a tribe: a body of people who share a common ancestor and form one division within a larger nation
At its core this word names a group held together by bloodline, a division of a people traced back to a single forefather. In its home setting that division is a tribe of Israel, one of the twelve families descended from the sons of Jacob. This is the framework the New Testament simply assumes when it identifies someone as being of the tribe of Benjamin or of Judah, or when it promises the apostles rule over the twelve tribes of Israel.
Revelation stretches the same word outward to cover the peoples of the whole world. In its recurring refrain, every tribe and tongue and people and nation, the tribes of humanity stand alongside the tribes of Israel: mankind seen by its family lines. The two uses are one idea at different scale, a people grouped by descent, whether that people is a single tribe of the covenant nation or one of the many peoples of the earth.
What holds the range together is descent. This is not a nation defined by land and culture, nor simply a crowd or a population, but a group that reckons itself from a shared ancestor.
Nuances
Whether "all the tribes of the earth" means the peoples of the whole world or the tribes of the land of Israel.
- majorityThe peoples of the whole earth, who mourn at the coming of the Son of Man.; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew (ICC), on Matthew 24:30
- minorityThe tribes of the land of Israel, mourning within the near-term judgment in view.; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT), on Matthew 24:30