In Genesis 49, Jacob prophesies about (blesses and curses?) his twelve sons. The first three of them don’t fare well. Jacob recalls Reuben’s offense of taking his concubine (Genesis 35:22) and the murderous violence of Simeon’s and Levi against the Canaanite inhabitants of the city of Shechem (Genesis 34). He demotes all three.

Then Jacob blesses the fourth-born son, Judah, and says that all the other brothers will bow to him (49:8). He also declares that the scepter will not depart from his family (v. 10).

We know that a lasting dynasty comes from the tribe of Judah and that Jesus himself is from that dynasty. So it is easy to think that Judah is the main tribe, the new firstborn son that has the authority that Reuben, then Simeon and Levi, were disqualified from holding. And it seems natural to read Israel’s history as primarily about Judah and how the rest of Israel responds to Judah. We sometimes wonder why Joseph didn’t inherit that honor, based on what happened in Genesis, but the story seems clear.

But that story is wrong. If you read the history of Israel in the Bible straight through from Genesis onward, Judah is not the central character. The story flows straight from Genesis to Kings. And Kings is preoccupied with the Northern Kingdom, a bigger and greater nation than Judah in the South.

Yes, God does establish the Davidic dynasty in order to bring blessing on the nation of Israel. But when David’s household sins eventually overtake his dynasty and lead to political dissolution, the story doesn’t focus on Judah. It focuses on the majority of Israel, the ones who get to claim the name of the whole nation, the Northern Kingdom.

It is not until the story of Israel ends in exile (with the exile of Judah as an epilogue) that the focus really shifts. It does so in a striking manner. We get a new story going all the way back to Genesis. First Chronicles begins: “Adam, Seth, Enosh; Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared; Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech; Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth…” (vv. 1-4). To make Judah the central character in the drama, the Bible literally restarts the narrative going back to creation. Perhaps Seth’s genealogy sets a precedent for this kind of “reboot” as it were:

“This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5:1–3 ESV).

Like the story of Seth, Chronicles goes back to Adam. Before Chronicles, the story has been sometimes detailed and sometimes not, sometime revealing only a few stories in a long vague period of time (Judges) and sometimes almost becoming a biography (the books of Samuel for David). But it has all been in chronological order. Chronicles is the first break in the narrative flow.

Also, in First Chronicles 5, we are explicitly told why the previous narrative climaxed by focusing on the Northern Kingdom. We are told that Judah was never the firstborn of Israel: “”The sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel (for he was the firstborn, but because he defiled his father’s couch, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph the son of Israel, so that he could not be enrolled as the oldest son; though Judah became strong among his brothers and a chief came from him, yet the birthright belonged to Joseph)…” (1 Chronicles 5:1–2 ESV).

Jacob adopted the two sons of Joseph so that they were regarded as brothers to Joseph’s brothers. Ephraim and Manasseh became two major northern tribes. If they had the birthright, we need to read the Bible from that perspective. If we do that, it becomes more understandable why God would send Elijah and Elisha as a new Moses and new Joshua. The Northern Kingdom was a the center of God’s covenant.

Perhaps this is also why it is important that, though Jesus was of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of David, he is identified as a Nazarene. Even a demon identifies Jesus according to his hometown away from Jerusalem and Judea (Mark 1:24). Those identifying themselves with the tribe of Judah, dismissed Jesus as a Samaritan (John 8:48). The Gospels show us the power center of Jerusalem acting like an onerous Rehoboam towards the sons of Joseph. As a son of Joseph, Jesus champions them and sets them free. Like Jeroboam, Jesus had to flee to Egypt from a king in Jerusalem who was acting like Pharaoh (1 Kings 11:26-40). Jesus thus inherits not only the royal authority of David, but the birthright of Israel. He is both the son of David and the heir of Jeroboam the Ephraimite, of the tribe blessed preeminently by Israel himself (Genesis 48:14-20).

Mark Horne is a member of the Civitas group, and holds an M.Div from Covenant Theological Seminary. He is assistant pastor at Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, and is the executive director of Logo Sapiens Communications. He writes at www.SolomonSays.net, and is the author, most recently, of “Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men” from Athanasius Press.