Jews, Israelites, and King David... the Convert??

In the time of Christ, there was a high degree of prejudice against non-Jews who wanted to worship God. Gentiles were not allowed to participate in worship at the temple in the same way as the Jews and were not seen by the Jews as spiritual equals. Modern Judaism does not carry this prejudice. They maintain that "converts" have the same status as those who are born Jewish, commonly citing King David as an example of a “convert” who was righteous and did many great things in the scriptures.

But wait! David was the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Ram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah!!! (I knew all of those genealogies would come in handy someday!)  Since these men were all Israelites from the tribe of Judah, why do they say that David was a “convert?”

The book of Ruth is about a woman who legitimately was a “convert” – she married an Israelite man (a Jew to be precise), who died, but she was later redeemed by one of his relatives, Boaz (who was also a Jew). As pointed out in the above lineage, Boaz was David's great-grandfather. Because Ruth, the great-grandmother of David, was not from the tribe of Judah, modern day Jews do not consider any of her descendents to be Jewish.

This is a common teaching in Judaism, and you may have heard the rule anecdotally that you are only considered Jewish if your mother is Jewish. This rule is called “matrilineal descent,” and the justification for this teaching is based on the commands instructing the Israelites not to take foreign wives. To demonstrate why this teaching is not biblically founded, let’s divert for a minute and talk about the difference between Jews and Israelites.

Most people today do not understand the biblical distinction between “Israel” and “Judah.” It’s really not that difficult: Israelites are the descendants of Israel (a.k.a. Jacob), and Jews are the descendents of Judah, who was one of the twelve sons of Jacob. All Jews are Israelites because Judah was one of the sons of Israel. On the other hand, there were 11 other tribes of Israel – one for each of the other 11 sons of Jacob. Therefore, not all Israelites are Jews: only the Israelites from the tribe of Judah are Jews.

The commandment used to justify matrilineal descent discouraged Israelite men from marrying women from other nations – meaning nations other than Israel. Remember, though, that not all Israelites are Jews, and there is no commandment that in any way prohibits men and women from the 12 different tribes of Israel from intermarrying. Therefore, if matrilineal descent applies to the Jews, then it must have applied to each of the other 11 tribes as well. For example, you could only be a Levite if your mother was a Levite, and you could only be a Reubenite if your mother was a Reubenite, and so forth.

With this understanding, a contradiction to this teaching is found in Judges 20-21. The tribe of Benjamin was destroyed by the other 11 tribes of Israel in a war. The 11 tribes later came to regret this action because they had nearly killed off the entire tribe of Benjamin, leaving only 600 men alive. Interestingly, chapter 21 indicates that all of the Benjamite women must have been killed, because the Israelites were worried about how to find replacement wives for the remaining Benjamites:

Judges 21:15-17

And the people grieved for Benjamin, because the LORD had made a void in the tribes of Israel. Then the elders of the congregation said, “What shall we do for wives for those who remain, since the women of Benjamin have been destroyed?” And they said, “There must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin, that a tribe may not be destroyed from Israel.

 Obviously, if matrilineal descent was the only legitimate way to be a Benjamite, then the other tribes would have known immediately that there was nothing that they could do to restore the tribe of Benjamin because they had killed all of the Benjamite women.

This clearly contradicts the practice among the tribes. Furthermore, the inheritance of land went through the men, regardless of the tribal affiliation or nationality of their wives, even if the wife was from a Gentile nation, such as Ruth was. If God were to insist on matrilineal descent, then He certainly would not have allowed “non-Israelite” children (i.e. with Israelite fathers and Gentile mothers) to take the inheritance of the “true” Israelites. God made no such distinction about “converts” as opposed to true Israelites; therefore, neither do I: King David was a Jew.