21 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Simeon from across Jewish tradition.
21 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.
When Leah named Reuben she saw the Egyptian affliction. When she named Simeon she heard the future cry. When Rachel named Joseph she saw Joshua at the Jordan.
After Shechem, Dinah asked where she could carry her shame. Bereshit Rabbah answers with Simeon's vow and a son named Shaul.
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.
Simeon and Levi razed a city for their sister. Jacob cursed their anger, not their deed, because the weapon was never theirs to carry.
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.
Jacob sent twelve servants to retrieve Dinah. Shechem drove them away, then turned back and kissed her where they could still see. The defiance was deliberate.
Dinah was twelve years old when Shechem took her. Jubilees and Jasher do not let the number stay in the background.
Simeon confessed at one hundred and twenty years that he had wanted Joseph dead. He had hated him since the pit, and his deathbed speech names the shame.
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.
Two handbreadths separated Jacob from Esau. Jacob scattered Simeon and Levi across the tribes. And the Targum hears Samson's name in the blessing of Dan.
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.
On his deathbed, Simeon traced every act of tribal violence back to the hatred he felt whenever Joseph had more than he did.
Jacob rebuked his sons for the slaughter at Shechem. A heavenly record reached a different verdict. Both accounts survived.
On his deathbed at one hundred and twenty, Simeon told his sons the truth about Joseph and described what envy feels like when it takes hold of a man.
Judith's prayer invokes the God of Simeon, the son of Jacob who slaughtered Shechem. That invocation was not casual. It was precise, and it opened an old door.
Held in Shechem's house for months, Dinah heard the plot against her brothers before they did. She found a way to warn them in time.
Levi dreamed of a brass shield, then found one on the road to Shechem. What he did next cost his father's blessing and earned him the heavenly record.
Simeon and Levi avenged Dinah at Shechem. Jacob cursed their anger at his deathbed, forty years after the swords were put away.
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.
Moses blessed eleven tribes and skipped Simeon, then buried Simeon's blessing inside Judah's so no one would hear the name spoken.
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.
