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What the Bible says about Judah
(From Forerunner Commentary)

"Judah" is often opposed to "Israel" (Hosea 11:12), which indicates that some prophecies should be applied separately to the Jews. Other words used to name Judah are "Ariel" (Isaiah 29:1), "tabernacle of David" (Amos 9:11), "Oholibah" (Ezekiel 23:4), and "Zion" (Isaiah 1:8).

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
What's in a Name?

Related Topics: Judah | Oholibah | Zion


 

Genesis 49:8-12

About Judah, Jacob asserts, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes." Judah was to remain the princely tribe indefinitely.

Charles Whitaker
Searching for Israel (Part Two): Blessings in Faith

Genesis 49:10

The patriarch Jacob had twelve sons, and God had to choose from which tribe His Son would descend. He proclaims His choice through Jacob's prophecy in Genesis 49:10: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people." Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew, as many scriptures record (Matthew 1:2; Luke 3:33; Hebrews 7:14, etc.).

This fact also has spiritual implications for us. Jesus says to the woman at the well, "For salvation is of the Jews" (John 4:22). Paul explains what this means:

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God. (Romans 2:28-29)

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Born of a Woman

2 Kings 16:1-6

II Kings 16:1-6 briefly summarizes one of the many wars between the Kingdom of Judah in the south and the Kingdom of Israel to its north. Appearing in this passage is the first occurrence of the word Jew in God's Word.

Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah, . . . king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to make war; and they besieged Ahaz but could not overcome him. At that time Rezin king of Syria captured Elath for Syria, and drove the men of Judah from Elath. (verses 5-6)

The King James Version translates "men of Judah" with the single word Jews. During the military campaign outlined above, the Syrians captured the port city of Elath from Judah, driving the Jews out.

The term Jew usually refers to a person from the tribe of Judah. In fact, Jew isa shortened, or what semanticists call a "clipped," form of the word Judah. Strictly speaking, a Jew is genetically a member of the tribe of Judah; that is, the term Jew refers to a person who has descended fromJacob's son, Judah. The Jews make up one tribe of the children of Israel, the tribe of Judah, whose homeland was in the southern part of Canaan. The Jews, then, form only a subset of a much larger group of people, the children of Israel.

Of course, the Kingdom of Judah had in it individuals descended from the tribes Judah, Levi, and Benjamin. Today, Jews (for the most part) do not differentiate between these three tribes. A modern Jew, more likely than not, is descended from the tribe of Judah or the tribe of Benjamin or the tribe Levi—few, if any, know specifically from which tribe. Moreover, few even give the matter much thought, so irrelevant today have the tribes become as social and political entities.

The term Jew is not interchangeable with the term Israel. While all Jews are Israelites, not all Israelites are Jews!

There is an important distinction between them. Today, a Jew is an individual descended through one of three tribes. However, the term Israel has a number of broader meanings, all derived from the fact that Israel was the name God gave the patriarch Jacob.

  • The word Israel can refer to a person. When used this way, it refers specifically to the patriarch Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel (see Genesis 32:28).
  • The word Israel often refers to all the descendants of Jacob. Hence, "the children of Israel," a term much used in the Pentateuch, refers to individuals from all the tribes—literally, all the descendants of the man Jacob (Israel).
  • After the fissure of the Davidic monarchy, the term Israel came to have a more specific national meaning. Used in this collective sense, Israel refers to those Israelites who were citizens of the Kingdom of Israel, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom.
  • Often, the Scriptures use the word Israel in a specialized, limited way, where it refers only to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. Jacob, remember, began his blessing on the two boys with the statement, "Let my name be named upon them" (Genesis 48:16).

These differences are more than "shades of meaning" or nuances. Readers of God's Word need to keep a keen eye on both the words Jew and Israel, ensuring that they understand their proper meaning in context.

Charles Whitaker
Searching for Israel (Part Six): Israel Is Fallen, Is Fallen

Habakkuk 1:5-11

God says, "You are not going to believe what I am about to tell you, Habakkuk, but I am already at work to deliver you and punish the sinners around you." Then what does He do? He tells the prophet that He is sending the ferocious, bloody, terrifying Chaldeans to conquer Judah!

The prophet must have been stunned! This was not the answer he expected in the least. What kind of deliverance is humiliating defeat at the hand of these utterly godless people who struck terror into the entire Middle East? In addition, they were Gentiles, and God was taking their side and cruelly punishing His own people. It must have shaken his faith to hear God tell him, "I am coming to spank this nation with the worst of the heathen."

And just as God said, Habakkuk did not want to believe it. In his eyes, the deliverance was worse than the original corruption—at least that is what he thought at first. From what he understood of God, this made no sense. How could a loving God punish His own special people with a club like the Chaldeans?

To understand God's answer we have to understand what God's work is. Psalm 74:12 says, "God is . . . working salvation in the midst of the earth." Genesis 1:26 says God is creating man in His own image, building character in us so that we can live eternally as He does. What is astounding is how He chooses to do it because He does it far differently than we would. As the old saying goes, "God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform." To a man's way of thinking, His works are truly mysterious; sometimes, we do not have a clue how He works.

Isaiah 55:8-11 explains that God sometimes does things in a very round-about way, but it has a kind of boomerang effect. At times, it seems God goes in one direction, off the beaten path, but that is merely our perspective of it. We find out later—after we have grown in wisdom and understanding—that He has been following His plan all along. We are the ones who have not kept up. Habakkuk deals a great deal with perspective—man's perspective versus God's. God always gets His job done. When He sends forth His word to accomplish a work, it always comes back to Him with the result He intends. It may not make much sense to us at the time, but it surely works because God is behind it. In the end, it is the best way.

Many have questioned why God has allowed the church to decline and scatter in recent years. What is happening here? Why has God had to do this in order to bring us into His Kingdom? Why must He destroy to make well? We have shaken our heads at the swiftness and brutality of it all. That is how Habakkuk felt with the Chaldeans breathing down the Judeans' necks. If God had told us a few decades ago that the church would lose, say, two-thirds of its members, would we have believed Him? Would we have even considered that a work of God? "Look . . . and watch—be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you" (verse 5). Now we can understand how Habakkuk felt. He had prior warning, and it made him question God's very nature.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Habakkuk


Find more Bible verses about Judah:
Judah {Nave's}
 




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