Benjamin, Son of Israel and Rachel: A Name Carried by a Tribe

Who he is, and when

Benjamin (בִּנְיָמִין) is a son of Israel and Rachel, born in the era of the patriarchs, which the era placed on Ussher's chronology (1650) sets at around 1996 BC to 1635 BC. His name first appears in Genesis 35:18 and is still being spoken as late as Revelation. In between it occurs in roughly one hundred and sixty-six verses spread over twenty-three books, which makes him one of the most frequently named figures in Scripture. That count, though, is misleading if read too quickly. The name Benjamin belongs not only to a man but to his descendants, to a tribe, and to a stretch of land, so most of the places where it appears are not about him at all. Judges alone accounts for forty-four of those mentions, and not one of them concerns the son of Rachel personally.

The scenes in Genesis

The man himself is almost entirely a figure in someone else's story. Genesis 43:14-16 shows him being sent down to Egypt with his brothers, and the words spoken over him are his father's, not his own: "May God Almighty give you mercy before the man, that he may release to you your other brother and Benjamin. If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved." Then the narrative moves: "The men took that present, and they took double money in their hand, and Benjamin; and got up, went down to Egypt, and stood before Joseph." Benjamin is taken. He is carried along with the present and the money, an object of his father's fear and of his brothers' bargaining.

His arrival is what changes the room. "When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, 'Bring the men into the house, and butcher an animal, and prepare; for the men will dine with me at noon.'" Joseph is his full brother; the dossier lists Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Dinah and Joseph among his siblings. In this scene Benjamin says nothing that the record preserves. He is seen, and the sight of him moves another man to act.

Sons are recorded for him: Bela, Becher, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Rosh, Muppim, Huppim, Ard and Ahiram (Genesis 46:21), and Jediael (1 Chronicles 7:6). His name then enters the tribal lists of Israel, in Exodus, Numbers 1:36-37, Deuteronomy, Joshua 18:20-21, and the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 2:2 and 1 Chronicles 8:1.

What the tribe did with the name

The heaviest passages that carry the name Benjamin are not about the man, and honesty requires saying so plainly before they are read. In Judges 20:12-15 the tribes of Israel send men "through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, 'What wickedness is this that has happened among you? Now therefore deliver up the men, the wicked fellows who are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and put away evil from Israel.' But Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the children of Israel." Twenty-six thousand men who drew the sword gathered, with seven hundred chosen men of Gibeah.

What follows is grim. In Judges 20:23-25 Israel weeps before Yahweh and asks, "Shall I again draw near to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother?" The answer is "Go up against him," and Benjamin destroys eighteen thousand men of Israel. In Judges 20:30-32 the tactic turns, and the children of Benjamin say, "They are struck down before us, as at the first," while Israel plans, "Let's flee, and draw them away from the city to the highways."

The aftermath in Judges 21:13-18 is one of the saddest paragraphs in Scripture: peace proclaimed to the survivors in the rock of Rimmon, wives given from the women of Jabesh Gilead, and still "there still weren't enough for them." The text says the people grieved "because Yahweh had made a breach in the tribes of Israel," and the elders ask how to provide wives "since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin," so "that a tribe not be blotted out from Israel." The name survives, barely. Later it appears in royal and national records (1 Samuel 10:20-21; 1 Samuel 13:15-16; 2 Samuel 19:16-17; 1 Kings 12:21; 2 Chronicles 15:8-9; Nehemiah; Ezra), and in Ezekiel's vision of the land: "As for the rest of the tribes: from the east side to the west side, Benjamin, one portion" (Ezekiel 48:22-24).

What we do not know

We have no recorded word from Benjamin's own mouth, no account of his character, no note of his death. The dossier preserves his parents, his brothers and sister, his sons, and two scenes in which he is spoken about rather than speaking. Everything else the name carries belongs to those who came after him, and the record does not let us read their courage or their sin back into the man.

The line into the New Testament

The name does not die with the Old Testament. It stands in Acts 13:21, in Romans 11:1, in Philippians 3:5, and in Revelation 7:8. Those four references are all the New Testament witness the dossier carries for this name, and they are enough to show that the tribe nearly blotted out in Judges 21 is still being named when the gospel is preached and when the last book of Scripture counts the tribes of Israel.