Jacob had 12 sons.....
Joseph had two sons.....
Jacob did not choose his 12 sons.....
Jacob did choose the two sons of Jacob..
..
Manasseh son of Joseph did replace one of the original 12 sons of Jacob when the census was taken during various times of scriptures for different reasons. Joseph as we all know is a son of Jacob; his sons Jacob's grandsons. Abraham had a nephew named Lot and a niece named Sarah.
Yeshua chose 12 apostles, then two more that the Yeshua did not choose; but were chosen by the apostles. Jacob was allowed to chose one of Joseph's son to replace one of the tribes of Israel. .
Jacob chose Joseph's sons as a direct inheritance/counting both of them as a collective tribe, blessing them with the best spiritual blessing while the others were also blessed. According to the latter part of Genesis, Jacob sought to curse Simeon and Levi due to their vengence on Dinah's rapist....while Reuben was stripped of his first-born blessing and that was given to Judah. Reuben was more righteous than Judah on multiple points/the First Born and Levi/Simeon did what their father should have done...with the Lord blessing them both later on (
as seen here, #
8 and #
6)...
The Lord worked out BOTH situations with Levi becoming the nation of priests/Levites taken care of by the people (even though Jacob's curse was still technically in effect/they never had a place of their own in regards to tribal land)--and Simeon was absored into the Kingly line of Judah, while Reuben was also protected/never died off.
The 2 sons of Jospeh never replaced the rest of the 12..even though they were dominant in the land (Manasseah being lesser than his younger brother Ephraim in scope, even though both were present)....and Judah ended up taking up only 2 tribes (Judah and Benjamin) while Israel included Joseph's tribe/the rest of the 10 tribes left....but many from those tribes came back over to Judah's side ..alongside others from Joseph's side...and once the exile began in II Kings 17, the others in Israel were sent off while Judah/those who sided with her survived longer.
In regards to the 12 tribes of Israel being represented, something that's interesting is to consider how not all of the tribes were ever listed...specifically, the tribe of Dan:
Revelation 7
144,000 Sealed
1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. 2 Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: 3 “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” 4 Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.
4 Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.
5 From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed,
from the tribe of Reuben 12,000,
from the tribe of Gad 12,000,
6 from the tribe of Asher 12,000,
from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000,
from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000,
7 from the tribe of Simeon 12,000,
from the tribe of Levi 12,000,
from the tribe of Issachar 12,000,
8 from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000,
from the tribe of Joseph 12,000, from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000.
Its interesting to consider how the Tribes of Dan and Ephraim are missing from the list. Though there are some who feel it is a translation error and more is there when studying the text. One Messianic, know as Steve Collins, actually spoke more in-depth on the matter---
as seen here.
Of course, others are of the mindset that the tribe of Dan was not included because of how they may've fallen into extreme idolatry/immorality....and thus, the Lord wiped them out. The tribe of Dan as a whole was guilty of gross idolatry—even to the point of stealing the idols they used to practice their religion (Judges 18:14-31).
Theirs was the first organized idolatry in ancient Israel, and the longest in duration..and it continued "until the day of the captivity of the land," nearly 500 years later (Judges 18:30). Some say that Ephraim and Dan are connected in their being not listed, as idolatry is the same thing that Ephraim fell into like Dan (compare Judges 17:1-3 and Hosea 4:17). However, that may not be a valid argument since both the tribe of Manasseh and the tribe of Joseph are listed. Ephraim and Manasseh were the two sons of Joseph (Genesis 48:1). Since Manasseh is one of the two tribes descended from Joseph, "the tribe of Joseph" mentioned in Revelation 7:8 must refer to Ephraim. From this, we can learn that Ephraim, being the leading tribe of the house of Joseph, sometimes bore the name "Joseph"--and thus, it may not be the case that Ephraim was wiped out.
But with Dan, I'm still processing what to make of it.
As another said best when it came to their giving conjecture:
Maybe the tribe of Dan is not mentioned because they became so involved in idolatry (Judges 18:30-31). The Lord hates idolatry, and this was the very thing that led God to give up on the early inhabitants of the “promised land” given to Israel. The Lord warned Israel that they were not to study or practice any of the pagan rites of the heathen nations that were overthrown by God to make way for the Children of Israel to become a nation (Exodus 23:31-33, Leviticus 18:1-5 & verses 24-30). Every thing connected with idolatry was to be burned or put to death as they entered the land to possess it (Deuteronomy 7:1-6 & Joshua 6:15-21).
Others are of the mindset that Israel, at the eve of the Lord's coming, shall be found re-embodied as a nation...with its tribes distinctly specified and Joseph being substituted for Dan---and possible reasons others feel are that either Dan is replaced because the Antichrist is to come from Dan....or Dan is to be Antichrist's especial tool. One can compare Genesis 49:17, Jeremiah 8:16 and Amos 8:14 when it comes to the possibility of Dan being one who won't be used except for wrong.. just as there was a Judas among the Twelve.
For myself, I don't think its necessarily the case that Dan has no place in the future. For Ezekiel 48:31-34 also specifies a gate to the city of Jerusalem for each tribe. "And the gates of the city shall be after the names of the tribes of Israel: three gates northward; one gate of Reuben, one gate of Judah, one gate of Levi. And at the east side four thousand and five hundred: and three gates; and one gate of Joseph, one gate of Benjamin, one gate of Dan. And at the south side four thousand and five hundred measures: and three gates; one gate of Simeon, one gate of Issachar, one gate of Zebulun. At the west side four thousand and five hundred, with their three gates; one gate of Gad, one gate of Asher, one gate of Naphtali."
These same gates are also mentioned in Revelation 21:12-13, in the middle of the description of the new Jerusalem after the future 1000 year kingdom. "... had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates."
As Dan is mentioned first in the apportioning of land in the soon-coming Millennium (Ezekiel 48:1) and the apostle Paul assures us, "All Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26), I don't know I could say that Dan's fate is lost.
I was just reading about H.G. Wells & his opinion of Paul earlier today:
It is a fact in history that the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth had in it something profoundly new and creative; he preached a new Kingdom of Heaven in the hearts and in the world of men. There was nothing in his teaching, so far as we can judge it at this distance of time, to clash or interfere with any discovery or expansion of the history of the world and mankind. But it is equally a fact in history that St. Paul and his successors added to or completed or imposed upon or substituted another doctrine for—as you may prefer to think— the plain and profoundly revolutionary teachings of Jesus by expounding a subtle and complex theory of salvation, a salvation which could be attained very largely by belief and formalities, without any serious disturbance of the believer's ordinary habits and occupations, and that this Pauline teaching did involve very definite beliefs about the history of the world and man. It is not the business of the historian to controvert or explain these matters; the question of their ultimate significance depends upon the theologian; the historian's concern is merely with the fact that official Christianity throughout the world adopted St. Paul's view so plainly expressed in his epistiles and so untraceable in the gospels, that the meaning of religion lay not in the future, but in the past, and that Jesus was not so much a teacher of wonderful new things, as a predestinate divine blood sacrifice of deep mystery and sacredness made in atonement of a particular historical act of disobedience to the Creator committed by our first parents, Adam and Eve, in response to the temptation of a serpent in the Garden of Eden. Upon the belief in that Fall as a fact, and not upon the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, upon the theories of Paul, and not upon the injunctions of Jesus, doctrinal Christianity built itself.
