Tribes of Israel

Manasseh

Manasseh is the only tribe that lived on both sides of the Jordan, and it never fully cohered. It gave Israel Gideon and Jephthah, produced the daughters of Zelophehad whose case changed Israel’s inheritance law, and grew faster between the two censuses than any other tribe.

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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

NamesakeManasseh, elder son of Joseph by Asenath, adopted by Jacob (Genesis 41:51; 48:5)
MotherThrough Joseph and Rachel
Name means“Making to forget” — “God has made me forget all my hardship”
Jacob’s blessingGenesis 48:14-20 — the left hand; great, but less than his younger brother
Moses’ blessingDeuteronomy 33:17 — “the thousands of Manasseh”
Census32,200 at Sinai; 52,700 on the plains of Moab — the largest increase of any tribe (Numbers 1:35; 26:34)
TerritorySplit in two — half in Gilead and Bashan east of the Jordan, half in the hills west of it
At the kingdom splitIsrael — both halves went with the northern kingdom
End of the lineEastern half deported c. 733 BC; western half in 722 BC

The man behind the tribe

Joseph’s firstborn in Egypt, named for the relief of a man whose past had finally stopped hurting: “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house” (Genesis 41:51).

He is also the son whose place was taken. When Jacob adopted both boys, Joseph carefully positioned Manasseh at his father’s right hand — and Jacob crossed his arms, laying the right hand on Ephraim. Joseph tried to correct him. Jacob refused: “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” (Genesis 48:19). Manasseh’s blessing is genuine, and it comes second, and the tribe lives out that ambiguity for the rest of its history.

The blessings

Jacob adopted Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, on par with Reuben and Simeon (Genesis 48:5) — which is how Joseph received the double portion of the birthright Reuben forfeited (1 Chronicles 5:1-2). Both boys are blessed together, and Israelite fathers still bless their sons with the words of that day: “God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh” (48:20).

Moses treats Joseph as one blessing and then splits the strength between the brothers: “they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh” (Deuteronomy 33:17). Ephraim’s number is larger even in the blessing.

Territory

Uniquely, two separate territories.

The eastern half — Machir’s descendants, hardened soldiers, took Gilead and Bashan from Og the Amorite and asked to keep it (Numbers 32:39-42; Joshua 13:29-31). It was the largest single tract any tribe held, and the most exposed.

The western half took the hills north of Ephraim, from the Jezreel Valley down through Shechem toward the coast (Joshua 17:1-13). They complained to Joshua that one allotment was too small for so numerous a people, and he told them to go clear the forested highlands and drive out the Canaanites with their iron chariots — which they only partly did (Joshua 17:14-18).

History in outline

c. 1887 BC — Born in Egypt

Joseph’s firstborn (Genesis 41:51).

c. 1859 BC — The crossed hands

Adopted by Jacob, but blessed with the left hand (Genesis 48:8-20).

c. 1406 BC — Zelophehad’s daughters

Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, of the clan of Manasseh, ask for their dead father’s inheritance since he had no sons. Moses brings the case before the LORD, and the law is changed: “The daughters of Zelophehad are right. You shall give them possession of an inheritance among their father’s brothers” (Numbers 27:1-11; 36:1-12).

c. 1406 BC — Land on both banks

Machir’s clans take Gilead and Bashan; the rest settle west of the Jordan (Numbers 32:39-42; Joshua 17:1-13).

c. 1400 BC — Unfinished conquest

Manasseh cannot dispossess Beth-shan, Taanach, Dor, Ibleam, or Megiddo, and puts the Canaanites to forced labor instead (Joshua 17:11-13; Judges 1:27-28).

c. 1175 BC — Gideon

Called from threshing wheat in a winepress at Ophrah: “Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.” With three hundred men he breaks Midian (Judges 6-8).

c. 1170 BC — Abimelech

Gideon’s son by a concubine murders his seventy brothers on one stone and rules Shechem three years before a woman drops a millstone on his head (Judges 9).

c. 1100 BC — Jephthah

A Gileadite of the eastern territory delivers Israel from Ammon (Judges 11).

c. 1000 BC — With David

Men of Manasseh desert to David at Ziklag, “chiefs of thousands,” and 18,000 more come to Hebron to make him king (1 Chronicles 12:19-21, 31).

c. 841 BC — Hazael

Aram devastates Gilead and Bashan, striking the eastern Manassites with Gad and Reuben (2 Kings 10:32-33).

c. 733 BC — The eastern half exiled

Tiglath-pileser deports Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh (1 Chronicles 5:25-26).

722 BC — The western half exiled

Samaria falls and the rest of Manasseh goes with it (2 Kings 17:6).

c. 715 BC — A remnant at the Passover

Men “of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun” humble themselves and come to Jerusalem for Hezekiah’s Passover (2 Chronicles 30:11, 18).

c. 622 BC — Josiah’s reform

Josiah’s purge of the high places runs “in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, and as far as Naphtali” (2 Chronicles 34:6).

Israel or Judah?

Israel — the north, both halves. Manasseh’s eastern territory was Transjordan and its western territory bordered Samaria, so both went with Jeroboam in 931 BC. The tribe was deported in two stages: the eastern half in Tiglath-pileser’s campaign around 733 BC, and the western half when Samaria fell in 722.

Of all the northern tribes, though, Manasseh has the most recorded contact with Judah afterward. Manassites are named twice among those who came south to Hezekiah’s Passover (2 Chronicles 30:11, 18); Josiah’s reforming officers collected money “from Manasseh and Ephraim and from all the remnant of Israel” for the temple repairs (2 Chronicles 34:9); and after the exile, “some of the people of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh lived in Jerusalem” (1 Chronicles 9:3). The tribe as an entity was gone, but Manassite families were in the holy city again.

Revelation 7:6 seals twelve thousand from the tribe of Manasseh — listed by name, where Ephraim is not.

Notable people

Gideon, the least man of the weakest clan, who tore down his father’s Baal altar in the night, asked for a fleece twice, and watched God cut his army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred so that no one could claim the credit (Judges 7:2). Jephthah of Gilead. Abimelech, Israel’s first would-be king, and its worst. Jair the Gileadite, a judge with thirty sons on thirty donkeys (Judges 10:3-5). And the daughters of Zelophehad, five women who asked a question no one had asked, and got an answer that became law for the whole nation.

Christ connection

Manasseh is the tribe that was second — the elder son whose father’s hand went to the younger, the half-tribe that never had one homeland, the name that Ephraim’s shadow fell across for a thousand years. And it is the one of the two that Revelation still lists among the sealed.

Gideon carries the same theme into a battlefield. “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, My own hand has saved me” (Judges 7:2). God works with the smaller number, the second son, the weakest clan, the man hiding in a winepress — “so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:29).

Key passages