[13] "The Ten Lost Tribes," page 12.
[14] "All the House of Israel wholly" is found in Ezek. xi. 27, and is used of those of the southern kingdom who were already in captivity, as contrasted with those who were still with Zedekiah in Jerusalem and Palestine. The parallel to Ezek. xi. is Jeremiah xxiv., where the two parts of the nation—those already in captivity and those still in the land—are also contrasted under the symbol of the two baskets of figs, one of which was "very good" and the other "very evil." When Peter, for instance, said, "Let all the House of Israel know assuredly that God hath made this same Jesus both Lord and Christ," he addressed the "Jews" in Palestine, as every one knows. "My chosen," or "Whom I have chosen," apart from its use as applied to the priests and Levites, is used sixteen times of Zion and Jerusalem, and just as many times of the whole nation. Deut. vii. 6; xiv. 2; Psalm xxxiii. 12; Isaiah xli. 8, 9—may be turned up as examples. "My servant" is used seventeen or eighteen times in the second half of Isaiah, and when not directly applied to the Messiah, as in xlii. 1; xlix. 3-7; lii. 13; and liii. 11—is a designation of the whole people; and it must be remembered that Isaiah prophesied primarily "concerning Judah and Jerusalem." The term as a designation of the people is also used five times by Jeremiah in the same inclusive sense, i.e., of the whole nation.
PART II.
THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE TEN "LOST" TRIBES.
ARE THE TRIBES LOST?
But now discarding the whole heap of Anglo-Israel fiction, let us glance at the question of the so-called "lost" Ten Tribes in the light of Scripture history and prophecy. Anglo-Israelism first of all loses the Ten Tribes, for whom it claims a different destiny from the "Jews," whom it supposes to be descendants of the Two Tribes only, and then it identifies this "lost" Israel with the British race. But there is as little historical ground for the supposition that the Ten Tribes are lost, in the sense in which Anglo-Israelism uses the term, as there is Scriptural basis for a separate destiny for "Israel" apart from "Judah."
The most superficial reader of the Old Testament knows the origin and cause of the unfortunate schism which took place in the history of the elect nation after the death of Solomon. But this evil was to last only for a limited time; for at the very commencement of this new and parenthetical chapter of the nation's history it was announced by God that He would in this way afflict the seed of David, but not for ever (1 Kings xi. 39).
A separate kingdom, comprising Ten of the Twelve Tribes, was set up under Jeroboam in B.C. 975, and its whole history, of about 250 years, is one long, dark tale of usurpation, anarchy, and apostasy, unrelieved by the occasional gracious visitations of national revival which light up the annals of the Judean kingdom under the House of David.
After many warnings and premonitory judgments the kingdom of the Ten Tribes was finally overthrown in the year B.C. 721, when its capital, Samaria, was destroyed, and the bulk of the people carried captive by the Assyrians, and made to settle in "Halah and Habor, and by the river Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (2 Kings xvii. 6; 1 Chron. v. 26).
Now I would beg you to notice two or three facts.