Reader's Questions
This page is under construction!
Please feel free to send us your questions regarding any historical or Biblical topics. See our submission page.

1 Ki. 10:32, “In those days the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel...” –before
their final complete exile.
1 Ki. 14:15, Israel scattered “beyond the river,” not all in one place.
2 Ki. 17:6, The Assyrian king “captured Samaria and exiled Israel”
Deut. 29:28, “cast them into another land, as it is this day”
Isa. 5:26 “the end of the earth”
Isa. 11:11-12, “the four corners of the earth”
Isa. 27:13 (Vulgate), “those lost from the land of Assyria”
Isa. 49:9, “say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Show
yourselves.” An address to the lost ten tribes according to Jewish midrash “Pesikta
Rabbati 31:10”
Isa.
49:21, (Ten Tribes:) “where had they been?”
Jer. 15:4, “I will cause them to be removed into
all kingdoms of the earth”
Hos. 2:14, “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness,”
not a return to Canaan.
Hos. 8:8, “Israel is swallowed up now among the nations”
Hos. 9:17, “wanderers among the nations”
Ezra 1:15, ONLY “Judah and Benjamin” returned; remaining ten tribes did not return
“Israel and Judah... developed more or less independent of the other, Israel
in the north and Judah in the south; and only gradually did circumstances bring
them together, and then came the inevitable clash of interests, religious as
well as political.” –"Hebrew Origins," Theophile
James Meek, 1936, p.76
“Israel as a kingdom was never restored from Assyria, as Judah was from Babylon
after 70 years.” –Jamieson, Faucett, Brown Commentary, p.650
“There never was a real return from the exile, although some individuals doubtless
returned...the captivity of Israel did not actually terminate at 538 [B.C.], nor,
in fact, ever.” –Geo. Ricker Berry, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, “Was Ezekiel
in the Exile?” pp.89, 92 (Journal of Biblical Literature 49 (1930)
“Many of the towns in southern Judah and Simeon were not reoccupied after the
exile. This process was quite as disastrous as it is portrayed in the Old Testament...”
–Thos. Davis, “Shifting Sands,” Oxford Univ. Press, 2004
“That the Redeemer comes ‘from Zion’ [Isa. 59:20] for Israel implies that Israel
is in exile...” –G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson, “Commentary on the New Testament
Use of the Old Testament,” Baker Academic, 2007, p.674
“The exile, into all lands, among all nations, was as irrevocably decreed as was
the destruction of the city.” –Charles C. Torrey, Yale University, Journal of
Biblical Literature 56 (1937), p.206
“...the returnees came only from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin —the exiles
in Babylon. The ten tribes did not return...the loss of the [ten] tribes marked
the greatest demographic defeat inscribed in Jewish memory since Biblical times.”
–Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, “The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History,” Oxford Univ. Press,
2009, pp.17, 117
“Evidently it was a token return...” –Frank Moore Cross, Harvard University, “A
Reconstruction Of The Judean Restoration,” Journal of Biblical Literature 94 (1975),
p.15
“The tree of Israel, grown from one root with various branches, was cut into pieces.”
–John Calvin, cited in Boer, “John Calvin,” pp. 190-191
“The ten [tribes] which had previously been carried away being scattered among
the Parthians, Medes, Indians, and Ethiopians never returned to their native country,
and are to this day held under the sway of barbarous nations.” –Sulpitius Severus
(circa. 360-420 A.D.), Severus, Sacred History, bk ii, ch. Ii, in Schaff, et al.,
transl. Sulpitius Severus
“Jewish people often thought that ten of the twelve tribes were lost and would
be restored only in the end time.” –Craig Keener, “A Commentary on the Gospel
of Matthew,” Eerdmans, 1999, p.315
The ten tribes’ not returning opened “a huge wound that does not heal.” –Talmudic
Haga, Sefer Ha-Berit Ha-Hadash
Please feel free to send us your questions regarding any historical or Biblical topics. See our submission page.