“That same day Moshe commissioned the people as follows: ‘These are the ones who are to stand on Mount G’rizim and bless the people after you have crossed the Yarden: Shim‘on, Levi, Y’hudah, Yissakhar, Yosef and Binyamin; while these are to stand on Mount ‘Eival for the curse: Re’uven, Gad, Asher, Z’vulun, Dan and Naftali. The L’vi’im, speaking loudly, will proclaim to every man of Israel:”-Deuteronomy 27:11-14
We are continuing to examine the situation when the 12 tribes of Israel ascended Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim to pronounce the blessings and the curses.
As I mentioned in my last post, the six tribes that pronounced the blessings were descended from the sons of Rachel and Leah and the other six were descended from Jacob’s concubines.
Moving forward, the next fascinating point I want to bring to your attention is that the makeup of the tribes of Israel has now been returned to its original pre-Exodus composition!
Do you remember how Jacob when on his death bed adopted Joseph’s two Egyptian sons (Ephraim and Manasseh) away from Joseph and included them as among the tribes of Israel?
At that instant, there were now 14 tribes of Israel instead of 12.
Then do you recall how Joseph was completely removed as a tribal name bringing the total down to 13 tribes?
Then, later on, do you remember how the tribe of Levi was removed from Israel (to be set apart as the Lord’s priests) bringing the total once again back down to 12 tribes (but not the original 12 tribes).
And it was based on this new tribal restructuring that the territories of the land were divided up and assigned to all of Israel.
However, in the listing we have here in Deuteronomy 27, the two sons of Joseph have been removed and the name of Joseph has been added back in.
And Levi has also been added back in and is now being counted as among the regular 12 tribes.
Why?
Hell if I know man but no doubt this is prophetic!
We know this is prophetic because when we study the prophetic books such as Ezekiel concerning the return of Messiah, the original, pre-Exodus tribal makeup has been restored.
I’m done.
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