Genesis 49:6 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Genesis 49:6
O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall.
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix
come
תָּבֹ֣אta.Vo'
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal jussive, 3rd person feminine singular
secret
בְּסֹדָם֙be.so.Dam
H5475
a session · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
assembly
בִּקְהָלָ֖םbik.ha.Lam
H6951
assemblage (usually concretely) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
honour
כְּבֹדִ֑יke.vo.Di
H3519
properly · noun, common both genders singular construct + pronominal suffix, 1st person masculine singular
united
תֵּחַ֣דte.Chad
H3161
to be (or become) one · verb, qal jussive, 3rd person feminine singular
anger
בְאַפָּם֙ve.'a.Pam
H639
properly · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
slew
הָ֣רְגוּHa.re.gu
H2026
to smite with deadly intent · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
man
אִ֔ישׁ'Ish
H376
a man as an individual or a male person · noun, common masculine singular absolute
selfwill
וּבִרְצֹנָ֖םu.vir.tzo.Nam
H7522
delight (especially as shown) · conjunction + preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
down
עִקְּרוּ'i.ke.ru-
H6131
to pluck up (especially by the roots) · verb, piel perfect, 3rd person common plural
wall
שֽׁוֹרShor
H7794
a bullock (as a traveller) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 34:30 And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the P…
Psalms 26:9 Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men:
Psalms 16:9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.
Genesis 34:25-26 And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brethren, took each man h…
Psalms 26:4-5 I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers.
Psalms 57:8 Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early.
Psalms 64:2 Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity:
Proverbs 1:15-16 My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path:
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 49:5-7
These were next in age to Reuben, and they also had been a grief and shame to Jacob, when they treacherously and barbarously destroyed the Shechemites, which he here remembers against them. Children should be afraid of incurring their parents' just displeasure, lest they fare the worse for it long afterwards, and, when they would inherit the blessing, be rejected. Observe, 1. The character of Simeon and Levi: they were brethren in disposition; but, unlike their father, they were passionate and revengeful, fierce and uncontrollable; their swords, which should have been only weapons of defence, were (as the margin reads it, Gen 49:5) weapons of violence, to do wrong to others, not to save them…
Into their secret council, etc. - Jacob here exculpates himself from all participation in the guilt of Simeon and Levi in the murder of the Shechemites. He most solemnly declares that he knew nothing of the confederacy by which it was executed, nor of the secret council in which it was plotted.
If it should be said that the words תבא tabo and תחד techad should be translated in the future tense or in the imperative, as in our translation, I shall not contend; though it is well known that the preterite is often used for the future in Hebrew, and vice versa. Taken thus, the words mark the strong detestation which this holy man's soul felt for the villany of his sons: "My soul shall not come int…
O my soul, come not thou into their secret,.... Their cabinet counsels, combinations and conspiracies; this Jacob said, as abhorring the wicked counsel they had took of slaying the Shechemites; and lest any should think he was concerned in it, or connived at it, he expressed a detestation of the fact on his dying bed: the future tense may be put for the past; and so Onkelos renders it, "my soul was not in their secret"; and so the other two Targums paraphrase it, that when they got and consulted together, his soul was not pleased and delighted with their counsel, but abhorred it; or "my soul shall not come", which Jarchi thinks prophetical refers to the case of Zimri, the son of Salu, of the…
The Church Fathers
God forbid, Jacob is saying, that I should share their evil intent or associate myself with their unjust doings. "Because in the heat of their passion they slew people"; their rage turned irrational.… After all, even if Shechem had sinned, there was no need to turn their thirst for blood against everyone. "And in their fury they cut down a bull"; there is reference here to the son of Hamor, calling him a bull because of his hot-blooded maturity.
As for the historical account, it seems that in this passage [Simeon and Levi] are reproached because, through deceit and fraud, they slaughtered Shechem, the son of Hamor, who after sleeping with their sister had tried to associate himself with the family of Israel. They also destroyed the whole people [of Shechem], so that Israel himself, their father, said to them, "You made me odious in this world." Therefore he curses their cruelty and their recklessness and declares he will scatter them amid the people of Israel, and that from them the Levites and the priests who do not have their own inheritance of land will descend.
Read the gospel and you will find it written down; the scribes were from the tribe of Simeon, and the high priests from that of Levi. Since the decision to arrest the Christ and to execute him was taken in their council, the prophet foreknowing that said, "O my soul, come not into their council!" In this passage he talks about the council where they took their decisions by searching for a reason through which they might accuse Christ, so that "they took counsel together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him." And Isaiah says the same: "Woe to their soul, for they have devised an evil counsel against themselves, saying, 'Let us bind the just one, for he is burdensome to us.' "
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Dinah — Judged; vindicated, daughter of Jacob by Leah, and sister of Simeon and Levi (Gen. 30:21). She was seduced by Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite chief, when Jacob’s camp was in the neighbourhood…
Levi — Adhesion. (1.) The third son of Jacob by Leah. The origin of the name is found in Leah’s words (Gen. 29:34), “This time will my husband be joined [Heb. yillaveh] unto me.” He is mentioned as taking a…
Simeon, The tribe of — Was “divided and scattered” according to the prediction in Gen. 49:5-7. They gradually dwindled in number, and sank into a position of insignificance among the other tribes. They decreased in the…
Alliance And Society With The Enemies Of God · Saints deprecate — Saints deprecate
Anger · Dinah — Dinah
Children · Male: Received the blessing of their father before his death — Male: Received the blessing of their father before his death
Company · EVIL — EVIL
Hamor · Mur — Mur
Levi · Jacob’s prophecy regarding — Jacob’s prophecy regarding
Patriarchal Government · Exercised in: Blessing and cursing their children — Exercised in: Blessing and cursing their children
Simeon and Levi are brethren. He condemns the massacre of the city of Shechem by his two sons Simon and Levi, and denounces the punishment of so great a crime. Whence we learn how hateful cruelty is to God, seeing that the blood of man is precious in his sight. For it is as if he would cite to his own tribunal those two men, and would demand vengeance on them, when they thought they had already escaped. It may, however, be asked, whether pardon had not been granted to them long ago; and if God had already forgiven them, why does he recall them again to punishment? I answer, it was both privately useful to themselves, and was also necessary as an example, that this slaughter should not remain…
"Simeon and Levi are brethren:" emphatically brethren in the full sense of the word; not merely as having the same parents, but in their modes of thought and action. "Weapons of wickedness are their swords." The ἅπαξ lec. מכרת is rendered by Luther, etc., weapons or swords, from כּוּר = כּרה, to dig, dig through, pierce: not connected with μάχαιρα. L. de Dieu and others follow the Arabic and Aethiopic versions: "plans;" but חמס כּלי, utensils, or instruments, of wickedness, does not accord with this. Such wickedness had the two brothers committed upon the inhabitants of Shechem (Gen 34:25.), that Jacob would have no fellowship with it. "Into their counsel come not, my soul; with their ass…
Simeon and Levi were violent and lawless; instead of serving justice, they indulged their uncontrolled anger and disregarded life (34:24-29). • I will scatter them: Simeon’s land was largely absorbed into Judah’s (Josh 19:1, 9); Levi was given a more honorable future because the Levites became the priestly tribe (see Exod 32:25-29), but they had no region of their own (Josh 21).
Rashi on Genesis 49:3
וראשית אוני THE BEGINNING OF MY VIGOR — That is the first drop [of semen], as he had not experienced a seminal emission from all of his days [until that time] (Genesis Rabbah 98:4).
אוני means MY VIGOR, as (Hosea 12:9) “I have gained me (און) strength”; (Isaiah 40:26) “by the greatness of His (אונים) might”; (Isaiah 5:29) “and to him that hath no (אונים) might Ho increaseth strength”.
יתר שאת SUPERIORITY IN DIGNITY — Since you were the first-born it was proper that you should be superior to your brothers by being endowed with the priesthood. This term שאת “lifting up” alludes to the נשיאות כפים the raising of the hands when the priests pronounce the benediction (cf. Onkelos).
ויתר עז SUPE…
Simeon, The Tribe Of · Predictions respecting — Predictions respecting
Tribes Of Israel, The · Predictions respecting each of — Predictions respecting each of
Walls · Of houses: Could be easily dug through — Of houses: Could be easily dug through
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
