1 Chronicles 5:23-26--The Half-Tribe of Manasseh

1 Chronicles 5:23-26
English Standard Version
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The Half-Tribe of Manasseh
23 The members of the half-tribe of Manasseh lived in the land. They were very numerous from Bashan to Baal-hermon, Senir, and Mount Hermon. 24 These were the heads of their fathers' houses: Epher, Ishi, Eliel, Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah, and Jahdiel, mighty warriors, famous men, heads of their fathers' houses. 25 But they broke faith with the God of their fathers, and whored after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. 26 So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, the spirit of Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and he took them into exile, namely, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan, to this day.

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This is the last of the Trans-Jordan people.  While we don't know exactly where Baal-hermon is, it would make sense that it is in the same region as Mount Hermon, which also mentioned.  Today, Mount Hermon forms a border with Israel, Lebanon and Syria.

We again talk about geographical boundaries, then heads of families, but there is no census data here for these people.  There is however some narrative by the priests to explain how the half-tribe of Manasseh broke faith with God and whored after the false gods of the land they lived in.  They had just seen God completely destroy the people that worshiped these gods, and yet they decided to give their allegiance to the losing side.  For this reason, God stirred up Pul, king of Assyria, and then Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, to take them into exile.  That is, the Assyrians took all of the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh that were the Trans-Jordan tribes.  They were the easiest for Assyria to attack, so they were the first of the Israelites to be taken into exile.  They were taken by Assyria to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan, and they had not returned to their ancestral land at the time this was written after the Babylonian exile.  We know that not all of them died, for they are included in the 144,000 witnesses in the book of Revelation. God knows who they are and where they are at right now.  Their genealogy and history have not escaped Him, even if it is not listed here.