Some of the passages that list the tribes of Israel are Genesis 35:23-36, 49:3-27; Exodus 1:2-5; Numbers 1:20-43; 1 Chronicles 2:1-2; and Revelation 7:5-8, which inspired the question. The two that are different are Numbers and Revelation. Numbers removes Levi and Revelation removes Dan. In both instances, the removed names are replaced with Manasseh. Our clue is found in the same name that is used as the replacement. Manasseh was one of Joseph’s sons. In Genesis 48:3-20, Jacob adopts both Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph’s sons, to be his own. In doing this, these two sons would receive Joseph’s allotment of land and make 13 tribes of Israel. However, in Joshua 14:1-5 and Joshua 21 we see that the tribe of Levi is given no allotment of land. The reason for this is because they are the priestly tribe and are to be given some cities to live in. Being the priestly tribe, they were supported by the other tribes and therefore did not need a large amount of land for agricultural purposes. Again, they did not need to produce agricultural resources because the other tribes gave them portions of theirs. For this reason, in Numbers Levi is removed from the list and Manasseh is inserted in his place. Now in a list of the tribes, you will either have the actual children of Jacob listed or you would have two names mentioned for Joseph. In most, if not all of those cases, Joseph and Manasseh are mentioned. Because Ephraim was the most favored of the two sons, he would be considered to be equivalent to Joseph. For that reason, you would either have Joseph named or Ephraim, but not both. Again, in most cases Joseph is mentioned. Because Joseph was the most favored of his sons, he and or his sons would always be listed. If a biblical writer chose to list Levi and Manasseh, then he would just remove one of the other sons of Jacob from the list to make 12. Again, the purposes of the lists of the tribes of Israel are either to list the actual sons of Israel or to list the tribes of Israel that had an allotment of land. In both cases there are only twelve. Now if you combine the reasons, there would be thirteen tribes, but the Bible does not combine those reasons. For this reason, the Bible can rightly say there are only 12 tribes of Israel and have differences in the lists, because of the two different purposes and for the above reasons are there differences in the lists.
Resource tip: The way to go about finding the answer to this question and the way I discovered the answer is the following. I tried to find a lists of the references that list the tribes by using my exhaustive concordance. A concordance is a book that lists all the places a word is mentioned in the Bible. In looking up tribe and twelve, it became too difficult to find the lists. So I decided to google tribes of Israel mentioned in the Bible. I happened to find a website that listed the passages that contain a list of the tribes of Israel. I then took all the lists and listed the tribes they name and compared those list to find the differences. I focused on the different names and looked in my concordance and in my Bible dictionary to learn about these individuals. Now I already knew that Manasseh was Joseph’s sons, but you would find this out by using the above two resources. Once I discovered the explanation that Genesis 48 provides and the information about Levi in Joshua, the answer begins to come together.
