The twelve tribes of Israel

The Tribe of Simeon

Son of Jacob by Leah · Name means Hearing (Leah said, the LORD hath heard that I was hated) · Settled in the far south, inside the borders of Judah

Simeon was the second son of Jacob by Leah, and his tribe was the smallest and least distinct of the twelve, absorbed into the territory of Judah. Because of the violence he and Levi committed at Shechem, Jacob prophesied that his descendants would be scattered in Israel, and so it came to pass. Simeon's story shows how sin echoes down the generations, and how God can still redeem what men divide.

Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.Genesis 49:7 (KJV)

Simeon the man

Simeon was the second son born to Leah, who named him saying, Because the LORD hath heard that I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also. His name means hearing. He appears at Joseph's side of the great family drama as one of the elder brothers, and when Joseph, unrecognized in Egypt, kept one brother as a hostage to test the others, it was Simeon he bound and held.

The defining act of Simeon's life came earlier, in the terrible affair at Shechem. When their sister Dinah was violated, Simeon and Levi answered with treachery and slaughter, deceiving the men of the city and killing them while they were helpless. Jacob rebuked them for it then, saying they had made him a stench among the peoples of the land, and he never forgot it.

The wound in that story is real. Dinah had been grievously wronged, and the anger of her brothers was not, in itself, sin; it was the cold treachery and the wholesale killing that Jacob condemned. Simeon shows how a just anger, unbridled and unsanctified, can curdle into cruelty and bring a curse upon those who indulge it. The Bible does not excuse the crime against Dinah, nor does it excuse the vengeance that answered it.

Jacob's blessing: divided and scattered

Simeon and Levi are the only two of the sons over whom Jacob's final words are more curse than blessing. Simeon and Levi are brethren, he said, instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. He would not join himself to their counsel, for in their anger they slew a man. Then came the sentence: Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

It is a rare thing in Scripture: a father, at the end, naming a sin rather than covering it. Jacob does not pretend. The fierce anger of these two brothers would be broken up and dispersed, so that it could never again gather into that kind of violence. The prophecy would be fulfilled, but, as we will see, in two very different ways for the two brothers.

The tribe absorbed

When the land was divided, the tribe of Simeon received no separate, unbroken territory of its own. Instead its inheritance lay within the borders of Judah, a scattering of towns in the dry south, because the portion of Judah was too large for them. So from the beginning Simeon was folded into a stronger tribe, its identity blurred.

Simeon was also the tribe most diminished. In the wilderness the census of Simeon's fighting men fell more sharply than any other tribe's, from tens of thousands to a fraction of that number, and when Moses blessed the tribes at the end of Deuteronomy, Simeon alone is passed over in silence, not named at all. Over time the Simeonites were swallowed up, some moving south and east in search of pasture, most simply merging into Judah. The scattering Jacob foretold came true, quietly and completely.

Yet even a scattered tribe was not without its faithful. The Chronicler records that some of Simeon went to the fertile valleys seeking pasture and drove out the peoples there, and that others in the days of King Hezekiah struck down the remnant of the Amalekites and dwelt in their place. The tribe that lost its own land did not lose its share in the wars and the worship of the LORD, but carried on, hidden within the life of Judah.

Simeon in God's plan

Simeon is a hard mercy of a tribe. The scattering that fell on him for cruelty was a real judgment, and Scripture does not soften it. Yet the same scattering set within Judah a tribe that shared in Judah's blessing, and Simeon too is sealed among the redeemed in the Revelation, twelve thousand of the tribe of Simeon standing among the saved.

The lesson of Simeon runs alongside the lesson of his brother Levi. The same curse, divide and scatter, fell on both, yet Levi's scattering became the honor of the priesthood, while Simeon's became mere dispersal. The difference was not the word spoken but the turning that followed. What God pronounces as judgment he can still transfigure into blessing, for those who will be changed.

A note on counting the twelve: Jacob had twelve sons, but the tribes are reckoned in more than one way in Scripture. The tribe of Levi was set apart for the priesthood and received no territory of its own, and Joseph, given the double portion of the firstborn, was counted as two tribes through his sons Ephraim and Manasseh. So when the land was divided the tribes still numbered twelve, with Levi outside the count. Different lists in the Bible reflect this: the blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy leaves out Simeon, and the sealed tribes in Revelation 7 omit Dan and Ephraim while naming Levi, Joseph, and Manasseh. The number twelve is preserved as a sign of the whole people of God.

Related: The Tribe of Levi · The Tribe of Judah · Jacob in the Bible · All twelve tribes