The twelve tribes of Israel

The Tribe of Reuben

Son of Jacob by Leah · Name means See, a son (Leah said, the LORD hath looked upon my affliction) · Settled east of the Jordan, in the tableland of Moab

Reuben was the firstborn son of Jacob by Leah, and his tribe settled east of the Jordan River. Though he was the eldest and should have held the birthright, Reuben forfeited his place of leadership through sin, and his father Jacob prophesied that he would not excel. The tribe never rose to prominence, and its story is a sober reminder that being first by birth is not the same as being faithful.

Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father’s bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.Genesis 49:4 (KJV)

Reuben the man, the firstborn

Reuben was the eldest of the twelve sons of Jacob, born to Leah, who was the unloved wife. When she bore him she said, Surely the LORD hath looked upon my affliction, and named him Reuben. As the firstborn he stood to inherit the double portion and the leadership of the family, the birthright and the blessing that belonged to the eldest son.

Reuben is not painted all dark in Scripture. When his brothers plotted to kill Joseph, it was Reuben who tried to save the boy, urging them to cast him into a pit rather than shed his blood, meaning to come back later and deliver him to his father. When he returned and found Joseph gone, he tore his clothes in grief. Later, in Egypt, it was Reuben who offered his own sons as surety for Benjamin. He was not without conscience, but he was, in the end, unsteady.

The great failure of his life came when he lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, a grasping at his father's authority that Jacob never forgot. Genesis records it plainly and briefly, and its shadow falls across the blessing Jacob would speak over him at the last.

Jacob's blessing: unstable as water

When Jacob gathered his sons to bless them before he died, he began with Reuben and named both his dignity and his ruin. Thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. It was the language of high honor, everything the firstborn should have been.

Then the blessing turned: Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed. The word for the firstborn became a word of loss. Reuben would not lead. The birthright passed, as the Chronicler later explains, to the sons of Joseph, while the rule and the royal line went to Judah. Reuben kept his place among the twelve, but not the crown of the eldest.

It is one of the honest, hard moments of Genesis. The one born first is not the one who leads, and the reason is given without flattery. Position is not the same as character, and the Bible never pretends otherwise.

The tribe and its territory

When Israel came to the edge of the Promised Land, the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, asked Moses for the land east of the Jordan, because it was good for their many cattle. Moses granted it on the condition that their fighting men cross over and help their brothers conquer Canaan first, which they did. So Reuben settled in the tableland east of the Dead Sea, in territory that had belonged to Moab, exposed and far from the heart of the nation.

That choice, made for the sake of flocks, left Reuben on the frontier. In the Song of Deborah, when the tribes were called to battle, Reuben lingered among the sheepfolds to hear the bleatings of the flocks, and the poem says that for the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart. Being east of the Jordan, the Reubenites were among the first carried away when Assyria came. The tribe that started with every advantage quietly faded from the story.

There is one noble moment in the tribe's history. When the eastern tribes went home after the conquest, they built a great altar by the Jordan, and the rest of Israel almost went to war against them, fearing they had fallen into false worship. But Reuben and Gad explained that the altar was no rival to God's altar; it was a witness, that the LORD is God, so that in later years no one could say the eastern tribes had no part in Israel. They named it Ed, which means witness. It was Reuben's care that the tie to the whole people of God, and to the true worship of the LORD, should never be broken.

Reuben in God's plan

Reuben's life is a warning written into the very first pages of Israel's family: gifts and birthright count for nothing without steadiness and holiness. Yet even here grace is not absent. Reuben is not cast out; he remains one of the twelve, sealed among them in the vision of Revelation, where twelve thousand of the tribe of Reuben are numbered among the redeemed. The man who could not excel is not forgotten by God.

The birthright that Reuben lost did not vanish; it was given, and in God's ordering the rule went to Judah, from whose line the Messiah would come. Reuben's fall makes room, in the strange economy of Scripture, for the rise of the tribe from which Christ was born. Even our failures, in the hands of God, are woven into a plan larger than ourselves. The gospel does not begin with our worthiness, and Reuben stands at the head of the tribes as living proof that God's purposes rest not on the strength of the firstborn but on the mercy that raises up whom it will.

A note on counting the twelve: Jacob had twelve sons, but the tribes are reckoned in more than one way in Scripture. The tribe of Levi was set apart for the priesthood and received no territory of its own, and Joseph, given the double portion of the firstborn, was counted as two tribes through his sons Ephraim and Manasseh. So when the land was divided the tribes still numbered twelve, with Levi outside the count. Different lists in the Bible reflect this: the blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy leaves out Simeon, and the sealed tribes in Revelation 7 omit Dan and Ephraim while naming Levi, Joseph, and Manasseh. The number twelve is preserved as a sign of the whole people of God.

Related: The Tribe of Judah · The Tribe of Gad · Jacob in the Bible · All twelve tribes