Tribe of Simeon

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Simeon (/ˈsɪmiən/; Hebrew: שִׁמְעוֹן, Modern Shim'on, Tiberian Šimʻôn; "Hearkening; listening") was one of the Tribes of Israel.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes after about 1200 BC,[7] Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes. At its height, the territory occupied by the Tribe of Simeon 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. (Joshua 19:1-9) Simeon was one of the less significant tribes in the Kingdom of Judah.

Origin

Map of the twelve tribes of Israel

According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe consisted of descendants of 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.[8] With Leah as a matriarch, scholars believe the tribe to have been regarded by the text's authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation. In the opening words of the Book of Judges, following the death of Joshua, the Israelites "asked the Lord" which tribe should be first to go to occupy its allotted territory, and the tribe of Judah was identified as the first tribe.[9] According to this narrative, the tribe of Judah invited the tribe of Simeon to fight with them in alliance to secure each of their allotted territories. However, the tribe of Simeon is not mentioned in the ancient Song of Deborah, and some scholars think that Simeon was not originally regarded as a distinct tribe;[10] 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.[11]

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.[12] In the following verse, which may or may not be related,[13] 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.[14] Further verses state that about 500 men from the tribe migrated to Mount Seir, slaughtering the Amalekites who had previously settled there.[15]

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.[13]

Simeon was one of the strongest tribes during the wandering in the desert. Its symbol is that of a gate representing the city of Shechem.

Fate

Simeon is listed in the Book of Joshua,[16] elsewhere in the same Book these towns are ascribed to Judah;[13][17] 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.[18][19] 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.[20][21] 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;[21] 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.[13]

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 etiological myth which developed to explain Simeon's misfortune, after it had occurred.[18] In the Blessing of Jacob, this punishment appears to be prophesied, with the tribe being predicted to become divided and scattered. Some textual scholars view this as a postdiction, believing that the Blessing of Jacob was written in a period around the 9th or 8th centuries (900-701 BC), the same period in which the tribe was actually dwindling.[21]

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.[13] 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.

References

  1. ↑ Genesis 29:33
  2. ↑ Genesis 46:10
  3. ↑ Numbers 26:12-14
  4. ↑ Joshua 15:21-32
  5. ↑ Joshua 19:1-9
  6. ↑ Judges 1:3,17
  7. ↑ Kitchen, Kenneth A. (2003), "On the Reliability of the Old Testament" (Grand Rapids, Michigan. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)(ISBN 0-8028-4960-1)
  8. ↑ Peake's Commentary on the Bible
  9. ↑ Judges 1:1-2
  10. ↑  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Simeon, Tribe of". Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company.
  11. ↑ Israel Finkelstein, the Bible Unearthed
  12. ↑ 1 Chronicles 4:38-40
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 Jewish Encyclopedia
  14. ↑ 1 Chronicles 4:41
  15. ↑ 1 Chronicles 4:42-43
  16. ↑ Joshua 19:2-6
  17. ↑ Joshua 15:26-32, 15:42
  18. 1 2 Peake's commentary on the Bible
  19. ↑ Jewish Encyclopedia, Book of Joshua
  20. ↑ Jewish Encyclopedia, Priestly Source
  21. 1 2 3 Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (Harper San Francisco) (1987) ISBN 0-06-063035-3
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/13/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.