The Torah lists Shimeon's sons with a single odd note about the last one: Shaul, born of a Canaanite woman (Exodus 6:15). The Aramaic paraphrase of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 6:15 cannot let that detail pass without unmasking it. Shaul, the Targum whispers, is the same figure who would reappear centuries later as Zimri ben Salu, the prince of the tribe of Shimeon struck down by Phinehas for his brazen union with a Midianite woman (Numbers 25:14).
The meturgeman is teaching by collapsing time. A tribe's founding wound — a Canaanite marriage at the entry into Egypt — ripens into the same wound at the exit from the wilderness. Shimeon's line is marked from its origin by the pull toward forbidden union with the nations, and that pull resurfaces with Zimri on the plains of Moab. This is why the tribe of Shimeon all but vanishes in later blessings; its founding sap carried a flaw.
For the listener, the lesson is sobering. A single compromised choice at the root of a family can echo across generations. But the echo is not fate. Phinehas, also a descendant of this Exodus generation, breaks the cycle by acting with kana'ut, holy zeal. The takeaway: the sins we inherit are real, but the story of our line is still ours to finish.