SIMEON (Heb. Šim'ôn; Gr. Symzōn). - Second son of Jacob (v.) and Leah (Gen. 29:33; 35:22; 48:5), from whom one of the tribes of Israel took its name. At his birth his mother linked his name to the Lord's answer, "because I have heard (šāma') that I am unloved, and he gave me this one also." He took part with Levi in the fierce and treacherous repression of the Shechemites, who had dishonored their sister Dinah (ibid. 34:1-31): the deed incurred Jacob's reproach (ibid. 49:5 ff.), but for a certain aspect of heroism and religious-patriotic zeal it was also celebrated (Judg. 9:2). On the first journey he made to Egypt during the famine, S. was kept by Joseph as a hostage, since the firstborn Reuben was not guilty of the sale of his brother (Gen. 42:25, 36; 43:23). In Egypt his six sons later joined him with Jacob (ibid. 46:10; cf. 1 Chron. 2:1; 4:24 ff.).
The principal information about the tribe of S. is given in Josh. 19:1-9. Its territory lay between Beersheba and the Dead Sea, south of Judah, with which the tribe appears to be joined (ibid. 19:1) and by which it was in fact absorbed: it is the Negeb, a vast desert zone, in which the tribe appeared scattered rather than settled (1 Chron. 4:39-43), an idea reflected in Jacob's menacing prophecy (Gen. 49:7) and in the fact that in the blessing of Moses (Deut. 33) the tribe is omitted.
The decline of the tribe appears already from the desert period: the Simeonites fit for arms at Sinai numbered 59,300 (Num. 1:22), in the steppes of Moab only 22,200 (ibid. 26:12-14). The occupation of the territory assigned to S. took place with the help of Judah (Judg. 1:3, 17), which kept the best part: what fell to S. was nothing but steppe or desert. This also explains why in this tribe there was only the single Levitical city of Ashan (1 Chron. 6:59, 65 [Heb. 6:44, 50]; Ain in Josh. 21:4, 9, 16 is to be corrected to Ashan). The Simeonites still furnished 7,100 warriors to David (1 Chron. 12:25). But already in this period, and ever more frequently afterward, the cities that had belonged to S. are counted as Judean: Bethel, Ramoth in the south, Arama, Ashan (1 Sam. 30:27-30), Beersheba (2 Sam. 24:7; 1 Kings 19:3; 2 Kings 23:8), Ziklag (1 Sam. 27:6), etc. (cf. 1 Chron. 4:28-31).
The subsequent notices suggest that the tribe had to pass through particular difficulties, against which it sought to react: in part it was absorbed by Judah, in part perhaps by Arab tribes and by the Philistines, who at times occupied some of the cities. Some will also have emigrated to the northern tribes, with which S. would seem to have had particular relations, to judge from the identity of the calf cult at Beersheba and in the northern centers of Bethel, Gilgal and Dan (Amos 4:4; 5:5; etc.). Against the nomads of the desert the tribe sought to defend itself: and likewise to react against the Canaanites, as in the case of the two expeditions (1 Chron. 4:34-45) in the time of Hezekiah, in which 13 Simeonite chiefs occupied a zone of pastures near Gerar, taking them from the "sons of Ham."
The name of S. was also borne by a citizen of Jerusalem of the time of Ezra (Ezra 10:31) and by a priest, ancestor of the Maccabees (1 Macc. 2:1). Giovanni Rinaldi