Tribe of Simeon

The Tribe of Simeon (Hebrew Name|שִׁמְעוֹן|Šimʻon|Šimʻôn|"Hearkening; listening") was one of the Tribes of Israel. At its height, the territory it occupied was in the southwest of Canaan, bordered on the east and south by the tribe of Judah; the boundaries with the tribe of Judah are vague, and it seems that Simeon may have been an enclave within the west of the territory of the tribe of Judah. Simeon was one of the less significant tribes in the Kingdom of Judah.

Origin

According to the Torah, the tribe was founded by an individual, Simeon the second son of Jacob, and of Leah, from whom it took its name; however some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. ["Peake's commentary on the Bible"] With Leah as a matriarch, Biblical scholars believe the tribe to have been regarded by the text's authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation. However, the tribe is not mentioned in the ancient Song of Deborah, and some scholars think that Simeon was not originally regarded as a distinct tribe; [JewishEncyclopedia] according to Israel Finkelstein, the south of Canaan, in which Simeon was situated, was simply an insignificant rural backwater at the time the poem was written. [Israel Finkelstein, "the Bible Unearthed"]

Character

The impression gained from the Books of Chronicles is that the tribe wasn't entirely fixed in location; at one point it is mentioned that some members of the tribe migrated southwards to Gedor, so as to find suitable pasture for their sheep. [1 Chronicles 4:38-40] In the following verse, which may or may not be related, ["Jewish Encyclopedia"] it is mentioned that during the reign of Hezekiah, part of the tribe came to the land of some Meunim, and slaughtered them, taking the land in their place. [1 Chronicles 4:41] Further verses state that about 500 men from the tribe migrated to Mount Seir, slaughtering the Amalekites who had previously settled there. [1 Chronicles 4:42-43]

According to the Midrash, many families in the other Israelite tribes were descended from women from Simeon, which had been widowed from their original Simeonite husbands. ["Jewish Encyclopedia"] : : "Simeon": Simeon was one of the strongest tribes during the wandering in the desert. The symbol is that of a gate representing the city of Shechem.

Fate

Simeon is listed in the Book of Joshua, [Joshua 19:2-6] elsewhere in the same Book these towns are ascribed to Judah; [Joshua 15:26-32, 15:42] ["Jewish Encyclopedia"] some textual scholars view the Book of Joshua as being spliced together from several different source texts, in this particular case, the lists of towns being different documents, from different periods to each other. ["Peake's commentary on the Bible"] ["Jewish Encyclopedia", "Book of Joshua"] This seeming contradiction can be explained in the following way. The tribe of Simeon, like Levi, was decreed to be scattered throughout as punishment for massacring Shechem. Levi was scattered throughout all of Israel whereas Simeon was scattered in towns only within Judah.The tribe seems to have dwindled in size, and the size of the tribe dramatically drops by over half between the two census recorded in the Book of Numbers; although the Bible places these census during the Exodus, textual scholars place them in the period of priestly source, roughly 700-600 BC. ["Jewish Encyclopedia, "Priestly Source"] [Richard Elliott Friedman, "Who wrote the Bible?"] The tribe is completely absent from the Blessing of Moses, which textual scholars date to near the time of the Deuteronomist, after the dates of these census; [Richard Elliott Friedman, "Who wrote the Bible?"] some Septuagint manuscripts appear to have attempted to "correct" this, adding the name of "Simeon" to the latter half of verse 6, which scholars view as unwarranted based on the Hebrew manuscripts. ["Jewish Encyclopedia"]

In the Bible, the dwindling of Simeon is portrayed as being a divine punishment for their reaction to the Rape of Dinah, though many biblical scholars view the episode, and Dinah herself, as an aetiological myth which developed to explain Simeon's misfortune, after it had occurred. ["Peake's commentary on the Bible"] In the Blessing of Jacob, this punishment appears to be prophesied, with the tribe being predicted to become "divided and scattered"; textual scholars view this as postdiction, since the Blessing of Jacob is believed to have been written in a period around the 9th or 8th centuries (900-701 BC), the same period in which the tribe was actually dwindling. [Richard Elliott Friedman, "Who wrote the Bible?"]

As part of the kingdom of Judah, whatever remained of Simeon was ultimately subjected to the Babylonian captivity; when the captivity ended, all remaining distinctions between Simeon and the other tribes in the kingdom of Judah had been lost in favour of a common identity as "Jews". Nevertheless, an apocryphal midrash claims that the tribe was deported by the Babylonians to the Kingdom of Aksum (in what is now Ethiopia), to a place behind "the dark mountains". ["Jewish Encyclopedia"] Conversely, Eldad ha-Dani argued that the tribe of Simeon had become quite powerful, taking tribute from 25 other kingdoms, some of which were Arabians; though he names their location, surviving versions of his manuscripts differ as to whether it was the land of the Khazars or of the Chaldeans - "Chaldeans" would be an anachronism, though it could possibly refer to Buyid Dynasty Persia. A few modern-day groups claim descent from the tribe of Simeon, with varying levels of academic and rabbinical support; some Christian Identity followers believe themselves to be descendants of the tribe.

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