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Tribe of Judah....
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Together with the Tribe of Benjamin, descendants of Judah eventually
formed the southern Kingdom of Judah in the ancient Land of Israel, when
the Kingdom of Israel was divided. These two tribes were thus not carried
into captivity with the ten tribes of the northern Kingdom of Israel when
it fell. This started the tradition (some say myth) of the Ten Lost Tribes
of Israel.
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Judah and his three surviving sons went down with Jacob
into Ancient 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. |
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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).
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The lion is the symbol of
the Tribe of Judah
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The inheritance of the tribe of Judah was at first
fully one-third of the whole country west of the Jordan River,
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. |
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