17:18 the tribe of Judah only. Judah was the tribe of the Davidic kings, and so the nation was called Judah. However the tribes of Benjamin, Simeon and Levi had to a large extent been assimilated into Judah. Also, spiritually minded individuals from the northern tribes had filtered back into Judah. Note II Chronicles 11:16; Acts 26:7; James 1:1; etc., so that Judah eventually came to represent all twelve tribes. The ten tribes departed into Assyria never returned to the promised land in a tribal sense, and this fact has lent itself to many speculations about the present whereabouts of the “ten lost tribes.”