Tribe

A tribe in the biblical sense was a large kinship group descended from a single ancestor, organized as a social, political, and military unit. The twelve tribes of Israel descended from the twelve sons of Jacob (also named Israel), though the list varies slightly depending on context: Joseph's two sons Ephraim and Manasseh were each reckoned as a tribe in territorial allotments, while Levi was excluded from territorial inheritance as the priestly tribe dispersed throughout the land. The tribal structure was foundational to Israelite life from the Exodus and wilderness period through the period of the Judges, when tribal confederacy was the primary political form, to the monarchy, where tribal distinctions continued to shape power dynamics. The division of the kingdom after Solomon's death followed tribal lines — Judah and Benjamin in the south, ten tribes in the north. In the New Testament, Revelation 7 presents the sealing of 144,000 from the twelve tribes of Israel as a symbol of the complete people of God, and Revelation 21:12 names the twelve tribes on the gates of the new Jerusalem.