CHAPTER XXIV.

The benedictions on Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.

THE poet now enters upon the benediction of the twelve tribes, commencing, as Jacob had previously done, with the first-born Reuben, he being the lineal representative of the patriarch by whom he was begotten; thus blessing the tribes through their several original heads.

Let Reuben live, and not die;
And let not his men be few.

The first clause in this distich agrees well with Jacob's prophecy, that Reuben should not excel. It strongly supports the inference of former undeserving, promising to his descendants life indeed, but only this, in consequence of the atrocity of that patriarch, and the forfeiture of his birthright by his unnatural incest. His posterity were to live, but not to be distinguished, except for their rebellions, of which disposition they had already given sufficient evidence, Dathan, Abiram, and On, being of this tribe.

The words of this prophetic blessing appear to me, as Houbigant supposes, merely to promise that the Reubenites shall continue to exist as a distinct community, notwithstanding the disgrace and crimes of their ancestor; beyond this no expectations are raised, for I think

there cane little doubt that the second clause refers to Simeon, for reasons which I shall presently give, merely observing by the way that both these tribes being comparatively unimportant, they are each dismissed in a single line.

The phrase "live, and not die,” applied to Reuben, is a Hebrew form of expression, not uncommon in scripture, the union of the negative and affirmative greatly strengthening the latter, and was probably, moreover, made use of by Moses for the purpose of adding grace to the clause, imparting to it rhythm as well as symmetry. We find the same thing, only the order inverted, in the first verse of the thirty-eighth chapter of Isaiah: "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live;" likewise in the seventeenth verse of the hundred and eighteenth Psalm:

I shall not die,

But live, and declare the works of the Lord.

Although these expressions are decidedly pleonastic, they unquestionably add both beauty and force to the idea which they are made the vehicles of communicating. They are not mere vain repetitions, but positive poetical adorn

ments.

The brevity of this benediction on Reuben's descendants may be sufficiently accounted for from the fact that their great progenitor, Jacob, had degraded his eldest son on account of his licentiousness, and involved his posterity in his disgrace, by transferring the privileges of primogeniture to Judah; Moses therefore merely

assures them, in confirmation of Jacob's prophecy, that they shall not be exterminated from among the tribes of Israel; thus implying their insignificancy as a political body, by the narrow limitations of his blessing.

And let not his men be few.

Houbigant, whom Durell follows, renders this hemistich thus:

And let Simeon be few in number.

The negative participle is not found in the Hebrew it is an interpolation by our translators; the prophecy, therefore, as it stands, will particularly apply to Simeon, whose posterity were so diminished after their departure from Egypt, when they amounted to upwards of fifty-nine thousand men, that within forty years from that period they were reduced to little more than twenty-two thousand, in consequence of their repeated impieties. This finally became the most inconsiderable of all the tribes, in point of numbers, though not in distinction, for most of the scribes are supposed to have been from the posterity of Simeon, so that his descendants were distinguished for their learning, and that influence which learning communicates, though not for their numerical strength. It will be observed, that the line in which the Simeonites are presumed to be referred to, does not imply any absence of civil or political eminence, but only of a numerous race; it therefore more strictly applies to the descendants of Simeon than to those of Reuben.

Why Moses should have omitted Simeon in a series of prophecies, relating separately and distinctly to the twelve tribes, it is difficult to conceive; for surely the cruelty practised by that patriarch upon the Shechemites, under extreme provocation, would scarcely, in a rude age when similar methods of retaliation were deemed laudable acts of revenge, be considered more criminal than the incest of Reuben. Besides, he was not more culpable than Levi, who participated in the same crime; and Levi is distinguished by Moses above many other sons of Jacob who had not been participators in any such enormity, for upon him he pours out the longest blessing of all, save that afterwards pronounced upon Joseph. It is moreover expressly stated, both by Josephus* and Philo,† that Moses blessed all the tribes. The name of Simeon is retained in the Alexandrian manuscript, the most ancient and valuable extant, likewise in the Complutensian and Aldine editions of the Septuagint; and seeming, as it does, to belong to the true sense of the passage, we are, I think, fully justified in believing that it should have a place in the text. As the words now stand, they have far less coherency than when the name of Simeon is added, as Durell proposes, thus:

Let Reuben live, and not die;
And let Simeon be few in number.

After the settlement of the Israelites in the

Ant. book iv. chap. 8.

↑ Vit. Mos, lib. iiì,

land of promise, the tribe of Simeon received for its portion only a district dismembered from the tribe of Judah, and some lands of which they took forcible possession in the desert of Gedor, and in the mountains of Seir.*

Herder supposes that Moses omitted Simeon in these benedictions, because he had no land which he could apportion to that tribe; but this does not appear a sufficient reason for so invidious an omission, since an act of this kind on the part of their venerated lawgiver, must have been one of superlative degradation, it being a mark of exclusive disgrace. Besides, it cannot be probable that Moses intended to degrade the Simeonites at a moment especially when he was pouring out his last valedictory blessings upon the assembled Israelites, separately and collectively. Why he should have selected Simeon in particular for so signal a mark of implicative odium, can be accounted for on no reasonable grounds of probability. It is far more consistent with the whole spirit and bearing of the context to believe that Simeon was included in the last solemn address of the inspired bard to his countrymen. "The Targum of Jerusalem and the Rabbins, followed by some ancient fathers, believe that the greater part of the scribes and men learned in the law were of the tribe of Simeon: and these being dispersed throughout Israel, produced the accomplishment of Jacob's prophecy.

"It is likely that Jacob meant the dispersion

* 1 Chron. iv. 39–42.