June Month of Poetry #5: The ten lost tribes

Today's historical mystery poem is about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to the people removed from the then-Kingdom of Israel after it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE. The tribes were: Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, and Ephraim. Israel had earlier split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah (which comprised the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin). 

Side note on Judah: it survived until the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, and was later re-formed as an autonomous Persian protectorate when Judean exiles returned after the fall of Babylon about 50 years later. Judah became the area known as Judea in Roman times, until the expulsion of the majority if its Semitic population in two waves in 70CE and 135CE. Modern Jewish people are named after Judah, and primarily gain their descent from these people.

Back to the ten tribes - the historians' assumption has always been that the captured people were assimilated and blended within the Assyrian empire, losing any sense of separate identity. Later DNA-based research has also validated the idea that the Samaritans, who remained in the Judea area, were almost certainly descendants of some fleeing members of the tribes. It is also quite likely that Judah absorbed a fair few refugees from Israel, swelling its own numbers and providing a path for some members of the ten tribes to remain part of Judaism.

However, the relatively rapid and wholesale dispersal of the ten tribes has proved to be fertile ground for speculation both plausible and implausible. Many groups claim descent from the ten tribes, or claim others are so descended (a la the Mormon belief that the ten tribes are among the ancestors of Native American tribes and possibly also the Polynesians.) More than that, the symbolic weight of the ten tribes, and the eschatological value of their possible discovery / return, has fuelled myth and story from the middle ages onwards.

I thought it might be interesting to try writing this one as a psalm. Not sure how successful it is, but it's good to try new things! I borrowed the opening line from Psalm 15 (King James Version because I wanted the richness of the older language) to get me started. Yes, I realise the Psalms translated into English lose a lot from the original, but there it is.

Lamenting Psalm

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

now that we have been brought low by thy judgement

carried away by our enemies, to vanish like seed in the wind

crying out for thee who we had abandoned

folding our tents under strange stars

I will sing unto thee, Lord, here in my exile.

Have mercy on us, for we faint with desire for thee

we will not trust in chariots or in the strength of our arms

we will make no more the graven idol and deliver unto it the blood of the calf

we will trust only in thee, Oh Lord, if thou shouldst restore us to Jerusalem

Oh Lord, who called Abram from Ur and led thy prophet Moses through the surge of the sea

we are worn thin by our groaning

poured as bitter water from a broken vessel on the sands

deliver us from darkness and the torment of this place

protect us from the lions that roar at night and leave us trembling

the beasts that would eat our flesh and drink of our blood

save us from the grave


and from the oblivion of forgetting thee and thy works

our fathers trusted in thee, and thou delivered them from evil

casting down their enemies at their feet

so we could proclaim, Oh Lord, thy greatness in all the earth

Why, Oh Lord, dost thou hide thyself from us?

why has thou forsaken us to trouble and woe?

How long, oh Lord, will Reuben weep?

How long will the women wail for Simeon in their chains?

Lord, we who dwell now amongst strangers in strange lands

we who voyage wide across thy vast and teeming firmament

we who will forget that we were thine, Oh Lord of Heaven

we who will vanish like dropped ink in a pool of still water

Lord, we say thy name and bow our heads

thou has brought us into the dust and dust we will remain

no one can keep alive his own soul, if thou dost not will it so

thou art the King of Glory, and our mouths shall say it so

until our children forget Jerusalem

until our children forget thy holy name.

Selah