Notes 73A: Reuben, Simeon and Levi's oracles (49:1-7)

Preamble

א וַיִּקְרָ֥א יַֽעֲקֹ֖ב אֶל־בָּנָ֑יו וַיֹּ֗אמֶר הֵאָֽסְפוּ֙ וְאַגִּ֣ידָה לָכֶ֔ם אֵ֛ת אֲשֶׁר־יִקְרָ֥א אֶתְכֶ֖ם בְּאַֽחֲרִ֥ית הַיָּמִֽים׃ ב הִקָּֽבְצ֥וּ וְשִׁמְע֖וּ בְּנֵ֣י יַֽעֲקֹ֑ב וְשִׁמְע֖וּ אֶל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֥ל אֲבִיכֶֽם׃

1 wayyiqra ya‛aqov el banaw; wayyomer he'as'fu w'aggida lakhem et asher yiqra etkhem b'axarit hayyamim. 2 hiqqav'tzu w'shim‛u b'ne ya‛aqov; w'shim‛u el yisra'el avikhem.
¹ And Jacob called his sons and said, "Come together that I may tell you what is to befall you in days to come. ² Assemble and hearken, o sons of Jacob; Hearken to Israel your father:

"Superscription, whereby the poem is attributed to Jacob" (EAS), and Speiser adds: "The heading does not necessarily stem from the compiler of the poetic sayings."

b'axarit hayyamim
Speiser rejects the traditional translation as 'in the end of days' (LXX ep' eskhatôn tôn hêmerôn, KJV 'in the last days', EF 'in the aftertime of days' but ESV 'in days to come').

ya‛aqov... yisra'el
On the co-ocurrence of both terms, see my note on Joseph (sub mide avir etc.).


Reuben

ג רְאוּבֵן֙ בְּכֹ֣רִי אַ֔תָּה כֹּחִ֖י וְרֵאשִׁ֣ית אוֹנִ֑י יֶ֥תֶר שְׂאֵ֖ת וְיֶ֥תֶר עָֽז׃ ד פַּ֤חַז כַּמַּ֨יִם֙ אַל־תּוֹתַ֔ר כִּ֥י עָלִ֖יתָ מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אָבִ֑יךָ אָ֥ז חִלַּ֖לְתָּ יְצוּעִ֥י עָלָֽה׃

3 r'uven b'khori atta koxi w'reshit oni; yeter s'et w'yeter ‛az. 4 paxaz kammayim al totar ki ‛alita mishk've avikha; az xillalta y'tzu‛i ‛ala.
³ Reuben you are my first-born,
My might and first fruit of my vigor,
Exceeding in rank
And exceeding in honor.
⁴ Unstable as water, you shall excel no longer;
For when you mounted your father's bed,
You brought disgrace — my couch he mounted!

The two verses seem to be antithetical, but Speiser regards v. 3 as constituting the address: by birth and so in principle, Reuben is the first and supreme, but his performance failed to live up to that standard and so...

al totar
'You shall excel no longer', more literally 'Surpass no more!' as EAS and EF (it is a negative imperative). The root, here a hiphil (cf. Speiser's note), is the same as that of yeter (a noun) twice in v. 3, and in the context might be read, with a bit of linguistic irony, as 'you, the firstborn, yeter this and yeter that - yeter no more!!' (or 'enough yeter-ing!'). It is a shame that JPS did not reflect this word play by rendering yeter as 'excelling' rather than 'exceeding.'

ki ‛alita mishk've avíkha
'For you mounted your father's bed.' Assumed to refer to the episode briefly mentioned in 35:22 (wayyélekh r'uven wayyishkav et bilha pilégesh aviw wayyishma‛ yisa'el 'Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine; and Israel found out.') What this could possibly mean when translated into tribal history is completely open to conjecture.

y'tzu‛i ‛ala
EH: 'This is an aside addressed to the assembled sons.'


Simeon and Levi

ה שִׁמְע֥וֹן וְלֵוִ֖י אַחִ֑ים כְּלֵ֥י חָמָ֖ס מְכֵרֹֽתֵיהֶֽם׃ ו בְּסֹדָם֙ אַל־תָּבֹ֣א נַפְשִׁ֔י בִּקְהָלָ֖ם אַל־תֵּחַ֣ד כְּבֹדִ֑י כִּ֤י בְאַפָּם֙ הָ֣רְגוּ אִ֔ישׁ וּבִרְצֹנָ֖ם עִקְּרוּ־שֽׁוֹר׃ ז אָר֤וּר אַפָּם֙ כִּ֣י עָ֔ז וְעֶבְרָתָ֖ם כִּ֣י קָשָׁ֑תָה אֲחַלְּקֵ֣ם בְּיַֽעֲקֹ֔ב וַֽאֲפִיצֵ֖ם בְּיִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

5 shim‛on w'lewi axim; k'le xamas m'kherotehem. 6 b'sodam al tavo nafshi biqhalam al texad k'vodi; ki v'appam har'gu ish uvirtzonam ‛iqq'ru shor. 7 arur appam ki ‛az w'‛evratam ki qashata; axall'qem b'ya‛aqov wa'afitzem b'yisra'el.
⁵ Simeon and Levi are a pair;
Their weapons are tools of lawlessness.
⁶ Let not my person be included in their council,
Let not my being be counted in their assembly.
For when angry they slay men,
And when pleased they maim oxen.
⁷ Cursed be their anger so fierce,
And their wrath so relentless.
I will divide them in Jacob,
Scatter them in Israel.

axim
Jacob treats Simeon and Levi together, uniquely in the poem, addressing them as 'brothers' (v. 5) although the translation says 'a pair', in an attempt to make more sense of the statement inasmuch as they are all brothers, and in the case of several of them even full brothers, sons of Leah.

m'kherotehem
Of unknown meaning.

b'sodam al tavo nafshi
As elsewhere (12:13, 19:19-20, 27:4 and 27:25 etc.), nafshi clearly is a ceremonious (and here, poetic) equivalent to anokhi, while sod means 'confidential conversation, counsel', only here in Gen. but well-attested outside it. The verb form tavo is 3fs jussive, here in effect a cohortative owing to nafshi: 'May I not enter.' The use of 'my person' in the translation is unidiomatic and forced; some nuances just have to be let go in translation (if readers want the original, let them read it).


biqhalam al texad k'vodi
A perfect parallelism with b'sodam al tavo nafshi, which is useful because it helps us to gloss it (and the preceding clause), since they are synonymous. Thus we need not agonize over the meaning of k'vodi, or even the embarrassing point that it is given the wrong gender here (generally kavod is a masculine noun): like nafshi it stands for anokhi and like it, it need not (indeed almost cannot) be translated distinctively without damaging the text in other ways, and so 'my being' in this version is really as pointless as are 'mine honour' (KJV), and even worse (!!) 'my glory' (ESV). The verb, texad, is not quite a hapax but close, but its formation (root y-x-d) and meaning ('join, unite') are ensured by the parallelism, as is its grammatical function (jussive-cum-cohortative): 'May I not join their assembly' (or however we decide to translate qahal).

The second part of the verse confirms our suspicion that all this is in reference to the Dinah incident (ch. 34).

ki v'appam
The noun af is slightly schizophrenic; the same word has meanings ranging from 'nose' and 'face' all the way to 'anger', but I believe the latter is a secondary extension on the basis of the very common expression wayyíxar appo (e.g. 39:19) 'his face heated up' whence 'he got angry.' (The temperature metaphor may be universal: Basque haserre 'get angry' contains the element erre 'to burn', while Nawat kwalani 'ditto' is derived from the same stem, *kwala, as kwakwalaka 'to boil'...) By extension, then, b'appam lit. 'by their face' really means 'in their anger' or 'in fury' which fits the context well - they kill men in their anger - when we relate this to Dinah's story.

arur appam
Whence it follows that this does not mean, as it does literally, 'Cursed be their face', but rather 'Cursed be their anger.'

axall'qem b'ya‛aqov wa'afitzem b'yisra'el
This is the verdict, motivated by the failings described in the foregoing lines: if Reuben has lost the initial advantage given him by order of birth, so have Simeon and Levi on account of their own misconduct. They are to be divided and scattered within Israel, clearly an allusion to developments in Israel's subsequent tribal history which took place long after patriarchal times but whose historicity is borne out by the absence of these tribes from later events in Israelite history. Israelite audiences, upon listening to this oracle, were surely nodding their heads as they heard Jacob's rulings: Reuben debunked and Simeon and Levi divided and scattered. It all makes sense.