Like the seven dwarves, most people can name a few Israelite tribes but very few can name all of them. Likewise, it is generally understood that there are twelve tribes, but that assumption isn’t true. There are actually thirteen tribes of Israel. This is not an alternative interpretation or conspiracy, it’s right there in the Old Testament.
Eleven tribes are named after the sons of Jacob/Israel born of four different women (two wives, two concubines), as follows in order of birth:
Reuben (Leah)
Simeon (Leah)
Levi (Leah)
Judah (Leah)
Dan (Bilhah)
Naphtali (Bilhah)
Gad (Zilpah)
Asher (Zilpah)
Issachar (Leah)
Zebulon (Leah)
Benjamin (Rachel)
The outlier is Joseph, firstborn of Rachel, his father Jacob’s favorite. (He had to work 14 years to earn her, but that’s a different story.) Yet there is no tribe of Joseph.
Instead, the twelfth and thirteen tribes are the descendants of Joseph’s two sons: Ephraim and Manasseh. Just as the Messiah’s genealogy is tainted with Canaanite and Moabite blood, it is of interest that the lineage of these two Israelite tribes is half Egyptian. As viceroy, Joseph was a high official in the Pharaoh’s court and was married to Asenath, daughter of the high priest of Egypt. He was even mummified and given a royal Egyptian burial, as was Jacob. This could not have pleased YHWH. although his comments are not recorded.
Joseph’s sons’ offspring are referred to as half tribes, which is a bit misleading (in fact Manasseh had by far the largest land grant). The origin of this tribal distribution is the inheritances assigned by Jacob/Israel on his death bed. According to tradition, first born Reuben should have been awarded a “double portion,” but Jacob revoked his inheritance because of his bad habit of doing the nasty with Dad’s concubine Bilhah (she was also birth mother to his brothers Dan and Napthali). As a consequence, Reuben’s extra share of the estate was given to Joseph’s sons. They were full tribes and received land allotments in the Book of Joshua.
There is a slightly funny passage in Genesis 38 which describes the blessing scene.
“So Joseph brought them from beside his knees, and he bowed down with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh with his left hand toward Israel’s right hand, and brought them near him.” - Genesis 48:12-16.
But simple Bible math shows that the two “boys” were at least twenty years old, so being beside Joseph’s knees would have been awkward.
The thirteenth tribe is Levi: the Levites, Moses’s clan. If Judah is the tribe with the highest profile historically and geographically, then the Levites have to be a close second. As the priestly group, they did not get a land allotment, but instead got dinner. As the officials in charge of sacrifices and – by extension – the economic benefits of the Tabernacle/Temple, they were on the receiving end of animal barbeques, shew bread and grain offerings. If you have ever wondered about the high standards specified for sacrificial offering ingredients found in Leviticus and elsewhere, consider who wrote the scripture and who benefitted.
Although God assigned the Levites to the priesthood, it was certainly not because of their moral standards. Levi himself was one of the ringleaders of a horrible, sneaky and otherwise reprehensible massacre of recently circumcised men of Shechem in Ex. 34 (see Fun Bible Story X). Later in Ex. 32, when Moses calls for men to execute attendees of the raucous golden calf soiree, it is the Levite family who answer the call. That’s 3,000 YHWH-sanctioned murders about ten minutes after the sixth commandment got inscribed.
Furthermore, we can find Levites behaving very badly in at least two other stories in Judges. So their appointment to the Hebrew priesthood must have been yet another component of YHWH’s inscrutable plan.