the great age of Judges 5 see Mark S. Smith, “What Is Prologue Is Past: Composing Israelite Identity in Judges 5,” in Thus Says the Lord: Essays on the Former and Latter Prophets in Honor of Robert R. Wilson, ed. Stephen L. Cook and John J. Ahn, Library of Biblical Studies 502 (New York, NY; London: T & T Clark, 2009), 43–58; Mark S. Smith, “Why Was ‘Old Poetry’ Used in Hebrew Narrative? Historical and Cultural Considerations about Judges 5,” in Puzzling Out the Past: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Bruce Zuckerman, ed. Steven Fine, Wayne T. Pitard, and Marilyn J. Lundberg (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 197–212; Volkmar Fritz, “The Complex of Traditions in Judges 4 and 5 and the Religion of Pre-State Israel,” in “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Aren M. Maier and Pierre de Miroschedji (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 689–98. Nevertheless, the early nature of this composition has been contested by some scholars in recent years. See, for instance, Serge Frolov, "Dating Deborah," TheTorah (2017); Jacob L. Wright, “War Commemoration and the Interpretation of Judges 5:15b-17,” Vetus Testamentum 61 (2011): 505–521.
Editor’s note: The relationship between Machir, Gilead, and other ostensible branches of Manasseh varies in different texts. For a discussion, see Aaron Demsky, "Manasseh's Genealogies: Why They Change between Numbers, Joshua, and Chronicles," TheTorah (2019).
In that case, Israel may have already existed as a twelve-tribe entity. See discussion, for example, in A.D.H Mayes, Israel in the Period of the Judges, Studies in Biblical Theology, 29 (second series) (Naperville, Ill, 1974), 29.
See, especially, the earlier studies of Cross and Freedman, Otto Eissfeldt, C.J. Labuschagne, and A.D.H. Mayes Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,” Journal of Biblical Literature 67, no. 3 (1948): 191–210; Otto Eissfeldt, The Old Testament; an Introduction Including the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, trans. Peter Ackroyd (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1965), 227; Casper J. Labuschagne, “The Tribes in the Blessing of Moses,” Oudtestamentische Studiën 19 (1974): 97–112; Andrew D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy, New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979). More recently, see Stefan Beyerle, Der Mosesegen im Deuteronomium: eine text-, kompositions- und formkritische Studie zu Deuteronomium 33, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 250 (Berlin; New York, NY: De Gruyter, 1997); Stefan Beyerle, “Evidence of a Polymorphic Text: Towards the Text-History of Deuteronomy 33,” Dead Sea Discoveries 5, no. 2 (1998): 215–232; Kenton L. Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 262–72. See also Tobolowsky, The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles: The History of the Tribal System and the Organization of Biblical Identity, 63–67.
Beyerle, Der Mosesegen im Deuteronomium: eine text-, kompositions- und formkritische Studie zu Deuteronomium 33, 108–12.
See Moses in Exodus 17:3-7, Numbers 27:14, Psalm 106:32, and Aaron in Numbers 20;12-13, 24.
More than anything else, there appears to be some “Archaic Biblical Hebrew” in this text, which is the earliest dialect of Hebrew preserved in the Bible. Some have used the presence of ABH, especially in Genesis 49:`11 and a few other places, to argue that the entire poem is ancient, including Ronald Hendel; Ronald Hendel, “Historical Context,” in The Book of Genesis: Composition, Reception and Interpretation, ed. Craig A. Evans, Joel N. Lohr, and David L. Peterson, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 152 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 51–54. Others have minimized the presence of ABH in this text, or even the capacity of scholars to date texts by dialects in general. For the latter, see especially Ian Young, Robert Rezetko, and Martin Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (London: Equinox, 2008); Robyn C. Vern, Dating Archaic Biblical Poetry: A Critique of the Linguistic Arguments (Piscataway, NY: Gorgias, 2011); Robert Rezetko and Ian Young, Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew: Steps Toward an Integrated Approach, Society of Biblical Literature Ancient Near East Monographs 9 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014).
See Claus Westermann, Genesis 37-50, trans. John J. Scullion (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1986), 223, 228; Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible, 85–90; Ulrike Schorn, Ruben und das System der zwölf Stämme Israels: Redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Bedeutung des Erstgeborenen Jakobs, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 248 (Berlin; New York, NY: De Gruyter, 1997); Jean-Daniel Macchi, Israël et ses tribus selon Genèse 49, Orbis biblicus et orientalis 171 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 185–250; Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible, 109–24, 267–72; Kenton L. Sparks, “Genesis 49 and the Tribal List Tradition in Ancient Israel,” Zeitschrift Für Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 115, no. 3 (2003): 327–47. See also Tobolowsky, The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles: The History of the Tribal System and the Organization of Biblical Identity, 55–62.
Editor’s note: Notably, one list that some scholars consider to be earlier than this, Gen 29-30, also shows signs of redaction. See Tzemah Yoreh, "How the Israelite Family Was Put Together: The Twelve Sons of Jacob," TheTorah (2016).
See especially Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible.
See, among many others Nadav Na’aman, “The Israelite-Judahite Struggle for the Patrimony of Ancient Israel,” Biblica 91, no. 1 (2010): 1–23; Na’aman, “The Jacob Story and the Formation of Biblical Israel”; Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible; Monroe and Fleming, “Earliest Israel in Highland Company”; Koog P. Hong, “Once Again: The Emergence of ‘Biblical Israel,’” Zeitschrift Für Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 125, no. 2 (2013): 278–88. This position goes back to the work of Philip Davies in the 1990s, especially Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel”: A Study in Biblical Origins, 1992.
The idea that a singular version ethnic identity endures all of histories challenges is called the “primordialist” view of identity and few people subscribe to it anymore, which suggests that Israelite identity in biblical literature is, regardless, not precisely early Israelite identity. See especially James C. Miller, “Ethnicity and the Hebrew Bible: Problems and Prospects,” Currents in Biblical Research 6, no. 2 (2008): 170–213.
See Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar, and Brian B. Schmidt, The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, Archaeology and Biblical Studies (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007); Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2006); William G. Dever, Beyond the Texts, An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2017), 119–247.
Editor’s note: See Marvin Sweeney, "Israel's History as a Family Narrative," TheTorah (2015).
This was the theme I dealt with at length in, Andrew Tobolowsky, The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles: The History of the Tribal System and the Organization of Biblical Identity, Forschungen Zum Alten Testament 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017).
David M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 473. Both Amos and Micah were Judahite prophets who did a considerable amount of prophesying in Israel however.
Editor’s note: For more on this passage, see Noam Cohen, "Hosea's Characterization of Jacob," TheTorah (2019).
This point was made in, Robert R. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 183–84.
For which, see especially Na’aman, “The Jacob Story and the Formation of Biblical Israel.”
Editor’s note: For a discussion of linear vs. segmented genealogies in the Bible, see Aaron Demsky "Reading Biblical Genealogies," TheTorah (2016), idem, "Manasseh's Genealogies: Why They Change between Numbers, Joshua, and Chronicles," TheTorah (2019).
John Van Seters, Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 197–198. See also Gary N. Knoppers, “Greek Historiography and the Chronicler’s History: A Reexamination,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122, no. 4 (2003): 627–650.
“Although… changes are wrought upon the past as the names and relationships of the ancestors change… it is really the present that is being described… the world of myth is a mirror and projection of the present world,” Robert L. Fowler, “Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue and the Creation of the Hellenes,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44 (1999): 3. Editor’s note: For a discussion of how Israelite genealogies do this as well, see Zev Farber, "Moses' Father-in-Law: Kenite or Midianite?" TheTorah (2015); Zev Farber and Jacob L. Wright, "What Was Caleb the Kenizzite's Connection to Hebron?" TheTorah (2016).
See, for example, Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible, trans. J. Nogalski; Sifrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, 3 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010); Thomas Römer, Israels Väter: Untersuchungen zur Väterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der Deuteronomistischen Tradition, OBO 99 (Freiberg: Universitätsverlag, 1990).
The exodus is referenced a number of times in 1 Samuel 1-15, mostly in what appears to be Deuteronomistic speeches and additions (1 Sam 2:27, 4:8, 6:6, 8:8, 10:18, 12:6, 12:8, 15:2, 6-7). David appears in 1 Sam 16, and the only references to the exodus in the story of his life comes in YHWH’s speech to Nathan the prophet, directing him to exhort David to build the Temple (2 Sam 7:6). Moses appears only in the books of Samuel in 1 Sam 12, in Samuel’s retirement speech.
