The 12 Sons of Jacob

 

Jacob’s 12 sons born to him by his two wives, Rachel and Leah, and their respective handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah. He also had a daughter, Dinah, by Leah.

Aside from Joseph, the brothers are not portrayed as righteous men in the text of Genesis. Reuben slept with Bilhah (Genesis 35:22), a sexual sin and also something the Bible elsewhere portrays as an attempt at usurping his father’s headship (1 Kings 2:13-25).
Simeon and Levi took vengeance on the man who defiled their sister by deceiving and killing him, his father, and all the men of their city (34:1-31).
Judah’s family dysfunction is documented in Genesis 38, culminating in him impregnating his daughter-in-law while thinking she was a pagan temple prostitute.
The brothers also teamed up to kill Joseph but settled on selling him into slavery.  

Though Jacob was considered a righteous man, the story of his family depicts his great shortcomings as a father. It is also a testament to the pitfalls of polygamy. Many believe God approved of the practice in the Old Testament, but it was never endorsed. The text repeatedly reveals the numerous problems it creates in the home. 

Thematically, Genesis spends much time on the relationships of the brothers in the family of promise. Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and now these 12 are all cases of fierce sibling rivalry.

However, with each subsequent family, we see improvement. Cain killed Abel. Ishmael had to be sent out of the home. Jacob had to run from Esau, but they later reconciled. And the sons of Jacob betrayed Joseph, but he forgave them and saved them. 

The 12 sons also make up the heads of the 12 tribes of the nation of Israel, though the two lists are not perfectly parallel As their families grew into the tribes, Joseph’s 11 brothers each had their own tribe. But Jacob counted Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, as his own and gave them each an inheritance and blessing (Genesis 48:5-6). 

This disparity is accounted for in various ways throughout Scripture to keep the number at 12. For example, in Revelation 7, Joseph is counted but Ephraim is not. Most importantly, when the Israelites went into the land of Canaan, the priestly tribe of Levi did not receive a land allotment since they would be scattered throughout the land in priestly service (Deuteronomy 18:1-2). This meant there were 12 tribal lands when they settled the Promised Land.