Tribe

In the Bible, the people of Israel are divided into 12 tribes. A tribe is the largest group of people who belonged together in the world of the Old Testament. People in a tribe are related to each other in one way or another.

A tribe was led by a council of wise men.
Each tribe was subdivided into clans, which in turn consisted of families.

The 12 tribes are linked to the sons of Jacob: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin.
The tribe of Joseph, however, never existed as such; instead, Joseph’s sons Manasseh and Ephraim became the fathers of two tribes. That would make it 13 tribes, except that the tribe of Levi is not usually counted because the tribe did not have its own tribal area.

In the conquest of Canaan each tribe was allotted its own area by Joshua. The tribe of Levi, however, had a special status. The Levites lived on the revenue from the offerings brought to them as the priestly tribe, and they had no area of land of their own.
Because both the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim did indeed receive an area, there were still 12 areas.

When, after the death of King Solomon, the kingdom of Israel split into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the tribes were also separated from each other. The Northern Kingdom (Israel) comprised the tribes of Reuben, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh.
The Southern Kingdom consisted of the tribe of Judah. Officially Simeon also belonged to the Southern Kingdom, but this tribe is barely ever mentioned after the division of the land.

The tribe plays an increasingly minor role in the New Testament. It is only when naming someone’s tribal background that it is still important.