Tribes of Israel

Ephraim

Ephraim is the tribe that held Israel’s sanctuary for three centuries, produced Joshua and Samuel, and then led ten tribes out of the house of David. The prophets stopped distinguishing between the tribe and the northern kingdom — when Hosea says “Ephraim,” he means Israel.

All twelve tribes The kingdom split

On this page

At a glance The man behind the tribe The blessings Territory History in outline Israel or Judah? Notable people Christ connection Key passages

At a glance

NamesakeEphraim, younger son of Joseph by Asenath, adopted by Jacob (Genesis 41:52; 48:5)
MotherThrough Joseph and Rachel
Name means“Fruitful” — “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction”
Jacob’s blessingGenesis 48:14-20 — the right hand laid on the younger; “his offspring shall become a multitude of nations”
Moses’ blessingDeuteronomy 33:17 — with Manasseh under Joseph: “the ten thousands of Ephraim”
Census40,500 at Sinai; 32,500 on the plains of Moab (Numbers 1:33; 26:37)
TerritoryThe central hill country north of Benjamin — Shiloh, Bethel, Shechem
At the kingdom splitIsrael — Ephraim led the revolt, and the prophets use its name for the whole north
End of the lineDeported by Assyria, 722 BC

The man behind the tribe

Ephraim was Joseph’s second son, born in Egypt to Asenath, daughter of an Egyptian priest, and named out of Joseph’s gratitude: “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction” (Genesis 41:52).

The decisive scene is Genesis 48. Jacob, dying, adopts Joseph’s two sons as his own — “Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are” (48:5) — which is how Joseph receives the double portion of the forfeited birthright. Then Joseph places Manasseh, the elder, at Jacob’s right hand and Ephraim at his left, and Jacob deliberately crosses his arms. Joseph objects; Jacob refuses to move them: “I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations” (48:19).

It is the fourth generation running in which God chooses the younger — Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over ten brothers, and now Ephraim over Manasseh.

The blessings

Jacob’s crossed hands are the blessing, together with the words spoken over both boys: “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys... and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth” (Genesis 48:15-16). Israel still blesses its sons with the formula Jacob gave that day: “God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh” (48:20).

Moses blesses Joseph as a single portion, then divides the strength: “his horns are the horns of a wild ox; with them he shall gore the peoples... they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh” (Deuteronomy 33:17).

Territory

The central hill country — the heart of the land, from Bethel north to Shechem, bordered by Benjamin to the south and Manasseh to the north (Joshua 16). It contained the nation’s most important religious sites: Shechem, where Joshua renewed the covenant and where Joseph’s bones were buried; Bethel, where Jacob saw the ladder; Shiloh, where the tabernacle stood for roughly three hundred years; and Timnath-serah, Joshua’s own inheritance.

For most of the period of the judges, if you went up to worship in Israel, you went to Ephraim.

History in outline

c. 1885 BC — Born in Egypt

Joseph’s second son (Genesis 41:52).

c. 1859 BC — The crossed hands

Jacob adopts both boys and puts the younger first (Genesis 48).

c. 1444 BC — Joshua

Hoshea son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, is one of the two spies who bring back a faithful report; Moses renames him Joshua (Numbers 13:8, 16).

c. 1406 BC — Joshua leads

Moses’ successor brings Israel across the Jordan and through the conquest, and is buried in his own Ephraimite hill country (Joshua 24:29-30).

c. 1400 BC — Shiloh

The tent of meeting is set up in Ephraim and remains there through the judges (Joshua 18:1; Judges 21:19).

c. 1250 BC — With Deborah

Ephraim comes down into the valley (Judges 5:14).

c. 1175 BC — Quarrel with Gideon

Ephraim complains angrily about not being called to the battle first; Gideon defuses them with a compliment (Judges 8:1-3).

c. 1100 BC — Shibboleth

Ephraim picks the same quarrel with Jephthah, who does not defuse it. At the Jordan fords the Gileadites test each fugitive’s pronunciation, and forty-two thousand Ephraimites are killed (Judges 12:1-6).

c. 1080 BC — Samuel

Born at Ramathaim-zophim “of the hill country of Ephraim” to Elkanah and Hannah, and given to the LORD at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:1-28).

c. 1080 BC — Shiloh destroyed

After the ark is captured the sanctuary falls; Jeremiah later uses it as a warning: “Go now to my place that was in Shiloh... and see what I did to it” (Jeremiah 7:12-14; Psalm 78:60).

c. 931 BC — Jeroboam

“Jeroboam the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite of Zeredah,” raises the northern revolt after Rehoboam’s harshness and becomes king of the ten tribes (1 Kings 11:26; 12:1-20).

931 BC — The calves

Jeroboam sets up golden calves at Bethel, in Ephraim’s own territory, and at Dan (1 Kings 12:28-30).

c. 750 BC — “How can I give you up?”

Hosea’s whole prophecy is addressed to Ephraim, and reaches its climax in God’s refusal to let go: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?... My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8).

722 BC — Exile

Samaria falls; Ephraim is deported (2 Kings 17:5-6).

c. 715 BC — A remnant comes home

Men “from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun” come to Hezekiah’s Passover in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 30:18).

Israel or Judah?

Israel — Ephraim is the north. No tribe is more identified with the northern kingdom. Jeroboam was an Ephraimite; the revolt began at Shechem in Ephraim; the golden calf at Bethel stood in Ephraim; and the northern capital was first at Shechem, then Tirzah, then Samaria, all within the Joseph territories.

By the eighth century the prophets simply use the name as a synonym. Isaiah’s “the head of Ephraim is Samaria” (Isaiah 7:9), Hosea’s relentless “Ephraim is joined to idols” (Hosea 4:17), and Ezekiel’s two sticks — “the stick of Joseph (that is, the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him” versus “the stick of Judah” (Ezekiel 37:16) — all treat Ephraim as the whole northern kingdom.

Some of the old rivalry with Judah was there long before the split: Ephraim held the sanctuary and Joshua’s grave, and losing the throne to Judah and the sanctuary to Jerusalem was a wound the tribe never absorbed. Psalm 78 tells the story that way — God “rejected the tent of Joseph; he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim, but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loves” (78:67-68).

Ephraim went into Assyrian exile in 722 BC and never returned as a tribe, though individuals came south — some to Hezekiah’s Passover, and Ephraimites are listed among those living in Jerusalem after the return (1 Chronicles 9:3). Revelation 7 lists Joseph and Manasseh among the sealed, but not Ephraim by name.

Notable people

Joshua, son of Nun — Moses’ successor, the conqueror of Canaan, and the man whose Hebrew name (Yeshua, “the LORD saves”) is the name later given to Jesus. Samuel, the last judge, the kingmaker who anointed both Saul and David. Jeroboam, whose name became a byword: nearly every northern king afterward is condemned for walking “in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sin which he made Israel to sin.” And Hosea, whose whole book is God’s grief over Ephraim.

Christ connection

Jacob crossed his hands over Ephraim, and the whole Bible keeps crossing its hands — the younger over the elder, the weaker over the stronger, “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).

But the tribe’s deepest note is Hosea 11. Ephraim earned every judgment it received, and God says so at length — and then breaks off: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim?... My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst” (11:8-9). Ezekiel then promises the two sticks will be one again in the hand of one shepherd, “my servant David” (Ezekiel 37:19-24). The kingdom Ephraim tore apart is put back together, not by treaty, but by a King.

Key passages