Who Were the Ashchenaz?

Open your to I Chronicles 1:5. I received this message and an important message because it shows me that this person that follows the Last Days teaching very closely didn’t connect the dots. I asked myself, maybe I should have connected the dots, referring to what this person asked regarding . The question is: “Help. How can the Ashchenaz (-Lost Tribes) be the sons of ? This person, knowing how I like the questions asked, gave me chapter and verse (if you have one that you are asking about). Don’t have me go hunting for it, include it in your message; and that is what this person did. I Chronicles 1:5-6: the family record of through is found in this chapter. Verse five starts with the sons of . Japheth was one of the sons of . It doesn’t say that here but we will go somewhere else where it does. ‘The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and , and , and , and , and , and . And the sons of Gomer; Ashchenaz, and , and .’ I was doing some looking up on so I can understand that more when I ran across this scripture and now I'm confused on Gomer being the father of Ashchenaz. I thought the Hebrew Tribes stemmed from (not Japheth) through Abraham to to Jacob. Absolutely and Scripture does not change that. And by now, if you are like this person that hasn’t connected the dots yet (though I’m pretty sure this person will as soon as they hear where I am going with this question), you are scratching your head also. “I thought the Hebrew tribes stemmed from Shem (not Japheth).” You are correct. Shem and eventually and so forth through Abraham to Isaac to Jacob. I guess names can be duplicated/repeated, but can you help clear this up for me?” That is not what happened here but I will clear it up for you. How can the Ashchenaz (Scythians- Lost Tribes) be the sons of Gomer? They are not. Well the Ashchenaz are the sons of Gomer, but they are not what we know about God’s Word, the Lost Tribes. And I have to clarify that for you and I will. But first let’s go back to Genesis. I went there when I was teaching on this and reading concerning Noah’s family record. I want you to pay attention because it was a good question that shows me that even though I briefly mentioned it and went to the scriptures, it was not caught or connected. Genesis 10:1-3, “Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, , and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after . The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz...” Then verse six gives us the genealogy of the sons of Ham, which we will skip. I like the way it starts there though, “and the sons of Ham”. Then we jump over to verse 21 (after it is done listing all the ), “Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder...” Have you ever noticed that Shem gets an introduction like the father of all the children of Eber and the brother of the elder? Ham does not get that kind of introduction in verse six in God’s Word. That is a subject for another time, but it is interesting. Genesis 10:21, “Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.” Okay. Now we see Shem’s family record starting in Genesis 11:10 (after the incident), “And these are the generations of Shem...” and it starts listing all the generations of Shem and it gets down to verse 27, “Now these are the generations of : Terah begat Abram...” and so forth. Then God calls Abram; and most of you know the story if you’ve been a Christian for a while. And this person is exactly right in this regard, but they are not correct in their assumption or their thinking. “I thought the Hebrew Tribes,” meaning Jacob’s sons (all 12 until Jacob did something under God’s direction with Joseph’s sons, which made them a 13 tribe unit), “stemmed from Shem (not Japheth) through Abraham to Isaac to Jacob.” And that is what you still should keep thinking because that is the only correct answer. So then after what we just read in different places, How can the Ashchenaz (Scythians-Lost Tribes) be the sons of Gomer? So how can the Scythians who are part of the Lost Tribes, who are descended from Eber and Abram (where the promises and all his genealogy after that that follows are promised to) be related to the Ashchenaz? Well they are related but how can they be the Lost Tribes? How can they be Ashchenaz and Hebrew at the same time? I pulled out one of the many bible dictionaries that I have (this happens to be an older one), and about Ashchenaz it reads, “A descendant of Noah through Japheth and Gomer.” That is what we read, in Genesis 10:3 and I Chronicles 1:6. “Eponymous ancestor of the successive inhabitants of an area,” listen closely, “between the Black and Caspian Seas.” Now if you look at a map, you will see the along the northern border of Turkey and the at the center and northern border of Iran. So most dictionaries will tell you the inhabitants of the area were Ashchenaz and they dwelt and lived between the Black and Caspian Sea. So what is it saying? Japheth and Gomer and eventually Ashchenaz dwelt and lived in the areas between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, up in the Caucasus Mountains and even a little further north than that. That is what the dictionaries describe and define as their location or residence. It goes on to say in this particular dictionary that the Ashkenaz, or according to some cuneiform tablets, tell of a tribe of Askunaz or Askuzai who were the allies of the Manai (or Menia.. kind of close to Manasseh isn’t it) in the revolt against the Assyrians in the 7th century (which I already covered that)...and then it goes on to say, and this is where the dictionaries don’t give you the complete story. It goes on to read, “The Ashkenaz are to be identified with the Scythians mentioned by Herodotus.” And I am sure that is what this person is finding in their research as they are checking me out: that the Ashchenaz (because that is what the dictionaries define) were Scythians, and I am saying the Scythians were the Lost Tribes, but Ashchenaz is identified with Gomer, which came from one of Japheth’s sons, which was a son of Noah. So how can it be Hebrew and Ashchenaz at the same time? They are not, but the question is, Why are they not? Now let’s connect the dots. Go to Hosea 1:1-4. “The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms”— because God was so fed up with the unfaithfulness of Israel and Judah, He was going to make a point and He went to extremes to make the point of what was going to happen to them. And He said to Hosea, “ Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms,” Go marry a whore, Hosea. Think about it. I would clear out my ears and bang on my head a couple of times to make sure I’m getting the word of the Lord correctly, “You want me to go marry a whore?” Try getting away with that in today’s religious world or in . “Go marry a whore.” This is not me, this is God’s Word saying this. I’m just reading it. “Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son. And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge [visit] the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.” The house of Israel, the tribes to the north, will cease to exist. Now it was not a genocide that happened, but they will cease to exist as they were known. Verse 5, “And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. And she conceived again.” If one child wasn’t bad enough, with doom predicted from the birth of that child, here comes another one, first a son, now a daughter. “And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Loruhamah”— which means not having obtained mercy—“for I will no more have mercy”—or, I will not add any more mercy—“upon the house of Israel [which is separate from the house of Judah]; but I will utterly take them away. But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen.” Which He did not. “Now when she had weaned Loruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son. Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.” That name means not my people. So what do we have here? 1) He will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel So they are not going to be known by Israel any longer, because He will cause it to cease. 2) He will have no more mercy and will utterly take Israel and it will cease being a nation And don’t confuse it with the Israel that is in the Middle East today. So, no more mercy or not having obtained mercy, and ceasing from being a kingdom of the house of Israel 3) You will be called or be known as ‘not my people’ and I will not be your God But then, Hosea 1:10, “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered...” So how is it going to cease? It will cease being a kingdom where they were originally located in the Promised Land. It will cease being a kingdom there and they will cease from having mercy. They will not be known by God as his people but a time would come when “the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place [meaning a time to come] where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.” Now tie that into the question. Remember, I said the Assyrian Empire went into Israel and took away captives. And the majority of those captives that they took they settled in the areas of the northernest part of Iraq and northwestern areas of Iran, some even further south than that. Now not all the house of Israel were taken as captives because it was in waves. Some fled north into the areas between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, in the Caucasus Mountains area. Now God says they will be not His people; You are not my people and I will not be your God. So this house of Israel that fled or were taken captive and then eventually released decades later—mostly because of the Scythians that fled in that area and started developing a powerful force of people, tribal units of people, that gave the Assyrian Empire hell, literally. And eventually it broke down the Assyrian Empire and the Babylonian Empire came into power. Anyway, they fled north or were taken in captivity and what God’s Word said happened, they lost their identity to history. It is like God the blinders on the historians of the world to not be able to see what developed in the Ashchenaz area. That’s why it is mistakenly connected that the Ashkenaz are the Scythians. The Scythians are the Lost tribes of Israel. They just happened to have settled in the areas of the Ashchenaz and to the world, that force of nature called the Ten Tribes of the Lost House of Israel (that lost their tribal identities, lost their connection with the area they came from completely) historians failed to connect the two and have falsely identified some of the Scythians, which were the house of Israel, as the Ashchenazi. God planned it that way. Hosea 1:9, “Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.” I will not have mercy and I will cause thee, the kingdom of the house of Israel, to cease. That all happened. They lost their identity. Now how can the Ashkenaz be the sons of Gomer? Because they are. BUT, the Ashchenaz—what the Scythian tribes became connected to because they overtook where the Ashchenaz lived eventually—their descendants were absorbed into the society and culture of the house of Israel much like the melting pot the United States became, much like how all the nations of western came into the United States slowly but surely and it didn’t take very many decades to overtake the native people of this country. Prior to the mass colonization from the western European nations, the Indians didn’t blend in with the Western Europeans, they kind of separated themselves. But others did and unfortunately history doesn’t really cover that much regarding how many Indians really did blend in, and decide to leave their tee-pees (no offence to the Indians, but that is what they decided to do) because they saw progress. They say they saw things that they never saw before and how man can live and develop and progress. But that is another story and I don’t want to get into that. So what happened is the Indians either blended in to the melting pot of what we now call the United States, or, as some have done, stuck to their tribal units and they live in remote areas of the desert and so forth. Well that is what happened to the Ashkenaz people, or descendants of the Ashkenaz sons, son of Gomer, Japheth, son of Noah. So bottom line is the Ashchenaz either blended in to the overpowering force of nature called the Lost Tribes of Israel, which lost their identity (but we know who they are now) or they packed up and moved. And that is what happened. So they came to be known as Scythians because of the Lost Tribes of Israel. And just like I read you in this dictionary, the mistake is thinking Scythians and the Ashchenaz people are one and the same, coming from the same father, Gomer. No they are not. Ashchenaz, true Ashchenaz were from Gomer. The ones that went into the area where Ashchenaz lived and took over were the lost tribes of Israel, or the northern tribes which was the House of Israel. And because they would lose their identity, they would lose their God, they would cease being a kingdom known as Israel, they became known as Ashchenaz for a very short time because that is the area they overtook and populated, first by the ones that fled, and then the release of that massive captivity. And they were a formidable foe that gave the Assyrian Empire hell and broke it down, as I preached and taught before in previous lessons. So you are right in that God’s Word says that the Ashchenaz can’t be the house of Israel, but the house of Israel became known as Ashchenaz because they had lost their identity. They lost their kingdom. They lost mercy that God had so much of time after time after time, but they would fall right back into worshipping and following false gods and creating false images. And God had enough. That was their punishment. And it goes on to say that Judah will be dealt with differently, but they will not be forgotten and they were not. Because you cannot cease being a kingdom and yet read in verse 10, “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.”And that is where they started to be a force that God describes here as something that you cannot even number. The problem with historians of the present day or the last few hundred years, and even go back further than that, they assume that this population that grew by leaps and bounds in that area between the Black sea and the Caspian Sea were all from Ashchenaz. No they weren’t. They became known as that because of what God said, “Ye are not my people and I will not be your God.” That is why one of the children of Hosea was named that. They would lose their identity. They would get another identity for a period of time, and then they would move on (most of them westwardly) and they would gain different identities as they moved west. And the main identity that took hold eventually would be the Celtic people—but, that is for another time. Hopefully you have a better understanding how to connect the dots now.

To be continued...

The Last Days Study Guide Who Were The Ashchenaz?

1. Why are the Lost Tribes identified with the Ashchenaz?

2. Where did the Lost Tribes stem from?

3. Where did the Ashchenaz stem from?

4. There are two key words that brings this seeming confusion to an end. What are they?