According to the Book of Genesis, Simeon was, the second son of Jacob

Jacob

Jacob "heel" or "leg-puller"), also later known as Israel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur'an was the third patriarch of the Hebrew people with whom God made a covenant, and ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his descendants.In the...

 and Leah

Leah

Leah , as described in the Hebrew Bible, is the first of the two concurrent wives of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob and mother of six of sons whose descendants became the Twelve Tribes of Israel, along with at least one daughter, Dinah. She is the daughter of Laban and the older sister of Rachel, whom...

, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Simeon

Tribe of Simeon

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Simeon was one of the Tribes of Israel.Following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes after about 1200 BC, Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes...

. However, some Biblical scholars

Biblical criticism

Biblical criticism is the scholarly "study and investigation of Biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work...

 view this as postdiction, an eponym

Eponym

An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

ous metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

 providing an etiology

Etiology

Etiology is the study of causation, or origination. The word is derived from the Greek , aitiologia, "giving a reason for" ....

 of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. With Leah as a matriarch, Biblical scholars regard the tribe as having been believed by the text's authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation, however, the tribe is absent from the parts of the Bible which textual scholars

Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...

 regard as the oldest (for example, the ancient Song of Deborah), and some scholars think that Simeon was not originally regarded as a distinct tribe.

Simeon's name

The text of the Torah

Torah

Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...

 argues that the name of Simeon refers to Leah's belief that God

El (god)

is a Northwest Semitic word meaning "deity", cognate to Akkadian and then to Hebrew : Eli and Arabic )....

 had heard that she was hated by Jacob, in the sense of not being as favoured as Rachel

Rachel

Rachel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, is a prophet and the favorite wife of Jacob, one of the three Biblical Patriarchs, and mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She was the daughter of Laban and the younger sister of Leah, Jacob's first wife...

, implying a derivation from the Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 term shama on, meaning he has heard of my suffering; this is a similar etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

 as the Torah gives for the theophoric name Ishmael

Ishmael

Ishmael is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first born child according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar...

(God has heard), implying that the names are cognate

Cognate

In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...

, and that the tribe of Simeon may originally have been an Ishmaelite

Ishmaelites

According to the Book of Genesis, Ishmaelites are the descendants of Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham.-Traditional Origins:According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham's first wife was named Sarah and his second wife Hagar. However Sarah was old and barren, and could not conceive...

 group. In classical rabbinical sources, the name is sometimes interpreted as meaning he who listens to the words of God, and at other times thought to derive from sham 'in, meaning there is sin, which is argued to be a prophetic reference to Zimri

Zimri (prince)

Zimri was the Prince of the Tribe of Simeon during the time of the Israelites in the desert. At Shittim he took part in the Heresy of Peor, taking as a paramour a Midianite woman, Cozbi...

's sexual miscegenation

Miscegenation

Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....

 with a Midianite woman, a type of relationship which rabbinical sources regard as sinful.

Simeon in Shechem

In the Torah's account of the rape of Dinah, wherein Dinah was raped (or in some versions, merely seduced) by a Canaanite named Shechem, Simeon and his brother Levi

Levi

Levi/Levy was, according to the Book of Genesis, the third son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Levi ; however Peake's commentary suggests this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite...

 took violent revenge against the inhabitants of the city

Shechem

Shechem was a Canaanite city mentioned in the Amarna letters, and is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as an Israelite city of the tribe of Manasseh and the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel...

 by tricking them into circumcising themselves and then killing them when they are weakened; in the account, Jacob heavily castigates Simeon for this, and, in his blessing

Blessing of Jacob

The Blessing of Jacob is a poem that appears in Genesis at . Jacob had twelve sons, each of whom is mentioned.The poem presents an opinion of the merits and attributes of each of the Tribes of Israel, and so can be compared with the Blessing of Moses, which has the same theme...

 condemns his descendants to become divided and scattered. Some Biblical scholars regard the account of the rape of Dinah as an aetiological myth, created by the Jahwist

Jahwist

The Jahwist, also referred to as the Jehovist, Yahwist, or simply as J, is one of the sources of the Torah. It gets its name from the fact that it characteristically uses the term Yahweh for God in the book of Genesis...

, to justify the presence of a sanctuary at Shechem; in comparison to the Elohist

Elohist

The Elohist is one of four sources of the Torah described by the Documentary Hypothesis. Its name comes from the term it uses for God: Elohim; it is characterised by, among other things, an abstract view of God, using "Horeb" instead of "Sinai" for the mountain where Moses received the laws of...

's justification of the Shechem sanctuary, where the land is simply purchased by Jacob, and dedicated to El Elohe Israel (meaning El

El (god)

is a Northwest Semitic word meaning "deity", cognate to Akkadian and then to Hebrew : Eli and Arabic )....

 is the God of Israel, mighty is the God of Israel, or God, the God of Israel), the Jahwist's account is viewed as a veiled slight against the sanctuary. Simeon's vengeance, and punishment in the blessing, are viewed by biblical scholars as aetiological postdictions which were designed to explain why, in the time of the author of the blessing (900-700BC), the tribe of Simeon was dwindling out of existence. The midrashic book of Jasher

Sefer haYashar (midrash)

The Sefer haYashar is a Hebrew midrash also known as the Toledot Adam and Dibre ha-Yamim be-'Aruk. It is known in English translation mostly as The Book of Jasher...

, argues that it was Simeon who deceived Hamor by insisting that the men of Shechem would need to be circumcised

Circumcision

Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....

; it goes on to argue that Simeon was extremely strong, despite only being 13 years old, and was able to slaughter all the men of Shechem nearly single-handedly, only having assistance from his brother Levi

Levi

Levi/Levy was, according to the Book of Genesis, the third son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Levi ; however Peake's commentary suggests this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite...

, and captured 85 young women, marrying the one named Bonah.

Relation with Joseph

The classical rabbinical sources argue that Simeon was very fearless, but also was particularly envious, and so had always been antagonistic and spiteful towards Joseph, owing to Joseph being Jacob's favourite son. The midrashic book of Jasher

Sefer haYashar (midrash)

The Sefer haYashar is a Hebrew midrash also known as the Toledot Adam and Dibre ha-Yamim be-'Aruk. It is known in English translation mostly as The Book of Jasher...

 argues that Simeon was the one who proposed that the brothers should kill Joseph, and other classical sources argue that it was Simeon who threw Joseph into a pit, and became furious when he found out that Judah

Judah (Biblical figure)

Judah was, according to the Book of Genesis, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Judah. Biblical scholars, such as J. A...

 had sold Joseph rather than killed him; according to the classical sources, Simeon suffered divine punishment for this inhumanity, with his right hand withered, but this caused Simeon to repent, and so his hand was restored a week later.

In the biblical Joseph narrative, when Joseph, having settled in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, asks his brothers to bring Benjamin

Benjamin

Benjamin was the last-born of Jacob's twelve sons, and the second and last son of Rachel in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Benjamin. In the Biblical account, unlike Rachel's first son, Joseph, Benjamin was born in Canaan. He died in Egypt on...

 to him, he takes Simeon hostage

Hostage

A hostage is a person or entity which is held by a captor. The original definition meant that this was handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war...

 to ensure that they return. According to classical rabbinical sources, Joseph chose Simeon to be the hostage because he was concerned that if Simeon wasn't separated from Levi, then Levi and Simeon might destroy Egypt together, since they had already destroyed Shechem. Another theory was that Joseph singled out Simeon due to his taking a prominent role in Joseph's betrayal. According to the midrashic book of Jasher, Simeon wasn't willing to become a hostage, so Joseph sent 70 strong Egyptians to take Simeon by force, but Simeon had a very powerful voice, and so was able to scare off the Egyptians simply by shouting; the text states that Simeon was eventually subdued by Manasseh

Manasseh (tribal patriarch)

Manasseh or Menashe was, according to the Book of Genesis, the first son of Joseph and Asenath. Asenath was an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On. Manasseh was born in Egypt before the arrival of the children of Israel from Canaan...

, and imprisoned. The Testament of Simeon, on the other hand, declares that Simeon acknowledged that it was just for him to be imprisoned, given his earlier mistreatment of Joseph, and so he went willingly.

According to the Book of Jubilees, Simeon was born on the 21st of Tevet

Tevet

Tebet is the fourth month of the civil year and the tenth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. It follows Kislev and precedes Shevat. It is a winter month of 29 days...

, and according to the book of Genesis he had six sons. Although some classical rabbinical sources argue that the mother of the children, and his wife, was Bonah, one of the women from Shechem, other classical rabbinical sources argue that Simeon's wife (and the mother of the children) was Dinah

Dinah

According to the Hebrew Bible, Dinah was the daughter of Jacob, one of the patriarchs of the Israelites and Leah, his first wife. The episode of her abduction and violation by a Canaanite prince, and the subsequent vengeance of her brothers Simeon and Levi, commonly referred to as "The Rape of...

, his sister

Incest

Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...

, who had insisted on the marriage before she would be willing to leave Shechem's home (Shechem was her rapist/lover). Many of the rabbinical sources argue that Simeon died at the age of 120, roughly three years before the death of his brother Reuben

Reuben (Bible)

According to the Book of Genesis, Reuben or Re'uven was the first and eldest son of Jacob with Leah. He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Reuben.-Etymology:...

, though Numbers Rabbah

Numbers Rabbah

Numbers Rabbah is a religious text holy to classical Judaism. It is a midrash comprising a collection of ancient rabbinical homiletic interpretations of the book of Numbers ....

states that Simeon became the senior of the brothers after Reuben had died.