The Song of Deborah, one of the oldest poems in the Hebrew Bible, works as a muster roll with commentary. Some tribes are praised, some are asked why they stayed home, and two are singled out for the highest praise: Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that risked their lives to the death on the heights of the field. The same poem earlier notes that out of Zebulun came those who handle the marshal's staff. Elon, one of the minor judges, is also of Zebulun.
The tribe went into exile with Naphtali when the Assyrians took Galilee in 733 BCE, and the name should end there. It does not quite. When Hezekiah of Judah, a generation later, sent messengers through the ruined north inviting people to keep Passover at Jerusalem, the account says most of them laughed at the couriers, but that some of Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and came. It is a small notice and a rare one: a fragment of a deported tribe still present on the ground and still recognisable by name.
The territory's longest afterlife is geographical. Nazareth stands within the old Zebulun allotment, and Capernaum within Naphtali's, which is why the Gospel of Matthew introduces the Galilean ministry by quoting Isaiah on the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. A tribal boundary drawn in the book of Joshua supplies the frame through which a first century preaching circuit is read, and that is now the main reason the name is known outside the tribal lists.