Israelites or Jews?

Do you get confused sometimes?

This is not going to be long, just had a thought after again seeing an editorial by a Jewish writer concerning Amalek and as I again read the scriptures, I decided I should point out something to our Jewish brethren, which I will mention after, again, sharing the pertinent verses.

And Samuel said unto Saul: 'YHWH sent me to anoint thee to be king over His people, over Israel; now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of YHWH.

Thus saith YHWH of hosts: I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he set himself against him in the way, when he came up out of Egypt.

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'

And Saul summoned the people, and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Judah.

1 Samuel 15:1-4

So, Saul, who was a Benjamite, was anointed king by Samuel, who was an Ephraimite, over the people of YHWH, Israel. Samuel tells Saul, the king, that because Amalek confronted Israel as he left Egypt, Saul is to utterly destroy Amalek, which leads Saul to gather a force of 200,000 footmen, who we have to assume are of the people he is king over, i.e. Israel, but then it goes on to say that there were an additional 10,000 of Judah! But wasn’t Judah included in Israel?

The way the verses read indicate that the answer is “no”, Judah at that time was not included in the Israel that Saul was king over: they would have been in the greater Israel that journeyed from Egypt, which is why they participated in the assault on Amalek, but they were not part of the Israel of Saul. There is a distinction between Israel, Judah and Greater Israel, a distinction the Jewish people today tend to leave hazy and very confusing when they refer to the personages of the Bible only in Jewish terms.

The Bible narrative is not confusing, only how it is taught leads to misinterpretation: all the seed of Jacob are Israelites, but only some of them are Jewish.