9And they sang a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. 10And you have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God. And they will reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:9-10.
I will take the order in Revelation 5:9 as the standard for this series. For no other reason than this is the first of these verses we have encountered. Notice the first item in Revelation 5:9 is Tribe [φυλή]. God has ransomed every tribe through the blood of Christ. In this example ‘tribe’ is the top of the list. Why would that be? It is clear from the list that all four categories are important and included. Christ’s blood has redeemed people for God from every tribe, every language, every people and every nation. Why not just take one of these four categories?
- Christ’s blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe.
- Christ’s blood has ransomed people for God from every language.
- Christ’s blood has ransomed people for God from every people.
- Christ’s blood has ransomed people for God from every nation.
Isn’t this overkill? Surely one category will suffice? Does it matter that all four are stated? If only one is needed, which would you choose? Would you prioritise tribe, language, people group or nation? Don’t these options all have the same meaning or intent?
I know what Omawusi would say. Allow me to introduce you to her. She is a nurse in Ward 31 of the Middlemore Hospital – the Cardiac Ward. I met her during my stay in the Ward after my stroke in 2023. The change of shift for the new nurses had come to relieve the ones who had been looking after me overnight. The charge nurse was introducing all of the ladies to me and she mentioned Omawusi’s name as she went down the line of nurses. She was clearly African and had an intriguing name. I heard it clearly and when I talked with her a short time later I used her name. She was surprised and said, “Oh my God, you got my name right. No one here pronounces my name correctly. But you heard it minutes ago and said it perfectly. How did you do that?”
I asked Omawusi where she came from and she said, “Yoruba.”
My next question was “Did you live in Lagos, Nigeria?”
Again she was shocked and asked, “How did you know that?”
I replied, “I know the Yoruba are the predominant tribe in the South of Nigeria along the coast. The Hausa are in the central area and the Igbo are in the North Eastern corner and the Fulani are the nomadic pastoralists in the North.”
She asked, “How did you know all of that about my country? Most people here know nothing about my country.”
I told her, “I was a Geography teacher in High School here in New Zealand and taught the senior school Nigerian physical geography and the influence on settlement patterns. Now I work with Wycliffe Bible Translators and am aware of the distribution of the tribes and languages in a number of countries of Africa and elsewhere.”
Omawusi didn’t regard herself as Nigerian. She didn’t classify herself after the name of her country. Rather, of highest importance to her, she was from the Yoruba tribe.
The same is true of Indonesians. Their tribe is mentioned first, not their nationality; they are Bugis, Torajan, Javanese, Balinese, Batak, not Indonesian first and foremost. In fact, the difficulty for the Indonesian government to unite the nation as Indonesians are the tribal differences. Don’t misunderstand my point here. I am not saying Indonesia is filled with rampant tribalism. It is not. Africa is perhaps the prime example of tribalism. Think Uganda and Idi Amin, Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe, Rwanda and the Hutu and the Tutsi. The examples abound.
What is it that gives rise to racial and tribal differences? In the first instance it’s physical appearance and the differences we detect between how we look and how others appear. The first determining characteristic is skin colour. We have just been informed of a child of friends of ours whose boss has fired her because she has dark skin. So what’s new you say? This injustice happens all over the world. Get over it! If only we could, but it seems we can’t. It might change your perspective on this anecdotal example when you know the child is an adopted tribal girl living with our friends as their daughter. The boss is a gentille, urban-dwelling-Thai-national. Oh yes their skin colour is different but not so different.
We thought it amusing living in Indonesian villages, and there were many who long to be white. Women would come to Tania and plead for the obat (medicine) to make them white. They did not want to be brown or dark skinned. They would give anything to have a lighter skin toning. One woman carried it to extremes. When Tania told her there was no obat for making her white, she refused to believe it. She started searching through Tania’s things in our temporary bedroom, set up in the front room and separated only by a curtain. She was looking for cream or tablets to lighten her skin colour. I would joke with the people who tried that tack with me and say. “Isn’t it interesting you are tanned and want to be white; people in New Zealand spend time lying in the sun, longing to be tanned and look more beautiful. No one is content but me!” They would say, “But you are white!” I would say, “Take another look at me. Can you honestly say I am white? Is the skin on my arm “white”? Actually I have Spanish blood and tan easily.”
It would amaze me in Indonesia how the people could look at someone and say, “He is Batak”, “He is Torajan”, “He is Malukan”. And they would be right. I couldn’t get over how they could just look at the facial features of strangers and correctly name their tribal group. Until, after a long time, I could do it myself. Ethnic groups, people groups do have some consistent facial features which distinguish them from other groups. But does that determine differences in ability, intelligence, education and class? No, however some believe it does and act like that. I have seen and heard of some of the most blatant acts of racism in Indonesia and other similar countries. Where tribal people are denigrated because of their physical characteristics or the way they speak.
I personally had a disadvantage when we made our move to Jakarta to work with Kartidaya because my Indonesian initially had been learned in Ujung Pandang (Makassar), Sulawesi. I had to learn Indonesian quickly in order to begin teaching Linguistics at UNHAS University. My Indonesian dialect was adequate for Eastern Indonesia, but I was regarded as a country-bumpkin in the church in Jakarta. My satisfaction came when I took a team from Jakarta to teach Deeper Bible in Palu, Sulawesi. After a few days the pastors, church members and Bible Translators were asking me to be the one to teach them, because they couldn’t understand the Jakartans’ accent. Strike a blow for equality!
I will expand these thoughts when we move on to Ethnic differences of People groups, the fourth in our list of four [ἔθνους]. Of course our next term to deal with is ‘language’, which again includes components of the other categories as you will see. What I find fascinating is that John included these four terms, seven times in the text of his letter. But don’t forget, he was told to write what he saw and what he heard. I have to believe that God wanted these words included in the text of Revelation seven times. What I find more interesting still is that these are the four technical terms most used and most debated in modern day missiological circles. I have to conclude God knew where the debate would go all these centuries later.
It might interest you to know Wikipedia claims there are 5,000 tribal people groups worldwide. That is the same statistic claimed by numbers of mission organisations when talking about the people groups in the context of the Christian concept of Unreached People Groups (UPGs). We will discuss this statistic when we get to the fourth category of People Groups.
People aren’t social. They’re tribal. Race doesn’t exist, but tribes are real.
Mat Johnson
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jane Howard
Don’t waste your time being what someone wants you to become to feed their list of rules, boundaries, and insecurities. Find your tribe. They will allow you to be you while you dance in the rain.
Shannon L. Alder
Real friends say bad things to your face and the good things behind your back.
Steven Aitchison