25 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Simeon from across Jewish tradition.
25 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines simeon, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
He sat up on the bed in his sons' house in Egypt and kissed each of them on the mouth. Then he told them his liver had never once moved for his brother.
Joseph chained Simeon in front of his brothers, then ordered good food sent to the cell as soon as they left. The cruelty and the care were the same plan.
Moses blessed eleven tribes and skipped Simeon, then buried Simeon's blessing inside Judah's so no one would hear the name spoken.
Her brothers killed every man in the city and pulled her out of the house. Then Dinah asked the question none of them had thought about.
Levi and Simeon killed every man in Shechem and Jacob cursed them for it. Within a generation, God chose Levi for the priesthood. Jubilees explains why.
Rebekah laid hands on Jacob, dressed him in priestly garments, and sent him from Esau. Her warning became prophecy at Jacob's burial.
Jacob rebuked his sons for the slaughter at Shechem. A heavenly record reached a different verdict. Both accounts survived.
Simeon and Levi walked into Shechem on the third day, when no man could rise from his bed, and killed every male. Judith knew that when she braided her hair.
Shechem seized Dinah while his city watched. Jacob's sons invoked the covenant of Noah, and the tradition holds the whole city answered for it.
He asked the angel for a name he could call on in trouble. The angel gave him a job description instead, and a sword, and an address.
She was twelve and she was being held in the prince's house when she overheard what the men downstairs were planning to do to her family.
Simeon and Levi avenged Dinah at Shechem. Jacob cursed their anger at his deathbed, forty years after the swords were put away.
The Romans sentenced them to death. The crime belonged to their ancestors. Rabban Shimon wept in confusion. Rabbi Ishmael told him to stop and listen.
On his deathbed, the patriarch Simeon gathered his children and named the force that had once brought him to the edge of fratricide: not hatred, but envy.
On his deathbed, Simeon confessed he had planned Joseph's murder in his heart and traced the same spirit back through Cain to the first morning of the world.
Simeon and Levi emptied a whole city after Dinah's shame, and surrounding nations whispered that if two sons could do this, twelve would end the world.
Joseph stored Egypt's grain, seized Simeon, and heaped Benjamin's plate seven times high before the silver cup closed the trap.
On his deathbed Jacob stripped Reuben of three crowns, spared Shechem's killers by cursing only rage, and made Dan a lone serpent like Samson.
Chariots behind them, deep water in front, and nobody moving. Then Judah's prince walked in alone until the water came up over his mouth.
Jacob still calls Reuben firstborn despite the bed. He, not Esau, summons sons to bless. He bars his name from Simeon and Levi's future sins.
Simeon sat in an Egyptian cell. Benjamin clung to Jacob's sleeve. Hunger pressed the house until Judah forced the choice.
Idols, blood, and his daughter. The three things Jacob asked God to keep him from are the three that broke on him inside one town.
Reuben planned a pit to save Joseph, then missed the rescue while repenting alone. Years later Joseph bound Simeon, the voice for murder.
Jacob's sons came from the field raging over Shechem, and when Jacob feared Canaan, they answered with their sisters honor.
Dinah steps beyond the tents to see the daughters of the land. Midrash hears she went out to be seen, and Shechem seizes what his eyes claim as spoil.
