Tribe of Ephraim
With the growth of the threat from Philistine incursions, the Israelite tribes decided to form a strong centralised monarchy to meet the challenge.
[9][10] The accents of the tribes were distinctive enough even at the time of the confederacy so that when the Israelites of Gilead, under the leadership of Jephthah, fought the Tribe of Ephraim, their pronunciation of shibboleth as sibboleth was considered sufficient evidence to single out individuals from Ephraim, so that they could be subjected to immediate death by the Israelites of Gilead.
In the biblical account, following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes.
Kenneth Kitchen, a well-known conservative biblical scholar, dates this event to slightly after 1200 BC.
[23] Some twenty years after the breakup of the United Monarchy, Abijah, the second king of Kingdom of Judah, defeated Jeroboam of Israel and took back the towns of Bethel, Jeshanah and Ephron, with their surrounding villages.
Spanish-Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela wrote that the southernmost bounds of the territory of Ephraim extended in a south-westerly direction as far as the town of Ibelin (now Yibna).
[19] Furthermore, in the Blessing of Jacob, and elsewhere ascribed by textual scholars to a similar or earlier time period,[35] Ephraim and Manasseh are treated as a single tribe, with Joseph appearing in their place.
According to this view, the story of Jacob's visit to Laban to obtain a wife began as a metaphor for the second migration, with Jacob's new family, possessions, and livestock, obtained from Laban, being representations of the new wave of migrants;[33] Professor David Frankel believes that ancient traditions regarding pre-conquest Ephraimite settlement in Canaan were unintentionally preserved in biblical passages such as 1 Chronicles 7:20-24.
[38] Professor Nili Wazana connects this with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's argument for why the Jews were indigenous to Canaan, which was affirmed in the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
[39] In the account of the deuteronomic history, Ephraim is portrayed as domineering, haughty, discontented, and jealous, but in classical rabbinical literature, the biblical founder of the tribe is described as being modest and not selfish.
[19] These rabbinical sources allege that it was on account of modesty and selflessness, and a prophetic vision of Joshua, that Jacob gave Ephraim precedence over Manasseh, the elder of the two;[19] in these sources, Jacob is regarded as sufficiently just that God upholds the blessing in his honour, and makes Ephraim the leading tribe.
[19] Nevertheless, other classical rabbinical texts mock the tribe for the character it has in the deuteronomic history, claiming that Ephraim, being headstrong, left Egypt 30 years prior to the Exodus, and on arrival in Canaan was subjected to a disastrous battle with the Philistines;[19] in the Midrashic Jasher this is portrayed as a rebellion of Ephraim against God, resulting in the slaying of all but 10, and the bleached bones of the slaughtered being strewn across the roads, so much so that the circuitous route of the Exodus was simply an attempt by God to prevent the Israelites from having to suffer the sight of the remains.
However, several modern day groups claim descent, with varying levels of academic and rabbinical support.
They also believe that the main groups of the Book of Mormon (Nephites and Lamanites) were parts of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, as part fulfilment of the blessing of Jacob: "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall",[45] interpreting the "wall" as the ocean).
