crime. So it was that on his deathbed, Jacob found it very necessary to remind these men of their wickedness. In telling them of their future he said, . . I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.” And at the time of the first census of Israel they numbered 59,300, and at the second census they had reduced in number to 22,000 population, which means that just before the conquest of the Prom ised Land, Simeon’s tribe was the smallest tribe of the people of Israel. When the blessing of Moses came upon the twelve tribes of Israel, we are led to discover that Simeon is not even mentioned by Moses at all as re ceiving a blessing in Deuteronomy 33. And one thing must here be recorded, that although Jacob laid a curse upon them for their own sin, he did not curse the sinners. The men reaped what they sowed, and the mercy of the Lord brought them at last to the place of honor. The sapphire is the second hardest stone in the world — this is very in teresting because Simeon’s name was inscribed on the sapphire and thus it became the foundation of his name, “hard, highly polished” you see and this is exactly what you find. The char acter of Simeon and Levi was very hard, and in their action against the Shechemites, was one that might ren der Simeon to be called a merciless, scratching or tearing to pieces invader of the community, which is the mean ing of the Hebrew word from which the English word sapphire is derived. Yes, there are tremendous teachings in these studies •— may God bless them richly to our hearts.
Simeon (continued) they can quickly deteriorate into some thing very, very sinful if we’re not careful. We need to remind ourselves that when Jesus Christ was here in the world, sometimes He became angry and sometimes He was highly indignant, but it was a righteous anger and it was a holy indignation. True it was that Shechem had wronged their sister and natural it was that, as-'her own brothers, they should defend their sis ter and seek some retribution for the evil that was committed against her. But the judgment is meted because their anger was so fierce and their wrath was so cruel that Jacob, their own fa ther had to cry out against it. Surely nothing justifies the sadism and cruelty into which they fell. Now in this display of anger Jacob used the strange expression “they slew a man and they digged down a wall” and we might wonder what that means. Well, if we come to Genesis chapter 34 we will see that in their anger they slew a man. The word man here is a collective singular word which means men. Now one man had sinned against Dinah their sister, but instead of punishing that one man, or even extending it to that man’s family, these two brothers Simeon and Levi, the sons of Jacob, each took a sword and at a time when the men of the city were at great disadvantage, they went into the city of Shechem and slew every male inhabitant. Now what a cruel, tragic, and terrible thing to do. Moreover in their cruel and stub born self-will, Jacob, their father, said they digged down a wall. This is a very strange translation of that phrase but all of the Bible commentators are agreed that the literal rendering is that they hamstrung oxen. You know what that means. It means that they went up behind an ox an d . they cut the large tendons of his hind legs until his legs folded under him and he couldn’t use them at all. Cruelty to animals or to mankind is indeed almost an unpardonable
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