Naphtali

Naphtali (Hebrew Naftali, "my wrestling") was the sixth son of Jacob and the second son of Bilhah, Rachel's maidservant. He was so named when Rachel, contending with her sister Leah for children, exclaimed, "With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed" (Genesis 30:8). From his sons sprang one of the twelve tribes of Israel, which settled the far north of Canaan and would one day be the very ground on which the Messiah's light first dawned.

The patriarchal blessings cast Naphtali in graceful and favoured terms. Jacob likened him to "a doe let loose that bears beautiful fawns" (Genesis 49:21), and Moses blessed him as "Naphtali, sated with favour, and full of the blessing of the LORD," bidding him possess the lake and the south (Deuteronomy 33:23). The tribe's inheritance lay in the fertile uplands and the shore of the Sea of Galilee, west of the upper Jordan, including the fortified towns of Hazor and Kedesh and the city of refuge there (Joshua 19:32–39; Joshua 20:7).

Naphtali proved valiant in Israel's wars. The judge Barak was a man of Kedesh-naphtali, and in Deborah's song the tribe is praised for risking everything: "Naphtali too, on the heights of the field", jeopardized their lives to the death against Sisera (Judges 4:6; Judges 5:18). Men of Naphtali answered Gideon's summons against Midian (Judges 7:23) and later came to make David king at Hebron, laden with provisions (1 Chronicles 12:34, 40). Because it lay on the exposed northern frontier, however, Naphtali bore the first brunt of invasion: Ben-hadad of Syria struck its towns, and it was among the first regions whose people Tiglath-pileser of Assyria carried into exile (1 Kings 15:20; 2 Kings 15:29).

Yet upon this borderland, first to be darkened by judgment, fell the brightest gospel light. Isaiah foretold that "the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali," once brought into contempt, would see a great light in "Galilee of the nations" (Isaiah 9:1–2). The fulfilment came when Jesus left Nazareth and settled at Capernaum, in the territory of Naphtali, to begin his Galilean ministry — "so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled" (Matthew 4:13–16). Thus the tribe whose name means "my wrestling," long a frontier of conflict and the first to fall to the conqueror, became the first to behold the dawning of the Light of the world; and Naphtali is numbered among the sealed tribes of God in the Revelation (Revelation 7:6).