The Ten Tribes Feasted While the Exile Was Already Sealed

The prophet Amos was not a subtle man. In the sixth verse of the eighth chapter of his book -- a text dated by scholars to the mid-eighth century before the common era, during the reign of Jeroboam II in the northern kingdom -- he describes a society that has perfected the art of luxury while ignoring the approach of its own destruction. "Woe, the tranquil of Zion," he begins. "And the secure of Mount Samaria."

The Midrash Rabbah on Numbers and related collections of the Midrash Rabbah tradition, compiled and edited over several centuries though drawing on materials from the tannaitic period onward, preserved two closely related readings of these verses that illuminate each other through comparison. Both readings begin with the same observation: when the text calls these people "foremost of the nations," it means they trace their lineage through two eponymous ancestors -- Shem and Ever. From Shem comes the priestly lineage of the world. From Ever comes the name "Hebrew." These are people of ancient and honored descent. And they are sprawled on their couches.

What do they talk about at their feasts? They compare their great men to the great men of the other nations. The exchange has the quality of a dinner-table game: who is as wise as Bilam, who is as wealthy as Haman, who is as mighty as Goliath? And then Israel comes to these conversations and raises them: was Ahitofel not wiser? Was Solomon not wealthier -- the king who caused silver to be in Jerusalem like stones? Was Samson not mightier? The nations agree. Israel wins the comparison every time. And then they go back to drinking.

The specific indictment that follows in the Amos passage reads, through the midrashic lens, as an anatomy of moral collapse that requires no foreign invader to explain. They lie on beds of ivory. They sprawl on couches, soiling them -- the midrash is explicit that the word seruḥim describes their habit of trading wives with one another, contaminating their households with seed that is not their own. They drag their finest animals before them before feasting, choosing the fattest sheep and the most fattened calves. They sing over wine with lyres, comparing themselves to David -- but where David played to honor God, they play to honor their own appetites. They anoint themselves with oils from Antioch and from the Patguta wine region, whose vintage was specifically known, the Sages note, for making the body more susceptible to licentiousness.

"But they are not distressed over the destruction of Joseph." This line from Amos is the pivot. Joseph, in the prophetic tradition, represents the northern kingdom of Israel -- the ten tribes. They are feasting in Joseph's territory while being "not distressed" over what is coming for Joseph. The rhetorical brilliance is that the people who should be most distressed are the people doing the feasting.

Then comes the detail that the second midrashic reading, preserved in a passage from a later compiler in the same tradition, makes startlingly precise. On the day that Sennacherib, king of Assyria, marched against the fortified cities of Judah -- a day recorded in Isaiah 36, in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah -- three sentences were sealed simultaneously in heaven. Rabbi Abba bar Kahana, citing Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman, states this as a single breath: the sentence of the Ten Tribes to fall at Sennacherib's hand was sealed. The sentence of Sennacherib to fall at Hezekiah's hand was sealed. And the sentence of King Uzziah to be struck with leprosy was sealed.

All on the same day. A nation's fall, its destroyer's fall, and a king's disease -- sealed simultaneously in a single divine decree, while the Ten Tribes were still lounging on their ivory couches drinking from wine goblets with pipes attached so they could drain the cup in one motion without lifting their heads.

The midrash draws a contrast that runs throughout the rabbinic tradition's understanding of divine judgment. A flesh and blood king shows favor to the public but makes distinctions when dealing with individuals. God does the opposite: whether it is the anointed priest who sins, the entire congregation that errs, or a single individual -- the standard of judgment is applied without favoritism. The sentence sealed for the Ten Tribes was not exempted because of their lineage from Shem and Ever. The comparison game they played at their feasts -- we are greater than Bilam, greater than Haman, greater than Goliath -- availed them nothing.

They were exiled at the head of the exiles. The thirteen hot springs, one for each tribe and one shared, were taken away. One remained, the Sages say, as a sign -- not as comfort, but as a pointer to the principle that transgression costs exactly what it costs, no more and no less, and that the day of reckoning arrives on schedule whether or not anyone at the table noticed it approaching. The full account of the Ten Tribes' downfall is preserved across multiple traditions in the Ginzberg Legends corpus and referenced in many texts across the Midrash Aggadah tradition.