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.
Into their secret, х cowd (H5475)] - a divan, a conclave of wicked conspirators.
Mine honour, х kªbodiy (H3519)] - joined with a feminine verb, as being in parallelism with х napshiy (H5315)] my soul; and both words are in the nominative, 'let not my soul' - i:e., let me not come into their circle (secret). [The Septuagint has: kai epi tee sustasei autoon mee erisai ta eepata mou, as if their Hebrew text had been kaabeed (H3515), liver, the seat of the mind.]
In their self-will they digged down a wall. This translation is not correct; because there is no mention made in the narrative (Genesis 34:1-31) of the demolition of the city wall; and besides, the text is not х shuwr (H7791)] a wall, but х showr (H7794)] an ox; whence some commentators render, 'they hamstrung the oxen;' but this interpretation is as inadmissible as the former; because instead of Simeon and Levi destroying the cattle, we read that they took the sheep and the oxen," etc. (Genesis 34:28). The wiser among the commentators, seeing the impropriety of both these rendering, have endeavoured to raise the idea of each word by saying, that the wall here is a metaphor for the prince of the city; or, that the ox, being an emblem of greatness, signifies the governor. But the mistake seems only to be this, that the word here expresses plainly what these interpreters were construed to think was expressed in metaphor; because the words of the history (cf. Genesis 34:25-26) remarkably coincide with, and greatly illustrate, these words of Jacob:
`For in their anger they slew men [taking 'iysh (H376 ) collectively] And in their wanton fury they destroyed the princes.
Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, And their wanton fury, for it was inflexible.'
The second part of this sentence increases in emphasis upon the first. And there is such an accession of spirit and beauty given to the sentence by the double repetition of the parallelism as is sufficient to recommend this translation (Kennicott).
I will divide them in Jacob ... Simeon and Levi having been confederates in crime, the same prophetical enunciation would be equally applicable to both their tribes. Levi had cities allotted to them (Joshua 21:1-45) in every tribe. On account of their zeal against idolatry they were honourably 'divided' in Jacob; whereas the tribe of Simeon, which was guilty of the grossest idolatry, and the vices inseparable from it, were ignominiously 'scattered'-lying on the outskirts of the promised land, and forming an appendage to Judah. But this arrangement was afterward modified, and the Simeonites had detached settlements assigned in the Negeb and Shephela (plain of Philistia) (cf. 1 Chronicles 4:38-43). According to Jewish tradition, they were employed as teachers in the several tribes. Jacob, in saying "I will divide them," did not so forget himself, through his excited feeling, as even apparently to assume the divine prerogative, but by a bold poetical figure introduces God Himself, as prophetically declaring what in the course of His providence He would accomplish.