Reu´ben (Behold a son), eldest son of Jacob by Leah (;; ). His improper intercourse with Bilhah, his father's concubine wife, was an enormity too great for Jacob ever to forget, and he spoke of it with abhorrence even on his dying bed (; ). For his conduct in this matter, Jacob, in his last blessing, deprived him of the pre-eminence and double portion which belonged to his birth-right, assigning the former to Judah, and the latter to Joseph (; comp.; ). The doom, 'Thou shalt not excel,' was exactly fulfilled in the destinies of the tribe descended from Reuben, which makes no figure in the Hebrew history, and never produced any eminent person. At the time of the Exodus, this tribe numbered 46,500 adult males, which ranked it as the seventh in population; but at the later census before entering Canaan, its numbers had decreased to 43,730, which rendered it the ninth, in population (; ). The Reubenites received for their inheritance the fine pasture-land (the present Belka) on the east of the Jordan, which to a cattle-breeding people, as they were, must have been very desirable ( sq.; 34:14;; ). This lay south of the territories of Gad (; ), and north of the River Arnon. Although thus settled earlier than the other tribes, excepting Gad and half Manasseh, who shared with them the territory beyond the Jordan, the Reubenites willingly assisted their brethren in the wars of Canaan (;; ); after which they returned to their own lands (); and we hear little more of them till the time of Hazael, king of Syria, who ravaged and for a time held possession of their country (). The Reubenites, and the other tribes beyond the river, were naturally the first to give way before the invaders from the East, and were the first of all the Israelites sent into exile by Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, B.C. 773 ().
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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