America in the Bible: Manasseh, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel

By Mikkel S. Kragh

The United States of America has a population of 331 mio. Of these app. 51% or 169 mio. self-identify their ethnic origin as belonging to one of the nations, we consider to make up the 10 Tribes of Israel in Europe.^{^[i]} Additionally, app. 5.8 mio. Americans consider themselves Jews with or without religion.

America is a daughter-nation of Britain, just like Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But unlike the latter three, America has become an empire in its own might, comparable to the British Empire in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The English-speaking nations as a whole represent the tribes of Joseph, but America in particular represents Manasseh. Britain and the other English-speaking nations, on the other hand, represent Ephraim.

We do not suggest that only Israelites of Manasseh are found in America. But as a nation, the USA represents the modern-day tribe of Manasseh.

2520 years of punishment fulfilled in America and Britain

In Leviticus 26:12-28 God told Israel that if they persisted in worshipping other gods, He would punish them “seven times”. After those “seven times” had expired, Israel would be let loose from God's punishment. In Biblical terminology “a time” means 360 days or 360 years. 7 x 360 years = 2520 years. If we calculate the date of the conquest and deportation of the individual tribes, we should therefore arrive at the year when they were loosed from God's punishment.

The tribe of Manasseh in Bashan was conquered by Assyria in 745 BC. 2520 years later we end up in AD 1776, the year the United States of America was founded by the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4^th.

The tribe of Ephraim was conquered and deported by Assyria in 721 BC. 2520 later we end up in AD 1801, which was the year the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was formed.

By calculating the 2520 years of punishment on Israel we can thereby confirm that Britain is Ephraim and the USA is Manasseh (in Bashan, at least).

Joseph and European immigrants to America

Joseph was taken to Egypt as a slave before he ended up as the prime minister of Egypt. Then his brothers came and bowed down before him and Joseph took them under his protection.

The story of Joseph is similar to European immigration to America. Most of the immigrants from Europe left their home countries because they were poor and there were better possibilities in America. These Americans of European descent in average became richer and more powerful than their kinsmen in Europe, and after World War II the United States protected Western Europe from Soviet aggression and helped Western Europe rebuild its economy through the Marshall Plan.

The meaning of Manasseh's name

Biblical names matter. They are not coincidental. The name Manasseh means “causing to forget”, because Manasseh was born after Joseph had gotten out of prison and become prime minister of Egypt and gotten a wife: “And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house.” (Gen 41:51) Most European immigrants to the U.S. must have had similar thoughts as Joseph after they had come to America.

In Joseph's giving of names to Manasseh and Ephraim we also see the reason why Ephraim got a greater blessing than Manasseh. “And the name of the second called he Ephraim: For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” (Gen 41:52)

There is a parallel between the names of Manasseh and Ephraim and the names of the first four sons of Jacob and Leah: Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. When Leah gave names to her first three sons, the meaning of their names reflected the fact that Leah thought that Jacob did not love her and hopefully would love her because she gave birth to them. Which Jacob did not. But when Judah was born, Leah did not think she was hated but simply praised the Lord: “And she conceived again, and bare a son: and she said, Now will I praise the LORD: therefore she called his name Judah; and left bearing.” (Gen 29:35)

The parallel to Leah's first four sons is that when Joseph gave name to Manasseh, Joseph thought of all the misery and affliction he had left behind. But when Joseph gave name to Ephraim, he spoke of fruitfulness.

Throughout the Scriptures there are several examples of brothers where the younger got the greater blessing instead of the older: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob. In each case, the older was more materialistic than the younger. Although there is nothing bad or sinful in Manasseh's blessing, it is still more materialistic than Ephraim's.

The U.S. is huge in size (#4 in the world), great in wealth (by far the largest economy in the world and by far the highest living standard of large nations), and great in numbers of inhabitants (#3 in the world).

Americans have a down to earth mentality and take pride in the fact that they do not have a king but that all citizens are considered equals. This egalitarian mentality is in contrast to the British (Ephraim) class mentality but is related to the egalitarianism of France (Reuben).

Machir = America?

The only one of Manasseh's grandsons who is mentioned as being “brought up upon Joseph's knees” is Machir (Gen 50:23). The meaning of Machir is “salesman”, which also denotes materialism, which again is a characteristic of the “American Dream”.

America is named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first to recognize that the Americas were the “fourth continent”. The Holy Spirit may have led the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to apply Amerigo's name to the New World in 1507, because that would be the new homeland of the descendants of Machir.

Jephthah and the American Revolution

In the Book of Judges chap. 11-12 we read about the judge Jephthah from the land of Gilead, which was the territory of Manasseh in Bashan. Jephthah defeated the Ammonites who were about to invade Israel. But the Ephraimites complained to Jephthah that he had not asked them to send men to the battle, and said that they would kill Jephthah and his house. In this story we find several parallels to Britain-Ephraim and America-Manasseh.

First, the Ephraimites said to Jephthah that the Gileadites were fugitives from Ephraim: “Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim: and the men of Gilead smote Ephraim, because they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites, and among the Manassites.” (Judg 12:4)

This is similar to the American Revolution, where the British colonists in the 13 American colonies rebelled, and the English viewed them as “fugitives” and illegal separatists from England. And like Jephthah and the Gileadites defeated Ephraim, so the 13 American colonies defeated England.

After the defeat the Ephraimites tried to get back to the territory of Ephraim but were stopped at the Jordan by the Gileadites. In order to ascertain who were Ephraimites and who were not, the Gileadites told the men to pronounce the word “shibboleth”. But the Ephraimites could not pronounce the H in the word and pronounced it “sibboleth”: And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephramite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right.” (Judg 12:5-6)

This silent H is also found in English spoken in England. An example is from the musical My Fair Lady, where the English Eliza says: “In 'artford, 'ereford, and 'ampshire, 'urricanes 'ardly ever 'appen.” The dropping of the ‘H’ in English-English may originate from the Norman Conquest, because in French the letter ‘H’ often is silent.^{^[ii]}

Geographic similarities between Manasseh and the United States

After the conquest of Canaan, the tribe of Manasseh received two territories. One west of the Jordan River, north of the territory of Ephraim, and another larger area east of the Jordan River in Gilead and Bashan. When the tribe of Manasseh is mentioned in the Bible, it is usually Manasseh in Gilead and Bashan. The tribes of Reuben and Gad also had their territories east of the Jordan River.

In this, there is a similarity with the U.S.A., which is divided from most of the other tribes in Europe. But in the Americas, there is also the French province of Quebec (Reuben). Most of the nations in the Americas are, of course, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking. Even though Spain and Portugal as nations cannot be considered Israelite nations, there is a visible element of the tribe of Gad in those two nations, because the Visigoths (of Gad) conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the 450s AD and became the progenitors of the Spanish and Portuguese elites in the Middle Ages. Latin America therefore has an element of Gad, even though the Latin American nations cannot be considered Israelite nations.

In the Americas we therefore have the tribes of Manasseh, Reuben and Gad, just like these three tribes were east of the Jordan River in ancient Israel.

Bashan and Gilead were large territories and good for raising cattle:

“Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a great multitude of cattle: and when they saw the land of Jazer, and the land of Gilead, that, behold, the place was a place for cattle;” (Num 32:1)

Likewise, the United States is huge in size compared to most other Israelite nations. The U.S. also has more cattle than any other Israelite nation, 93 mio. Compare this with the Israelite nations in Europe which have 60 mio., Canada 11 mio., Australia 24 mio., New Zealand 10 mio., South Africa 12 mio. and the State of Israel 0.5 mio.^{^[iii]}

(Interestingly, both Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh ended up with these territories east of the Jordan, but it was apparently only Reuben and Gad who asked Moses if they could get them. They were originally not supposed to get territory east of the Jordan, but got it anyway. The reason why Manasseh did not ask for that land may be because Manasseh was more blessed than Reuben and Gad.)

Manasseh and the knowledge of our Israelite origin

From the late 16^th cen. to the early 19^th cen. several people are known to have written about the Israelite origins of European nations, including two Frenchmen, a Swede, two Englishmen and a Fleming. But it was only with the lectures by the Scottish clergyman John Wilson in the 1830s and the publication of Wilson's book Our Israelitish Origin (1840) that this precious knowledge became widespread and started the British-Israel movement.

The next great step forward in the popularity of this knowledge took place in the 1930s when the American radio evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong started the Worldwide Church of God, where he also taught about the Israelite origin of European nations.

The fact that people of several nationalities did write about this subject but failed to gain popularity is a parallel to the blessings of the 11 tribes which were smaller than Joseph's blessings. The fact that this knowledge first became popular by the ministry of a Scotsman (Ephraim) and later by an American (Manasseh) is a parallel to Ephraim's and Manasseh's blessings which were larger than those of the other tribes.

Prophetic meaning of Manasseh

Manasseh and Ephraim were Joseph's sons. But because Jacob loved Joseph, he adopted Manasseh and Ephraim as his own sons: “And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee in Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine.” (Gen 48:5)

Jacob had 12 sons, of whom Joseph was one. When Jacob adopted Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, he therefore had 13 sons. Even though Manasseh was older than Ephraim, it was Ephraim who got the birthright. Manasseh could therefore be called “the 13^th tribe”. Since Ephraim and Manasseh were much younger than their uncles, Jacob's sons, they were probably the last of the patriarchs to die. While the patriarchs lived in Egypt they prospered. But after their deaths, the pharaoh of the Exodus assumed office, and he hated the Israelites: “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.” (Exo 1:8)

This is prophetic of our current day and age. Like the patriarch Manasseh, America is the last of great Western nations. After America and its allies have clashed with Russia and China and their allies, a One World Government will be formed, which eventually will be headed by the Antichrist. The Exodus pharaoh is a type of the coming Antichrist.

Manasseh: the 13^th tribe

Including Jacob's two adopted sons Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob therefore had 13 sons. These 13 sons became the ancestors of the 13 Tribes of Israel. Throughout the Holy Scriptures Israel consists of 13 tribes. But still the tribes of Israel are always referred to as the 12 Tribes of Israel, and not the 13 Tribes of Israel. The reason is that 12 is a godly number and 13 is not. 13 is the number of “rebellion, apostasy, defection, corruption, disintegration, revolution”, according to E.W. Bullinger in Number in Scripture. (E.W. Bullinger: Number in Scripture, p. 205) The number 13 is associated with misfortune because it spells the end of what exists. But in itself, it is not necessarily bad. If what exists is bad and it comes to an end, it is good that it ends and it is destroyed. Manasseh being the “13^th tribe” is not bad. It simply means that Manasseh was the last of patriarchs, and that the nation of Manasseh-America is the last of the Western Christian Israelite nations to be a world superpower before the formation of an ungodly One World Government.

America is also deeply connected to the number 13. The U.S. was formed when the 13 colonies rebelled. America is also connected with the meaning of the number 13. The U.S.A. was formed after the American REVOLUTION.

The Great Seal of the United States is a national symbol that was made in 1782. It is used to authenticate official documents. It is also featured on the one-dollar bill. The number 13 is also all over the Great Seal.

On the obverse (front) side there is an eagle holding 13 arrows and an olive branch with 13 olives and 13 leaves. Above are the Latin words: “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of many, one”). The reverse side contains a pyramid with the All-Seeing Eye above. Above are the Latin words: “ANNUIT COEPTIS” (“He favors our undertakings”, which is a quote from the Roman poet Virgil's book The Aeneid (ca. 29-19 BC), where the hero Ascanius prays to the pagan god Jupiter. Below is the Latin phrase of 13 letters: “NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM” (“New World Order” or “New Secular Order”).

The symbolism on the Great Seal is Masonic. That is because most of the Founding Fathers of America were Freemasons, even though the majority of ordinary Americans at the time of the American Revolution were God-fearing Protestants.