*** See 1 Kings xvii., xviii., where the conflict between
     Elijah and the prophets of Baal for the obtaining of rain is
     described.

He is described as being a “jealous God,” brooking no rival, and “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.”  We hear of His having been adored under the figure of a “calf,"* and of His Spirit inspiring His prophets, as well as of the anointed stones which were dedicated in His honour.  The common ancestor of the nation was acknowledged to have been Jacob, who, by his wrestling with God, had obtained the name of Israel; the people were divided theoretically into as many tribes as he had sons, but the number twelve to which they were limited does not entirely correspond with all that we know up to the present time of these “children of Israel.”  Some of the tribes appear never to have had any political existence, as for example that of Levi,** or they were merged at an early date into some fellow-tribe, as in the case of Reuben with Gad;*** others, such as Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, and Judah, apparently did not attain their normal development until a much later date.

* The most common of these animal forms was that of a calf or bull (Exod. xxxii.; Deut. ix. 21; and in the kingly period, 1 Kings xii. 28-30; 2 Kings x. 29); we are not told the form of the image of Micah the Ephraimite (Judges xviii. 14, 17, 18, 20, 30, 31).

** Levi appears to have suffered dispersion after the events of which there are two separate accounts combined in Gen. xxxiv.  In conjunction with Simeon, he appears to have revenged the violation of his sister Dinah by a massacre of the Shechemites, and the dispersion alluded to in Jacob’s blessing (Gen. xlix. 5-7) is mentioned as consequent on this act of barbarism.

*** In the IXth century Mesha of Moab does not mention the Reubenites, and speaks of the Gadites only as inhabiting the territory formerly occupied by them.  Tradition attributed the misfortunes of the tribe to the crime of its chief in his seduction of Bilhah, his father’s concubine (Gen. xlix. 3, 4; cf. xxxv. 22)

The Jewish chroniclers attempted by various combinations to prove that the sacred number of tribes was the correct one.  At times they included Levi in the list, in which case Joseph was reckoned as one;* while on other occasions Levi or Simeon was omitted, when for Joseph would be substituted his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh.** In addition to this, the tribes were very unequal in size:  Ephraim, Gad, and Manasseh comprised many powerful and wealthy families; Dan, on the contrary, contained so few, that it was sometimes reckoned as a mere clan.

     * As, for instance, in Jacob’s blessing (Gen. xlix. 5-7) and
     in the enumeration of the patriarch’s sons at the time of
     his journey to Egypt (Gen. xlvi. 9-26).