Revelation 7:5-8

Were sealedis not genuine except in the first and last clauses: and even then it is strictly a participle, not a verb: read " of the tribe of Judah, 12,000 sealed, of the tribe of Reuben, 12,000, of the tribe of Gad, 12,000, &c.… of the tribe of Benjamin 12,000 sealed." It is a question whether there is any principle in the order of the names. Judah is no doubt named first, as the tribe of David and of the Son of David: then Reuben as the eldest son of Israel, while Joseph and Benjamin, the two youngest, come last. Gad and Asher, Simeon and Levi, Issachar and Zebulun are also mentioned in pairs, according to their parentage and the order of their births: but the pairs themselves are not grouped either in order of age or of the dignity of the mother. It is curious, and has never been really satisfactorily accounted for, that while we have Josephgiven under that name, instead of Ephraim, we have Manasseh mentioned coordinately as one of the twelve tribes: room being made for him, not as in many O. T. enumerations, by the omission of Levi, who had no part nor inheritance with his brethren, but by the omission of Dan. Numbers 13:11 is some sort of analogy for the name of Joseph being appropriated to one of the two tribes descended from him: for the omission of Dan, the nearest analogy is the omission of Simeon in the blessing of Moses, Deuteronomy 33. The traditional view is, that Dan is omitted because Antichrist will come of that tribe: but the grounds for that opinion are very slight; it rests mainly on this omission itself, for no one would naturally understand Genesis 49:17 as implying that Dan would be an evil power. Others have suggested that Dan is omitted because they early fell into idolatry (Judges 18); but all Israel fell into worse idolatry, sooner or later: others again imagine that this tribe had been long extinct, because it is omitted in the enumeration of the tribes in the early Chapter s of Chronicles: but Zebulun is also omitted there, though both tribes were powerful in David's time, 1 Chronicles 12:33; 1 Chronicles 12:35. The case is not quite parallel where, in Revelation 21:12; Revelation 21:14, we have only room for the names of twelve tribes and twelve apostles: it will follow from Ezekiel 48:31-34, that Dan isthere included, and that Joseph only counts as one: and though either the name of St Paul or St Matthias (probably the former) must be omitted to keep the number of the apostles down to twelve, yet the omission is not pointed or express. We have no occasion to ask there whySt Paul is omitted, while here we cannot help asking why Dan is: probably there is a reason, but we had better confess we do not know it. It is worth noticing that in Revelation 7:7 there is some authority for the reading Isascharthe name is always so spelt in the O. T., though traditionally pronounced as in the A. V.