The 12 Sons of Jacob vs. The 12 Tribes of Israel

This is an easy way to teach the 12 sons of Jacob and how they became the 12 tribes of Israel. Students always understand the changes after this lesson.

Sorry, these are older photos of the visuals I created and not good camera quality.

 Print Sons poster here

Print Tribes poster here

 

I made today's visual using a tri-fold science foam board and clipart from Logos Bible Clips. I found the map free online. I printed everything on cardstock and laminated everything. There are links are at the end of this lesson to download everything but the map.

NOTE: Joseph, Levi, & both of Joseph's sons AND their scroll name tags ...ALSO, the 4 title pieces are attached with Velcro to the board. All the rest are attached with sticky dots. (Found in the scrapbook isle.) The extra pieces with the Velcro are saved in a 6x9 brown clasp envelope attached to the back of the board during storage.

What you see in blue is what I did using the visual while telling the Bible lesson. I either pointed to it, or added/subtracted from the visual.

Lesson found in Genesis 30 and 32 : (After review...) Today we are going to start with Abraham and then we are going to jump to Jacob and the 12 Tribes of Israel.

Download here

When Abraham was 99 years old, God appeared to him. Even though Abraham didn’t have sons, God told him to “Look toward the heaven and count the stars, if you can and that is how many descendants you will have.” (15:5-6) (Explain descendants) He believed what God told him. He said that Abraham would be 'a father of many nations'. Nations and kings would come from his descendants. And, as God promised, Abraham and Sarah had a son named Isaac.

Isaac married Rebekah and they had twins named Jacob and Esau. We are going to spend most of our time talking about Jacob and his family today because through Abraham to Jacob, Jesus was born.

Jacob had 12 sons. Looking at our board, we have Jacob and his 12 sons, from the oldest (Reuben) to the youngest (Benjamin).

 

 

Let's talk about Joseph. Jacob liked his 11th son Joseph the most, and he gave him a coat of many colors. You all know about Joseph. His brothers were so jealous that they put him in a pit and when some traders came by, they sold Joseph for 20 pieces of silver.

 

Joseph ended up in Egypt and did what God wanted him to, and he was 2nd in charge after the governor. His brothers went to Egypt and after a time, Joseph told them who he was and Joseph was able to see his father Jacob again. Joseph had 2 sons named Ephraim & Manasseh. (I held up the 2 sons)

 

Let's look at the board again. The title is The 12 Sons of Jacob. That's easy to understand. [Genesis 32:22-31] One night, Jacob wrestled with a man. When it was close to morning, Jacob found out he was actually wrestling with an angel from God and the angel told him that “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel". Now, we are going to change Jacob's name to Israel. (Original text means angel, messenger from God. This is one of the scriptures that I use to teach the children that angels do not have wings. If the angel had wings, Jacob would have felt them and known who he was wrestling.)

Eventually, the Promised land was divided up. Moses and Joshua, doing exactly what God wanted, were the ones that made the final decisions on who received what land.

Levi was considered the priesthood and took care of all the religious duties. He took care of the tabernacle and everything inside of it.  So, he was not given part of the land. So, we will take him off the board.

Joseph was considered a patriarch and that was considered more of an honor, so he was not given part of the land. A patriarch is a man who rules a family, clan, or tribe. We will take him of the board also.

Now we have 2 empty places! Also, since each person was given a section of land, and they had their whole groups of families living with them, and they had huge families back then, as a group they were each called a tribe. So, we will take down 12 Sons, since we know that each of the 12 sons didn't get a part of the land, and we will change it to The 12 Tribes of Israel.

We are not finished yet, though, we know there were 12 Tribes. Since Joseph was considered a patriarch now, he was not given a portion of the land, the portions were given to his sons. So, we will add Joseph's 2 sons Ephraim and Manasseh to the board to complete the 12 men.

That is how we went from having 12 sons of Jacob to the 12 Tribes of Israel.

Here are the name scrolls

Here are the 15 men (12 sons, Joseph's 2 sons, and Jacob)

Here are the titles
Bible Verse: And He said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. Genesis 32:28 (NKJV)

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.

Used by permission.

This post has more charts and a file folder printable for Jacob's family.

Click here to see the 12 Tribes Game.

Click here to see the Jacob & Sons Trading Cards.

 

(This tent stays up in my class permanently and I switch the banners. I teach a class for 1 year, and mostly teach Acts. I start with a very condensed life of Jesus, lead into Acts and Paul, then finish with letters from Paul, and having a couple of lessons about the old law & the new law.)