Tribes of Israel
Naphtali
Naphtali’s land was the first to be carried into exile and the first to see the Messiah. Isaiah put both facts in the same sentence, and Matthew quoted it when Jesus moved to Capernaum.
On this page
At a glance
The man behind the tribe
Naphtali was Bilhah’s second son, born into the bitter competition between Rachel and Leah. Rachel named him with the language of a contest finally won: “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed” (Genesis 30:8). Nothing further is recorded of the man himself.
The blessings
Jacob: “Naphtali is a doe let loose that bears beautiful fawns” (Genesis 49:21) — an image of freedom, speed, and grace rather than force. Some read the second half as “gives beautiful words,” which would fit a tribe that produced Barak and whose hills later heard the Sermon on the Mount.
Moses: “O Naphtali, sated with favor, and full of the blessing of the LORD, possess the lake and the south” (Deuteronomy 33:23). “The lake” is the Sea of Galilee, and Naphtali got exactly that.
Territory
Upper Galilee — a long strip from the Sea of Galilee north to the sources of the Jordan, with the western shoreline where Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin would later stand (Joshua 19:32-39). Nineteen fortified cities including Kedesh-naphtali, a city of refuge and Barak’s home town (Joshua 20:7; Judges 4:6).
It was fertile, well watered, and dangerously exposed — the first territory any army coming down from Damascus or Assyria would reach. That geography decided Naphtali’s history.
History in outline
c. 1909 BC — Born
Bilhah’s second son (Genesis 30:7-8).
c. 1400 BC — Galilee allotted
Naphtali receives the northern hill country and the lake shore, but does not drive out the people of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath, who become forced labor (Joshua 19:32-39; Judges 1:33).
c. 1250 BC — Barak and Deborah
Barak of Kedesh-naphtali musters ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun at Mount Tabor and destroys Sisera’s chariot army at the Kishon (Judges 4:6-16).
c. 1250 BC — “Risked their lives to the death”
Deborah’s song singles the tribe out: “Zebulun is a people who risked their lives to the death; Naphtali, too, on the heights of the field” (Judges 5:18).
c. 1180 BC — With Gideon
Naphtali answers Gideon’s call against Midian and joins the pursuit (Judges 6:35; 7:23).
c. 1000 BC — With David
37,000 men of Naphtali, with a thousand commanders, come to Hebron to make David king (1 Chronicles 12:34).
c. 966 BC — Hiram the bronze-worker
“The son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in bronze,” casts the pillars, the sea, and the vessels of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 7:13-14).
c. 900 BC — Raided
Ben-hadad of Damascus strikes “all Chinneroth, with all the land of Naphtali” (1 Kings 15:20).
733 BC — Deported
“Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria came and captured Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and he carried the people captive to Assyria” (2 Kings 15:29).
c. 700 BC — The promise
“But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea... The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:1-2).
c. 715 BC — Josiah’s reform reaches north
Josiah purges the altars “as far as Naphtali” (2 Chronicles 34:6).
c. AD 28 — Capernaum
“Leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled” (Matthew 4:13-16).
Israel or Judah?
Israel — the north. Naphtali went with Jeroboam in 931 BC and stayed in the northern kingdom for its whole two-hundred-year life.
It was also the northern kingdom’s front line. Damascus raided it under Ben-hadad, and Assyria annexed the whole territory in 733 BC — a decade before Samaria fell — deporting the population and reorganizing Galilee as an Assyrian province. Naphtali did not return as a tribe.
But the region was repopulated, partly by Israelites who drifted back and partly by others, which is why first-century Galilee was called “Galilee of the Gentiles” and why Judeans looked down on its accent. Some remnant of the northern tribes clearly persisted: the prophetess Anna, who greeted the infant Jesus in the temple, was “of the tribe of Asher” (Luke 2:36), and Jesus’ own disciples were Galileans.
Notable people
Barak, who would not go into battle without Deborah and is nevertheless named in Hebrews 11:32 among the heroes of faith. Hiram, the half-Naphtalite bronze-caster who made the pillars Jachin and Boaz and the great sea for Solomon’s temple. And, though not by tribal descent, the men who worked the lake that Moses promised to Naphtali — Peter, Andrew, James, and John all fished the Sea of Galilee, in the territory Moses had said would be “full of the blessing of the LORD.”
Christ connection
Isaiah 9 is the hinge. The territory that was first to be humiliated — brought into contempt, stripped, and deported — is named as the place where the light would dawn, and the promise runs straight on into “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given... and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
Matthew reports the fulfilment with deliberate flatness: Jesus moved house to Capernaum. The Messiah did not begin His public ministry in Jerusalem but in the tribe that had been gone the longest, among people the capital regarded as half-lost. Naphtali is God’s answer to anyone who assumes He starts with the strong.
Key passages
- Genesis 30:7-8 — Naphtali’s birth and name.
- Genesis 49:21 — “A doe let loose that bears beautiful fawns.”
- Deuteronomy 33:23 — “Possess the lake and the south.”
- Judges 4:6-16; 5:18 — Barak at Tabor; a people who risked their lives to the death.
- 1 Kings 7:13-14 — Hiram of Naphtali, the bronze-worker of the temple.
- 2 Kings 15:29 — Deported by Tiglath-pileser, 733 BC.
- Isaiah 9:1-7 — The land brought into contempt, and made glorious.
- Matthew 4:13-16 — Jesus settles in Capernaum, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.