Simeon and Levi are brethren
The blessing of Simeon and Levi:
I. THEIR SIN.
1. Immoderate revenge.
2. Cruelty to unoffending beasts.
3. Their cruelty was deliberate.
II. THEIR PENALTY.
1. To be disavowed by the good.
2. Their deed is branded with a curse.
3. They are condemned to moral and political weakness. (T. H.Leale.)
Simeon and Levi
The passage begins by declaring “Simeon and Levi are brethren.” “Brethren” not merely as having the same parents, but in thought, feeling, action. “Instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.” Such wickedness had these two brothers committed (see chap. 34. 25th and following verses) that Jacob could have no sympathy with it. As they had joined together to commit it, so righteous retribution was to follow. They were to be “ divided” and “ scattered.” Thus the murderous propensity of their nature would bring untold trouble upon Israel, and only by breaking this union and scattering them throughout Israel could their power for evil be weakened. They should form no independent or compact tribes. This sentence was so strikingly fulfilled when Canaan was conquered, that on the second numbering under Moses, Simeon had become the weakest of all the tribes (see Numbers 26:14).
1. Among the many lessons taught by the conduct of this tribe let us notice first, that though men may be “brethren,” there may be underneath this hallowed term principles utterly at variance with it. How sacred may be the outward sign, how suggestive of all that is commendable and holy, how hideous the principles it covers! The whited sepulchre may indeed cover the revolting sight of dead men’s bones. Such terms are the outward memorials of what should be, but too often they serve to represent their very opposite. One bearing the holiest of all names, Christian, may have a devil at heart.
2. Mark another truth. “Their swords are weapons of violence,” the patriarch says--the “anger was fierce,” the “wrath was cruel.” The sword is a lawful weapon. Anger may be right and wrath too. It is when they degenerate into “violence,” “fierceness,” and “cruelty” that they become sin. From being instruments of righteousness it is an easy transition to become instruments of Satan. And let not our inveterate self-righteousness take refuge under the covering that because no such crime as “houghing the oxen” is ours, therefore we are all right before God. Is it possible for such an easy self-deception: Yes, possible, and the thought of many, yea of most. What I is there not adultery in a “look”? Is there not murder in a feeling?
3. And observe, it is the sin that is cursed and not the sinner: “Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel.” It is the same all through the Bible. The sinner is never cursed apart from the sin that is in him. And for this sin which draws down that curse God has made a rich provision in Christ’s precious blood. If the sinner is cursed it is because he loves his sin, and clings to it, and will not have it removed. “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” Sin must be cursed. And if the sinner will not avail himself of the remedy, but still cleave to his sin, then he may be cursed with it--“the wrath of God abideth on him.”
4. Observe another truth in the history of these tribes in conjunction with that of Reuben in the last chapter. It is this, that the result of all sin, all living to the flesh, is diminution. Reuben’s sin led to it, for Moses had to pray that he might have a “few men” left, and not become altogether extinct. Simeon and Levi were to be “divided” and” scattered”; and both traceable to one cause--giving way to the flesh, to sensuality and self-will. Yes, living to self, to sin, to anything lower than Christ, does diminish. It makes us little--increasingly little. It banishes every vestige of largeness and greatness and grandness from our character, and from everything about us. We become little hearted, little souled, little in our ways of looking at things.
5. Lastly, let Jacob’s word of warning go forth to every Christian: “O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united.” The patriarch, as he thinks of their sin, traces its source to a “secret” spring, and its manifestation in an “assembly.” He warns us to have nothing to do with one or the other. The outward association and the secret spring are both alike dangerous to the soul. Like the Psalmist in his first Psalm, he would, as a faithful sentinel, warn us against coming in the way of either. And it is well, when evil is around us, to talk to one’s own soul about it all. “O my soul, come not thou into their secret; mine honour, be not thou united.” To make a clamour is easy. But let us watch our own souls, and all such meditation should have one effect--one of solemnity, separation, holiness: “Come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united.” If there is anything of God in you, then, “be not thou united.” No union with the flesh, or with aught that is contrary to God. (F. Whitfield, M. A.)
The tutor’s prediction respecting Tiberius
Theodorus Gaddaraeus, who was tutor to Tiberius the Roman Emperor, observing in him, while a boy, a very sanguinary nature and disposition, which lay lurking under a show of levity, was wont to call him “a lump of clay steeped and soaked in blood.” His predictions of him did not fail in the event. Tiberius thought death was too light a punishment for any one that displeased him. Hearing that one Carnulius who had displeased him had cut his own throat, “Carnulius,” said he, “has escaped me.” To another, who begged of him that he might die quickly, “No,” said he, “you are not so much in favour as that yet.” (Moral and Religious Anecdotal.)
A curse or a blessing
I would remind you of the different histories of the tribes of Simeon and Levi, as being alike fulfilments of one and the same prophecy. That was not because the prediction itself was, like some of the heathen oracles, so vague or so ambiguous that it could not be falsified by any event, for the phrases, “I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel,” are both definite and clear. But the explanation is to be found in the subsequent conduct of the men of Levi, as contrasted with that of the men of Simeon, whereby in the one case the prophecy took the ultimate character of a blessing, and in the other it kept that of a curse. Now this was in the lifetime of a tribe which extended over hundreds of years, but something not dissimilar may occur in the lifetime of an individual. Let us suppose that two men have been guilty of the same sin, and that as the penal consequence they have both had to bear the same thing, namely, separation from their native land and virtual transportation to a new and strange country. But the one, unwarned thereby, continues in his wicked ways, and goes down and down in iniquity, until he ceases to be recognizable even by those who look for him; while the other, moved to penitence, begins a new career, earns an honourable independence, gives himself to public affairs, and becomes a benefactor to the colony or the state, so that at length his name is everywhere mentioned with gratitude and respect. Here the proximate results in both cases were the same, but the ultimate how different! and all owing to the different dispositions of the two men. Nor is this an improbable supposition; you may have come on many eases like it, and they are all full of warning to some and encouragement to others, not only for the present life, but also for that which is to come. Up to a certain point we have power, by our penitence, to make blessing for ourselves for the life that now is and for that which is to come; nay, even after we have lost the first opportunity, there may come another on a lower plane; but at length there is a limit, beyond which all such opportunities cease, and we must “dree our weird” eternally. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)