Acts 26:7

Acts 26:7. Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. Before discussing the deeply interesting and important questions suggested by these few words, which represent, no doubt, a long and elaborate portion of this ‘Apology' of St. Paul's, we will quote the comment of Professor Plumptre on the words ‘our twelve tribes,' who are here represented as waiting for the ‘promise:' ‘It will be noted that St. Paul, like St. James (James 1:1), assumes the twelve tribes to be all alike sharers in the same hope of Israel, and ignores the legend so often repeated and revived, that the ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel, after they had been carried away by Shalmaneser, had wandered far away, and were to be found under some strange disguises, in far-off regions of the world. The earliest appearance of the fable is in the apocryphal 2Es 13:40-46, where they are said to have gone to “a country where never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep the statutes which they never kept in their own land.” The apostle, on the contrary, represents the whole body of the twelve tribes as alike serving God (with the special service of worship) day and night.'

In addition to the above-quoted contribution to the much-vexed question respecting the fate of the ten tribes of Israel, it is worthy of note to remember that the words of Ezra 6:17; Ezra 8:35, clearly indicate that many of the ‘lost' ten tribes must have returned with Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites (Ezra 1:5-11), to the old loved Land of Promise.

Whether or no the descendants of the lost portions of the ten northern tribes have been preserved a separate people in order one day to swell the ranks of that miraculously preserved nation, known in all lands still as Jews, is uncertain. This much however is clear, and perhaps in the discussions which constantly take place respecting the lost tribes is too much left out of sight, that although the present Jews are largely, possibly mostly, made up of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, still vast numbers of the descendants of the tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel, we see from the above passage of Ezra, must be reckoned among the Jews of our day. This fact was certainly recognised by both Paul and James some eighteen centuries ago. It is therefore inaccurate to speak, as is usually the practice, of the lost ten tribes. Now the promise to which all the twelve tribes of Israel hoped to come, as has been already explained above, was eternal life with God; and the attainment of this eternal life, the orthodox Jew was conscious, was bound up with the work and office of the coming Messiah. Paul, carefully trained in this orthodox Jewish school by one of its most famous and, popular teachers, the Rabbi Gamaliel, held this belief firmly from his student days; but Paul had subsequently arrived at a further stage of the common belief than had the Pharisees who now thirsted for his destruction: he had already come to the accomplishment of the hope to which they with their services and sacrifices were earnestly looking on to. In the Crucified and Risen Jesus of Nazareth, Paul knew that the beginning of the promise was reached, that the long-looked-for hope was accomplished, and that eternal life with God had begun for himself and all who recognised this Jesus as Messiah. Had He not vanquished death? Was He not the first-born of the new race who, through the gates of death, had entered into life?

The words, ‘instantly serving God day and night,' refer to the elaborate and never-intermitted service of worship and sacrifice, with its symbolism ever pointing to another and a higher life ever pointing, too, to the sacrifice on the cross, which won for men their access to this higher life. They failed to read aright the awful lesson taught by their perpetual sacrifices, that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. For the strange expression ‘day and night,' compare Psalms 134:1, ‘Bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house of the Lord.'