Judah’s Missing Son
The Gospel of Matthew opens with the genealogy of Jesus beginning with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. Then we read in verse 3, “Judah begot Perez and Zerah of Tamar…” Judah’s first two sons, Er and Onan, had died (Gen. 38:7, 9), but three sons survived: Perez, Zerah, and Shelah, also spelled Shela (Gen. 38:5, 29, 30). Yet nothing is said by Matthew concerning Judah’s son Shelah. What happened to him?
The New Bible Dictionary says, “Shela, son of Arpahchshad of the family of Shem, and father of Eber (Gen. 10:24; 11:12-15; 1 Chron. 1:18-24). Youngest son of Judah by Shua (Gen. 38:5; 46:12), promised by Judah to his daughter-in-law Tamar after Er and Onan had died. Father of the Shelanites (Num. 26:20). In Neh. 3:15 RV, the name of the pool better known as Siloam. AV gives Siloah.” Shelah was important enough to give his name to the famous baptismal Pool of Siloam (John 9:7, Lamsa) where Jesus healed the blind man. The word Siloah or Siloam is another form of Shelah. Significantly, Eber, son of Shelah, gave his name to the covenant nation as the source of the word “Hebrew.”
We also read of the fall of “the tower in Siloam” in Luke 13:4. Barnes Notes says, “For what purpose the “tower” here referred to was erected is not known; nor is it known at what time the event here referred to occurred. It is probable that it was not far from the time when the Saviour made use of the illustration, for the manner in which he refers to it implies that it was fresh in the recollection of those to whom he spoke.”
Barnes adds, “The name Siloah or Siloam is found only three times in the Bible as applied to water – once in Isa. 8:6, who speaks of it as running water; once as a pool near to the king’s garden in Neh. 3:15; and once as a pool, in the account of the Saviour’s healing the man born blind, in John 9:7-11. Josephus mentions the fountain of Siloam frequently as situated at the mouth of the Valley of Tyropoeon, or the Valley of Cheesemongers, where the fountain long indicated as that fountain is still found. It is on the south side of Mount Moriah, and between that and the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The water at present flows out of a small artificial basin under the cliff and is received into a large reservoir 53 feet in length by 18 feet in breadth. The small upper basin or fountain excavated in the rock is merely the entrance, or rather the termination of a long and narrow subterranean passage beyond, by which the water comes from the Fountain of the Virgin.”
Biblical names have meaning; “a name is a sign” (nomen est omen), and “Shelah” (Strong’s H7956) is similar to the Hebrew, “shalah” (H7952), meaning to mislead or be negligent. According to biblical law and custom, Shelah was required to “raise up seed for his brother” (Gen. 38:8) by marrying his late brother’s wife, Tamar, and having children to continue the family line and heritage. He showed disdain for that idea, possibly because Tamar’s two previous marriages had ended in the death of both her husbands. Due to superstition perhaps, he may have been afraid of meeting the same end! Interestingly, Shelah later had a son named Er, the name of his deceased brother who died without carrying on the family line.
Tamar, however, was a resolute young woman who refused to be denied and devised a plan of her own. Posing as a prostitute, she seduced her father-in-law Judah, and conceived twins: Pharez and Zerah; you can read about the important world history of their descendants in W.H. Bennett’s wonderful book, “The Story of Celto-Saxon Israel,” newly reprinted. But what about Shelah and his descendants?
The Old Testament has little to say about the man Shelah, but it does give us an interesting clue. We read in Genesis 38:2, “…Judah saw and met a daughter of Shuah, a Canaanite; he took her as wife and lived with her… she conceived and bore a son and named him Shelah. [They were living] at Chezib when she bore him.” (Amp.) Chezib, also known as Cozeba or Achzib, was in the Shephelah in the valleys of Elah and Soreq to the west of Jerusalem.
The Shelamites were evidently an important tribe in the king’s service, for we read in 1 Chronicles 4:21-23 (CEV), “Judah also had a son named Shelah, whose descendants included Jokim and the people of the town of Cozeba [Achzib], as well as Er who settled the town of Lecah and Laadah who settled the town of Mareshah. The people who lived in Beth-Ashbea were also descendants of Shelah, and they were experts in weaving cloth…but these family records are very old. The members of these clans were the potters who lived in the towns of Netaim and Gederah and worked for the king.”
The Shephelah was conquered by Assyrian King Senacherib in 701 B.C. in his campaign against Hezekiah. (Mordechai Cogan, “The Raging Torrent: Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia relating to Ancient Israel”). The largest city in the Shephelah was Lachish, and the British Museum displays a famous wall carving of this conquest from the Assyrian king’s throne room in Nineveh. The Prophet Micah (1:10-15) describes this defeat. Shelah’s descendants located in the Shephelah were subject to being swept up in the Assyrian exile and deported to the northern reaches of the Assyrian Empire, joining the earlier exiles of 732 and & 721 B.C.
After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, this posterity of the royal line of Judah would have joined their tribesmen and escaped through the Caucasus Mountains to the north in Europe. Due to this pathway, their descendants are known to us today as “Caucasians.” It is a significant and long-ignored fact that the lion of Judah is found in cities and regions stretching from Eastern Europe to Scotland. Yet there were never any lions in Scotland! The full-color study, “Symbols of Our Celto-Saxon Heritage” by historian W.H. Bennett beautifully illustrates the dozens of European heraldic emblems with Israelite symbolism.
The Jewish people themselves have not settled the question of “who is a Jew?” Jewish scholars have long admitted that they have no heritage in ten-tribe Joseph, the House of Israel. But are the descendants of Judah—Perez, Zerah, Shelah and their families—only found in Judaism today? Biblical history and Israelite heraldry clearly point to Europe and the British Isles. Few today acknowledge the biblical underpinning of the British unicorn, symbol of the House of Israel, and the Scottish lion, symbol of the House of Judah. The joining of lion and unicorn in the kingdom and throne of Great Britain is of more biblical significance than many appreciate!
