The Twelve Tribes of Isreal - Genesis 49

So this week we looked at the twelve tribes of Israel.

These were: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Zebulan, Isaachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh.

Firstly we talked about Ephraim and Manasseh, and how Ephraim was given the firstborn even though he was the second son(Gen 48 v 8 - 20) The tribe of Ephraim became the largest of all the tribes.

It's interesting that there's slight differences in some places, concerning the tribes. The 12 sons of Israel were the original 12 tribes. Reuben lost his rights as firstborn by defiling Jacob's bed(Gen 49 v 3-4) In Reuben and Joseph's place, Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, became tribes of Israel(Gen 48 v 5-6) In some other lists of the twelve tribes of Israel, Levi is not mentioned, presumably because the Levites were told to serve at the temple and therefore were not given any land of their own in Israel.
At this point we looked at Exodus 32, where we see the Levites loyalty towards God, in which they were rewarded with the spiritual service lost at that time by the firstborn of the other tribes.

We also briefly looked at the lost tribes of Israel. After Solomon's death, the Hebrew nation split into two kingdoms. The tribe of Judah, Simeon, Levi and Benjamin formed the Southern Kingdom, and the other tribes made up the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom and sent the tribes into Exile, so what happened to these tribes? Anyone know?

At the end of class we looked at another list of the twelve tribes, in which Joseph is listed as a tribe, along with his son Manasseh. Ephraim and Dan are both missing from the list.
Every list in the Bible contains Simeon, Judah, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin. To add to those nine tribes, there were Ephraim, Reuben, Joseph, Dan, and Levi. So were there 14 tribes then?

It's an interesting topic, i would be interested to see what other people's opinions are on this.

Continue of Nehemiah and other discussion

well this week i found out i was doing the blog at the end of study group so i only got a few notes, but i rememebered most of it i think.





We started by taking a little about Nehemiah from last week, and how Nehemiah was so upset because Jerusalem' s wall was broken. Nehemiah 1 v 1-3 '1.The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev in the twentieth year as i was in Susa the capital, 2. that Hanani one of my brother, came with certain men from Judah. And i asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem 3. And they said to me, "the remnant there in the provence who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. the wall of Jeruaslem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire." ' Nehemiah had the opportunity to go back to Babylon, he had a great life there, yet he stayed in Jerusalem. He was motivated to pull everything back together.

We were talking about the water cycle and how the seas were the nations, the sun was the knowledge of God which was the son Jesus. The clouds (top left) were the clouds of witnesses, which were all the people from Hebrews 11 which is about faith, those people will be in the Kingdom. Hebrews 12 v 1 'Therefore since we are surounded by so great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.'

Then we went on to talk about Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel because it linked with the water cycle as we looked at the different nations and the timeline. We find out what Nebuchadnezzar is like as a person, in other books he is just known as King. In Daniel we get to see the personal side of him. Daniel chapter 4 was written by Nebuchadnezzar and we compared this to modern times, and it would just be like Saddam Hussein writing a book of the Bible (if he wasn't dead)

i couldn't really remember the rest of what we talked about, sorry.

Nehemiah

I didn't offer to do the blog but I took a few notes so I might as well!

Today we looked at Nehemiah. We didn't have time to look at the whole book, we just really looked at the first couple of chapters. To start with we came up with what we already knew about Nehemiah:

• He had a vineyard ( I have yet to check this... but perhaps this is getting mixed up with Naboth??)
  
• His name means 'Comfort of Yahweh'
  
• He was a servant to the King - cupbearer


• Rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem

We have to look out for Nehemiah praying - you see different forms of prayer within the look.
2:1-5 The king was asking Nehemiah "what are you requesting?" and Nehemiah prayed before answering - we discussed how this might've been an extremely short one such as "Lord give me strength" without needing to close his eyes either.

His prayer in chapter 1 starts off by recognising God for who he is. He prays for the people as PART of the people - not in between the people and God. v6 "...which we have sinned against you..." He's the same level of behaviour and responsibility as everyone else.
See Isaiah 55:8 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.'
Everything might look good from the outside but when you look closer theres all these glitches.. take the Earth, for example. It looks perfectly round and flat from really far away but when you look really close you see quite a different picture. No-one standing in the Himilayas is going to say the earth is flat! That was difficult to explain... (anyone care to help me?)

We then looked briefly at the rebuilding of the walls around Jerusalem . It wasn't for a while after the temple got rebuilt that the walls around Jerusalem got repaired (see that diagram I drew, the gap between the 80years rebuilding the temple and when Nehemiah comes into the picture). Nehemiah 2:17 says
"17Then I said to them, "You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision."
Need to build up the walls to distract us from things of the outside world. Rebuilt - stop people breaking through. Try to do it induvidually - cannot do it. Work together, help each other, encourage each other.

chapter 5:19 reads "Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done for this people." This sounds pretty boastful but it's Nehemiah needing God's salvation. He's been trying hard but needs God's salvation. It seems boastful but that is probably just the language used.

Our task: Look through Nehemiah and find bits where we think he is praying (If i remember correctly).

November 2nd - Gideon

This week we looked at Gideon and to start off, we looked at how he was also called Jerubbaal (Judges 7:1), which means ‘’Let Baal Plead’’. We then had a whip-round of what we could remember about Gideon and some of the things we could remember were:

He destroyed the alter of Baal
He fought the Midianites
He defeated Zeba and Zalmunna
The fleece and dew signs
He was sent to save Israel
He built an alter called Jehovah-Shalom (“The LORD is Peace”)

We also had a think back to when we discussed the cycle in Judges and how it goes:
Faithful => Wandering => Oppressed => Appealing to God => A judge is sent => God delivers
And with Gideon, we can see we are at the ‘’Judge Is Sent’’ stage as God sends Gideon to battle and this battle is successful and Israel are saved. This cycle could also be applicable to each of our lives – we are all faithful but we are also appealing to God to send Jesus back to the earth so that we may be saved and granted access to the Kingdom of God.
So after the quick recap of Gideon, we read through Judges 6 to refresh our minds of part of the story of Gideon. We were then able to see some points that we’d missed out – the trumpets in v34, ‘But the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, and Abi-ezer was gathered after him.’, and that Gideon was from the tribe of Manasseh.
From reading this chapter, we were able to look at some learning points for us as individuals and a key point that we came across was that in Judges 6:6-8 we read, ‘And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and the children of Israel cried unto the LORD. And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD…the LORD sent a prophet unto the children of Israel.’ Here, we see that God was ready to answer the children of Israel’s cries and from this we are able to take comfort in knowing that when we are in trouble, when we pray to God, He will answer us, and even if God doesn’t answer us straight away, we always have the Word of God to give us an answer. Another lesson that we were able to make was by linking Judges 6:8-9 to Jeremiah 16:14-15 where it says, ‘Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it will no more be said, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them…’. From this, we were able to see that God will send the Prophet back to save us, the children of Israel, from all the lands that He has driven us and with our faith, we can keep this hope alive by reading the Bible and reading of His promises to us.
Another point that we were able to make from chapter 6 of Judges was about the cakes in v19. We looked back to Cain and Abel’s sacrifices and how God torched the one that He found acceptable and with Gideon, we see that God makes Gideon’s sacrifice acceptable as it gets torched, ‘…and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes.’.
We also looked at the humility of Gideon in v15; ‘My family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.’ Gideon’s family had an altar dedicated to them which showed they were highly respected. They also had 2 bullocks and these animals were special in those times as they were able to breed to provide food. Gideon himself had 10 servants upon which he could call. The humility that Gideon shows is a big example to us to help us remember that we are a lot lower than God and that we need to humble ourselves before God when we pray to Him.
So in summary, this week we were able to look at the faithfulness of Gideon and we were able to take away benefits from God’s Word in that He is always there for us when we call on Him.

Your job – look through chapters 7,8 and 9 and come up with any point that you want to make about Gideon and say how you feel that there is a lesson for us in it.
My comment:
Chapter 7:3-8. Here it talks about how Gideon’s army was reduced in number from 22,000 to 300. I think the process of elimination could compare to our lives and that it’s a bit like God saying that those who are afraid are those who don’t listen to the Word of God and they return to the world but those who lapped the water are those who lap up the water are those who lap up the water are those who lap up the Word of God as He saves those people from the Midianites and helps them to defeat the Midianites. Melanie x