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Israel and Judah, part 3

1 Chronicles 5:1, 2 tells us that Judah’s calling was to provide the rulers/kings for the House of Israel but that the birthright belonged to Joseph (that is, Ephraim). As long as these tribes remained united, each was able to benefit from the calling of the other. But when the kingdom was divided, the kings of Judah were separated from the Kingdom (Israel) itself.

Judah was never given the birthright itself, as so many Christians think. Judah had a very important calling, and the tribe was even given a portion of the birthright, but 1 Chronicles 5:2 says plainly that “the birthright belonged to Joseph.” Neither did the tribe of Levi possess the birthright, even though its calling too was important in providing for the priesthood.

Neither Judah nor Joseph could complete the full plan of God without the other. Fortunately, the prophets foresaw the day when the two “sticks” would be reunited at the end (Ezekiel 37:19). Genesis 49:10 says that this reunification was to occur “when Shiloh comes.” This had a double meaning. Shiloh is derived from shalom, “peace,” or reconciliation, but it was also a messianic prophecy of the coming Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Christ’s calling was to bring peace by repairing the breach (Isaiah 58:12).

There were breaches to be repaired on different levels. The most fundamental breach occurred when Adam sinned. Isaiah 59:2 says,

² But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.

The secondary breach, of course, was the division between Israel and Judah. Both breaches are to be reconciled, first the Judah-Joseph breach, and later the God-man breach at the reconciliation of all things. In both cases, repairing the breach was to bring unity and agreement, so that no more enmity would exist between them.

On Being One Flesh

The earliest illustration of the unity principle is found in Genesis 2:24, which speaks of the unity and agreement between the ideal husband and wife.

²⁴ For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

Sin, of course, put men and women at cross purposes, as, indeed, we see between men and between women as well. Mortality, the result of sin, made all of us corruptible and self-centered instead of Christ-centered. It is only by faith and studying the Word that we are able to overcome this impediment to full unity.

One of the main purposes of marriage is to give husbands and wives the opportunity to practice coming into agreement before embarking on a course of action. This is the model for any New Covenant marriage, and it is distinct from one spouse being obedient to the will of the other, which is modeled after the Old Covenant. Authority and obedience were established after sin entered the world in Genesis 3:16, but it was not so from the beginning.

It is perhaps peculiar, then, that Genesis 2:24 says that “a man shall leave his father and his mother” when he marries his wife. We usually think of a woman leaving her parents to join with her husband. But this is also a prophecy of Christ, who left His heavenly Father to claim His bride and to dwell with her on earth. When this marriage is finally consummated, of course, those who are of the bride company—both men and women—will be free to visit the Father in heaven whenever they wish! However, their home will be on the earth, because, as we read in Matthew 5:5, they will “inherit the earth.”

The Long Separation of Israel and Judah

Israel and Judah were separated for 210 years from the death of Solomon in 931 B.C. to the fall of Samaria in 721 B.C. Then the Assyrians took the Israelites captive. 2 Kings 17:18 says,

¹⁸ So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight; none was left except the tribe of Judah.

The idolatry and lawlessness of Israel made the breach worse. At first the two nations remained neighbors, living in different houses, as if to hold out hope of repairing the breach within a short period of time. But ultimately, God “removed them from His sight” altogether. The Assyrians gave them a new name: Ghomri, named after King Omri, the father of King Ahab of Israel. (In those days Omri was spelled with the letter gain and pronounced Ghomri or Gomer.

The prophet Hosea, to illustrate this in his personal life, was instructed by God to marry a harlot named Gomer in order to show that Israel (God’s wife) had been a prostitute. Her lawlessness (adultery) had broken up their Old Covenant marriage, for God then divorced her and sent her out of His house, as the law in Deuteronomy 24:1 KJV commands. Jeremiah 3:8 confirms this:

⁸ And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also.

Both Israel and Judah were harlots, says the prophet, and eventually Judah too was exiled from the land in 70 A.D. and sent into captivity. The only lawful way to return to a marriage relationship with God is to die and be raised as a new creation. This is why by faith we have been baptized into Christ’s death and raised with Him as new creatures (Romans 6:4). As new creatures, or as new individuals, the law no longer recognizes us as children of Adam or Israel, but as children of God, having been begotten by the Holy Spirit.

Likewise, Christ, though He was without sin, had to die in order to be resurrected as a new creation. In His present form, Christ is no longer the Husband of the Old Covenant bride that He had married at Mount Horeb.

It is through death and resurrection, then, that the breach is repaired. We are no longer souls descended from the first Adam but spiritual children of the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). As such, we are part of the bride of Christ, married to Him through a New Covenant. No one can be part of that bride company apart from faith in Christ. Christ will never again marry an Old Covenant bride.

In fact, it is forbidden in the law for a man to remarry the one that he has divorced (Deuteronomy 24:4). It is the same with earthly marriages that end in divorce, except when the divorced parties have become new creatures in Christ. In such cases they are no longer the people they used to be and are free to remarry without violating the law.

In the first century A.D., the Jewish historian, Josephus, tells us,

“Wherefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans; while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now; and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers” (Antiquities of the Jews, XI, v, 2).

Josephus was aware that the Israelites were still in exile and had not yet been joined with Judah. This was confirmed more recently in 1888 by Dr. A. Neubauer,

“The captives of Israel exiled beyond the Euphrates did not return as a whole to Palestine along with their brethren the captives of Judah; at least there is no mention of this event in the documents at our disposal” (The Jewish Quarterly Review, 1888, Vol. 1).

Some Christian commentators argue that there were enough Israelites among the people of Judah to constitute a unification between Israel and Judah. There were certainly a few Israelites in Judah, such as Anna, the prophetess, who was of the tribe of Asher (Luke 2:35). However, individuals do not constitute a tribe. The tribeship itself rests with the kingly heir. It is self-evident that the heir to the throne of Israel did not live in Judea during the time of Christ.

Therefore, it is clear that during Jesus’ earthly ministry, the sticks of Judah and Joseph had not yet been reunited, nor had the breach been repaired. The separation continued to the present day. The Israelites, having been renamed by the Assyrians (and others), immigrated into Europe under new names.

On a physical level, the ex-Israelites in dispersion remained under divine judgment, separated from God and from Judah. The only way they could be remarried to God and to receive once again the name Israel is through Christ under the New Covenant. The old one was irretrievably broken, and it has become “obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13). The New Covenant is Christ’s second marriage, built upon better promises that will not fail.

In Galatians 4:22-26 Paul tells us Abraham had two wives, Hagar and Sarah. Hagar, he says, is allegorically the Old Covenant, and Sarah is the New Covenant. He goes on to say that Hagar’s son was born naturally as a child of the flesh, while Sarah’s son was born by the promise of God. The children of the flesh will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 4:30). In other words, we must be begotten by God in order to be an inheritor.

Paul was not speaking of physical genealogy. We were all born naturally by our earthly parents, regardless of ethnicity. We must all become children of Sarah (New Covenant) by faith in Christ in order to qualify as Kingdom inheritors. Those who remain devoted to the Old Covenant that was mediated by Moses are not the ones chosen to inherit the earth.

Those who continue to advocate for Hagar’s fleshly (or natural) children are still not in agreement with God. The children of the flesh love their mother Hagar—that is, they love the earthly Jerusalem (Galatians 4:25) and pray that this city will be the capital of Christ’s Kingdom. Such people need to study Galatians 4 carefully in order to come into agreement with the divine plan.