Many references to Joseph and Judah appear in Jewish and Mormon scriptures, most of them prophesying Israel’s latter-day restoration and the dynamics of the relationship between these two divisions of the original twelve-tribed kingdom of Israel. They include the patriarch Jacob’s blessings upon his sons before his death, the Hebrew prophets’ predictions of Israel’s gathering and reunification, Book of Mormon predictions of Israel’s scattering and restoration, and revelations received by the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith on the role of the tribe of Ephraim.
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The Tribes of Israel
THE LOST TRIBES
722 years before the birth of Christ, the armies of the Assyrian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel (the land of the ten northern tribes) and carried the inhabitants off into captivity. The Kingdom of Judah in the south, was barely spared from the same fate by the strenuous efforts of the prophet Isaiah and their righteous king Hezekiah (and some large-scale, last minute repentance). Little more than 100 years later, the Assyrians, in turn, were conquered by the Babylonians. When their Assyrian overlords were subjugated, however, the Israelite “exiles” did not return as they were, by this time, already lost to history.
722 years before the birth of Christ, the armies of the Assyrian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel (the land of the ten northern tribes) and carried the inhabitants off into captivity. The Kingdom of Judah in the south, was barely spared from the same fate by the strenuous efforts of the prophet Isaiah and their righteous king Hezekiah (and some large-scale, last minute repentance). Little more than 100 years later, the Assyrians, in turn, were conquered by the Babylonians. When their Assyrian overlords were subjugated, however, the Israelite “exiles” did not return as they were, by this time, already lost to history.
Orson Hyde’s Dedicatory Prayer of the Holy Land
In 1840, in Nauvoo, Illinois, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith sent Orson Hyde, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, to Palestine to dedicate the Holy Land for the return of the Jews. The Jewish return to Palestine and latter-day restoration was a prominent theme in the Book of Mormon and in Joseph Smith’s divine revelations. Orson Hyde’s long and arduous journey from Nauvoo to Palestine included stops in Amsterdam and other European capitals, where he sought to persuade Jewish rabbis that the time had come for Jews to resettle their land.
The Prophet Zenos’ Allegory of the Olive Tree
Written by the ancient Josephite prophet Zenos, as recorded in the Book of Mormon, the following allegory of an olive tree predicts Israel’s division into three branches separated from their mother tree that God would plant in different parts of the world, as well as Israel’s latter-day reunification. The allegory was preserved in a scriptural record kept on brass plates by descendants of Joseph, who carried it out of Jerusalem with a party of Jewish émigrés traveling to the American continent around 600 B.C. It appears in Jacob 5:1–77 in the Book of Mormon.
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