By Clement Harrold

October 23, 2025

In the biblical narrative, Israel is a person before it’s a people. The great patriarch Jacob, the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham, is renamed Israel (“he who wrestles with God”) following his nocturnal contest with the Lord:

The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” (Gen 32:22-28)

Jacob (Israel) went on to have no less than twelve sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. These twelve sons were the basis for what eventually became the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel.

When Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt, he later became a lifeline for them and for many others when the land was struck by famine. At Joseph’s invitation, his father and brothers settled in Egypt together with their wives and children. As the generations passed by, their numbers steadily grew: “But the descendants of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong; so that the land was filled with them” (Exod 1:7). The Israelites were becoming a great people. As a result, the envious Egyptians began persecuting them in a variety of ways.

After seeing the suffering of His people build up over a period of 430 years (see Exod 12:40), God finally summoned Moses to lead them on the exodus out of Egypt and into the land of Canaan. It was the land of Canaan which God had promised to Abraham and his descendants all the way back in Genesis 17 (cf. Genesis 12, 15, and 22). God’s instructions to Moses highlight His special affection for His chosen people: “And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son’” (Exod 4:22).

While the initial flight from Egypt was successful, the subsequent disobedience of the Israelites led to them spending some forty years wandering in the wilderness. It was during this season of spiritual purification that the Israelites received the Law, through which they were expected to manifest God’s holiness to all the nations (see Lev 11:44; Deut 4:5-8).

When the Israelites finally arrived in the promised land, they were commanded to cleanse it of its wicked inhabitants and reclaim it for the Lord. Several centuries then rolled by, during which Israel experienced the period of the judges. But the people were not content with their judges, and soon they began asking for a king. The first Israelite King was an impressive but flawed man named Saul. His successor was the youthful and charismatic David, who took Jerusalem from the Jebusites and succeeded in uniting the twelve tribes of Israel.

For the first time in its history, Israel was a united kingdom. Yet this unification was remarkably short-lived. While the united kingdom held under King David’s son, Solomon, it soon came to a bitter end under Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. In response to Rehoboam’s poor governance, the ten northern tribes broke away under the leadership of a man named Jeroboam in around the year 922 B.C.

Tragically, God’s people were now split into two separate entities: the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah. The southern kingdom was composed of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, while the northern kingdom was composed of the ten remaining tribes. Among these, the tribe of Simeon was unusual in that it belonged politically to the northern kingdom, but geographically it seems to have been an enclave located within the southern tribe of Judah. It appears the reason that Simeon was recognized as one of the ten northern tribes was due to the bulk of its inhabitants having emigrated to the north, with the remainder eventually being assimilated into the tribe of Judah.

The numbering of the tribes also gets a little confusing. When Jacob was blessing his twelve sons at the end of his life, he gave a kind of “double portion” to Joseph through his sons Ephraim and Manasseh (see Gen 48). Hence instead of there being a single tribe of Joseph, there were actually two distinct tribes: Ephraim and Manasseh. This brings the total number of tribes to thirteen. But since the Bible prefers twelve as a symbolic number, it tends to resolve this numerical difficulty in one of two ways. Sometimes Ephraim and Manasseh are still counted as falling under the one tribe of Joseph (e.g. Rev 7:8). On other occasions, the solution comes in the fact that the priestly tribe of Levi didn’t inherit any land, and so “the twelve tribes” refer simply to the twelve land-owning tribes.

Following the split between the southern and northern kingdoms, the history of “Israel” (here we use this term to encompass both the southern and the northern kingdoms) becomes a series of unfortunate events. Due to their repeated moral failings, God’s people suffered centuries of conquest, exile, and foreign rule. In 722 B.C., the northern kingdom was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Around one hundred years later, the Assyrians were in turn overrun by the Babylonian Empire, which had been gradually increasing its power in the region, culminating in its conquest of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, in 612 B.C. Now the northern kingdom of Israel was ruled by Babylon, and it wouldn’t be long before the southern kingdom of Judah experienced a similar fate.

The Babylonian exile of the southern kingdom of Judah unfolded over three stages. The last of these was by far the most cataclysmic, and it ended in the destruction of Jerusalem and of Solomon’s temple in 587/586 B.C. This was the darkest chapter in Israel’s history, when God’s promises to His people seemed to have come to nothing. And yet, it was also the period when God sent many of the prophets in order to remind Israel of His faithfulness and of a coming restoration: “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa 49:6).

It wasn’t long before there was a new empire on the block. In 539 B.C., the Persian Empire, led by King Cyrus the Great, completed its conquest of Babylon. In the same year, Cyrus issued an edict encouraging the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (see  2 Chron 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-4). This second temple was constructed in around 516 B.C., and it would later be renovated and expanded by King Herod the Great in around 18 B.C. For the next two centuries, both southern and northern Israel functioned as provinces within the Persian Empire. By 330 B.C., however, the Persian Empire was conquered by Alexander the Great.

Following Alexander’s premature death in 323 B.C., the region splintered into a number of different kingdoms. The largest and most powerful of these was the Seleucid Empire. By 312 B.C., this new superpower had incorporated both southern and northern Israel under its rule. Some time later, in 168 B.C., a Seleucid king named Antiochus IV Epiphanes began a campaign of sustained persecution of the Jewish religion. This was met the following year by an armed rebellion in Judea, led by Judas Maccabeus. Despite significant setbacks, the rebellion was successful, and by 160 B.C. the Seleucids’ rule over Judea had been severely compromised.

The year 141 B.C. marked the beginning of what is known as the Hasmonean dynasty. For the first time in more than 400 years, Judea functioned as an autonomous state, and it gradually began to reclaim surrounding territories (including northern Israel) from the waning Seleucid Empire. This state of affairs lasted until 63 B.C., when the Hasmonean Kingdom became a vassal state of the Roman Empire following the Roman general Pompey’s conquest of the region.

This brings us to the end of the Old Testament era and the beginning of the New. Some 1,700 years after the time of Jacob, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, a province of the Roman Empire, and He was raised in Galilee, another Roman province. As the long-awaited Messiah, Jesus brings the old covenants to completion and inaugrates the new and eternal covenant foretold by the prophets (see Jer 31:31).

Theologians debate what role the Jewish people continue to play in God’s plan for salvation after the coming of Christ, and the New Testament itself allows for different interpretations on this point. But what is clear is that Jesus established the Church which is the new and greater Israel, and the living fulfillment of all God’s promises:

Israel according to the flesh, which wandered as an exile in the desert, was already called the Church of God. So likewise the new Israel which while living in this present age goes in search of a future and abiding city is called the Church of Christ. For He has bought it for Himself with His blood, has filled it with His Spirit and provided it with those means which befit it as a visible and social union. God gathered together as one all those who in faith look upon Jesus as the author of salvation and the source of unity and peace, and established them as the Church that for each and all it may be the visible sacrament of this saving unity. While it transcends all limits of time and confines of race, the Church is destined to extend to all regions of the earth and so enters into the history of mankind. Moving forward through trial and tribulation, the Church is strengthened by the power of God's grace, which was promised to her by the Lord, so that in the weakness of the flesh she may not waver from perfect fidelity, but remain a bride worthy of her Lord, and moved by the Holy Spirit may never cease to renew herself, until through the Cross she arrives at the light which knows no setting. (Lumen Gentium II.9)

Further Reading

Laurie Manhardt, Fr. Joseph Ponessa, Sharon Doran, Come and See: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Israel (Publisher Emmaus Road Publishing, 2014)

About Clement Harrold

Clement Harrold earned his master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2024, and his bachelor’s from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2021. His writings have appeared in First Things, Church Life Journal, Crisis Magazine, and the Washington Examiner.