ר"ע תיתד תונויצל ינויערה גוחה ,םולשו זוע
If we follow the annals of Simeon and his tribe in the Bible, we cannot help but notice their bitter fate. When Joseph suspects the brothers of spying and wishes to imprison one of them until they bring their younger brother, he takes Simeon (Genesis 42:24). One of the princes of the tribe of Simeon, Zimri the son of Salu, is he who sinned with the Midianite princess in front of Moses and the People of Israel (Numbers 25:6, 14); in the wake of this incident follows a plague in which 24,000 of the Children of Israel perish. The tribe itself suffers from a drastic decline in numbers: from the first census in the desert, in which the tribe numbered 59,300 (Numbers 1:23), the tribe shrinks to a population of only 22,200 (Numbers 26:14) at the time of the second census, a decline of more than 37,000! Likewise we may discern the bitter fate of the tribe in that Moses's blessings at the end of Deuteronomy (chapter 33) include blessings for all the tribes, save Simeon. Additionally, the tribe, in practice, receives no territory of its own, and inherits among the portion of the tribe of Judah (Joshua 19:1). The obvious question arises: Why did Simeon deserve this fate?
We may be aided in our attempt to answer this question by Jacob's statements in our portion in relation to Simeon and Levi. The speech usually referred to as Jacob's blessings to his sons, is definitely not a blessing in the part concerning these two sons:
Simeon and Levi are brothers; instruments of cruelty are their swords. Let my soul not come into their council; to their assembly let my honor not be united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they uprooted an ox. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob and split them up in Israel.
(Genesis 49:5-7)
Most commentators looked for a hint on these verses to the sins of Simeon and Levi for which Jacob cursed them. Nearly all of them agreed on one sin and claimed that Jacob referred to the killing of the people of Shekhem, as hinted in the words "in their anger they slew a man." Yet others saw in Jacob's words a hint to the sin of Joseph, among them Rashi, who comments: "In their self-will they uprooted an ox: they wished to uproot Joseph who was called an ox, as it says, 'The firstling of his oxen, grandeur is his.'" These exegetes, with Rashi at their head, rely on the words of the Midrash Tanhuma. Says Rashi:
Simeon and Levi are brothers- in one plot over Joseph. And they said one to his brother... Come now therefore and let us slay him (Genesis 37:19-20)- Who are they? Could it be Reuben or Judah? But they did not agree to kill him. Could it be the children of the maidservants? But their hatred was not complete, as it says, "And the lad was one with the children of Bilha and with the sons of Zilpa (Genesis 37:2)." Isaachar and Zebulun did not speak in front of their older brothers, so it must have been Simeon and Levi, whose father called them "brothers."
The two sins at issue are sins that stem from lack of self-control and inability to reign in anger, even when justified. The Bible relates that when the sons of Jacob heard of the Shekhem's deed, "The men were grieved, and they were very angry (Genesis 34:7)," yet only Simeon and Levi's anger led them to the cruel act of killing in the city of Shekhem. Regarding Joseph, the Bible writes, "And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all the brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him (Genesis 37:4)," i.e. the brothers all hated Joseph. Yet we have seen that the Midrash and commentators assign responsibility for Joseph's attempted murder to Simeon and Levi. Here, too, we see that only they among the brothers could not contain their emotions, and the plans of Reuben and Judah were needed to save Joseph. Anger and the inability to control it bring the brothers to kill the people of Shekhem; this same anger, originally channeled into the killing of strangers, brings them to wish to kill their brother, too. We learn that there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, and he who is cruel to the Gentile will end up being cruel to his very brother.
According to what we have seen, Simeon and Levi are partners in the same actions; this is reflected, too, in the words of Jacob, who assigns to the two tribes a similar destiny. Yet as we have seen in Deuteronomy, while Simeon merits a bitter fate, Levi is chosen to serve in holiness, though we can see that his destiny, "I will divide them in Jacob and split them up in Israel," comes true for him, as well. The Sages were aware of the difficulty posed by the two tribes' different fates, and explained in the Sifri:
"And to Levi he said"- Why does it say this? Since Simeon and Levi drank from the same cup, as it says, " Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob and split them up in Israel." As when two borrowed from the king, one paid back the king and then lent to him, while the other not only did not pay, but borrowed again. So too Simeon and Levi both sinned in Shekhem, as it says, "Two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dina's brethren, took each man his sword, and came upon the city unresisted, and slew all the males." Levi paid his loan in the desert, as it says, "Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said... Thus says the Lord... Put every man his sword at his side... and the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses," and lent to the Lord in Shittim, as it says, "Pinehas, the son of Elazar the son of Aaron the priest has turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, in that he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy." Simeon not only did not pay back his loan, but borrowed yet again, as it says, "Now the name of the man of Israel that was slain, that was slain with the Midianite woman, was Zimri the son of Salu, a prince of a father's house among the Simeonites." Therefore it says "And to Levi he said." (Sifri Deuteronomy, 349)
In the Sages' view, the deeds of the two tribes assigned them a similar destiny, but unlike the tribe of Simeon which continued in its father's ways, the descendants of Levi atoned for his actions by performing God's will, and were turned into holy servants.
Yaakov Deutsch is a doctoral student at the Department of General History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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