Genesis 49:6

O my soul, come not thou into their secret,.... Their cabinet counsels, combinations and conspiracies; this Jacob said, as abhorring the wicked counsel they had took of slaying the Shechemites; and

O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall.

Their secret; or, counsel, or company, as the word is used, ; i.e. do not partake with them in their secret and wicked designs. Hereby he signifies to all posterity, that that bloody enterprise was undertaken without his consent or approbation, and that he could not think of it without detestation, nor let it pass without a severe censure. Or, O my soul, thou wast not in their secret, as the Chaldee, Syriae, and Arabic take it, by a common enallage of the future tense for the past. Mine honour; either, 1. Properly so called. So the sense is, Let not my honour or good name be bound up with theirs; they gloried in this wickedness, which I abominate, and which indeed is their shame. Or, 2. Improperly; so he understands either, 1. His soul, which is indeed the glory of a man, though I do not remember any place of Scripture where that word must necessarily be so understood. So this is a repetition of the same thing in other words, which is usual in Scripture. Or rather, 2. His tongue, for which the word honour or glory is commonly put, as , compared with 57:8 108:1, because the tongue or speech is the glory of a man, by which he is distinguished from unreasonable creatures, and, if well used, it brings much honour to God, and to the man that speaks with it. So the sense is, As my soul did not approve of that wicked action, so my tongue never gave consent to it, nor shall it now by silence seem to own it, but shall publicly witness my abhorrence of it. In their anger they slew a man, i.e. men, the Shechemites, ,26, the singular number for the plural, as 32:5 , compared with . He saith man rather then men, either with respect unto the prince, whose slaughter was principally designed, or to show that they slew them all to a man. In their self-will: it may note, that this cruelty of theirs was committed, 1. By their own will and choice, not by Jacob’ s will or consent, which they never asked nor obtained. 2. Without any necessity or sufficient provocation, but merely by their own will and proper motion. 3. Not rashly and hastily, but wilfully and resolvedly, after mature deliberation. 4. Not unwillingly, but cheerfully, and with delight and good will, as that word commonly signifies. They digged down a wall; not the walls of the city, but of private houses; it may be only of the prince’ s house, who upon the first noise of the tumult might, and probably did, retire and secure himself in some strong room of the house, whose wall they brake down that they might come at him. For neither were the walls of houses or cities so strong then as now many are; nor were Simeon and Levi destitute of fit instruments to break down a wall, which doubtless they brought with them, as easily foreseeing that difficulty in their enterprise.

Genesis 49:6 O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall.Ver. 6. O my soul, come not thou, &c.] Jacob here meaneth that neither should any, neither would he approve of their perfidy, saith an interpreter. And yet Thuanus writes that the Pope caused the massacre of Paris to be painted in his palace. Another of them highly extolled in his consistory the noble act of Clement the monk, that killed the king of France, comparing it with the work of creation, incarnation, &c. Friar Garnet, our chief gunpowder plotter, had his picture set among the rest of their saints, in the Jesuits’ Church at Rome. And Cornel. a Lapide, upon Apoc. vii. 3, crowns this traitor with fresh encomiastics. In their anger they slew a man.] Yea, many innocents; and then cried out, O rem regiam! as Valesius did when he had slain three hundred. O pulchrum spectaculum! as Hannibal, when he saw a pit full of man’ s blood. Quam bonus est odor hostis mortui! as Charles IX, in the massacre of Paris; where they poisoned the Queen of Navarre; pistoled the Prince of Conde; murdered the most part of the peerless peers of France, their wives and children; with a great sort of the common people, in various parts of the realm, - thirty thousand in one month, three hundred thousand in the space of a year! Mohammed I, Emperor of the Turks, was thought, in his time, to have been the death of eighty thousand men. Selymus II, in revenge of the loss he had received at the battle of Lepanto, would have put to death all the Christians in his dominion, in number infinite. Mithridates, king of Pontus, with one letter, slew eighty thousand citizens of Rome in Asia, that were scattered up and down the country for traffic’ s sake. It was the cruel manner of Uladus, prince of Wallachia, together with the offenders, to execute the whole family; yea, sometimes the whole kindred. Did not these two brethren in sin do so, and worse? Jacob Revius, De Vitis Pont., p. 291. Gir. i. Apol. contra Jesuit. Answ. to Cathol. Supplic., by Gab. Powel, 885. Val. Max., lib. ix. Turk. Hist., fol. 363.

(6) Their secret.—The word sôd used here is literally the little carpet, or cushion, upon which an Oriental sits. Consequently, for two persons to sit upon the same carpet marks a high degree of friendship and familiarity. It would therefore be more exactly translated alliance, or intimacy.Unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united.—For assembly (Heb. congregation), see Genesis 28:3; Genesis 35:11. It means here their union, or confederacy. In the first clause Jacob bids his soul, his true self, not to enter their alliance; here, after the manner of the parallelism of Hebrew poetry, he intensifies the meaning. For by mine honour, he signifies all that gave him dignity and worth in the sight of God and man. And this nobleness would be degraded and lost by union with men banded together for evil. In their self-will they digged down a wall—Self-will is worse than anger, and signifies that arrogant temper which leads on to wanton cruelty. The last words mean, they houghed an ox. The Vulgand Syriac took it as our version does, and understood it of making a breach in the walls of Shechem; but they had a different reading, shur, whereas the word in the Hebrew is shor, an ox, and it is so rendered by the LXX. The ox was in old times the symbol of majesty, and thus bulls are put for princes in Psalms 22:12; Psalms 68:30. Thus, then, the meaning is, “In their anger at the wrong done to their sister they slew Hamor, prince of Shechem, with his people; and from wanton cruelty, without any just cause for indignation, they hamstrung the noblest of their brethren, not killing Joseph outright, but disabling him by selling him into slavery, that he might there perish.”

Verse 6. Into their secret council, c.] Jacob here exculpates himself from all participation in the guilt of Simeon and Levi in the murder of the Shechemites. He most solemnly declares that he knew nothing of the confederacy by which it was executed, nor of the secret council in which it was plotted. If it should be said that the words תבא tabo and תחד techad should be translated in the future tense or in the imperative, as in our translation, I shall not contend though it is well known that the preterite is often used for the future in Hebrew, and vice versa. Taken thus, the words mark the strong detestation which this holy man's soul felt for the villany of his sons: "My soul shall not come into their secret council. My honour shall not be united to their confederacy. For in their anger they slew a man] איש ish, a noble, an honourable man, viz., Shechem. And in their pleasure] This marks the highest degree of wickedness and settled malice, they were delighted with their deed. A similar spirit Saul of Tarsus possessed previously to his conversion; speaking of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, St. Luke says, Acts 8:1: Σαυλοςδεηνσυνευδοκωντῃαναιρεσειαυτου· And Saul was gladly consenting to his death. He was with the others highly delighted with it; and thus the prediction of our Lord was fulfilled, John 16:2: Yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And it is represented as the highest pitch of profligacy and wickedness, not only to sin, but to delight in it; see Romans 1:32. As the original word רצון ratson signifies, in general, pleasure, benevolence, delight, c., it should neither be translated self-will nor wilfulness, as some have done, but simply as above and the reasons appear sufficiently obvious. They murdered a prince - Hamor, the father of Shechem. Instead of שור shor, which we have translated a wall, and others an ox, I read שר sar, a prince, which makes a consistent sense; (see Kennicott's first Dissertation, p. 56, c.) as there is no evidence whatever that Simeon and Levi either dug down a wall or houghed the oxen, as some have translated the passage; (see the margin;) on the contrary, the text, Genesis 34:28-29, proves that they had taken for their own use the sheep, oxen, asses, all their wealth, their wives, and their little ones.

6. council] or, as R.V. marg., secret. The word means either a secret confederacy, or its secret purpose. The parallelism of the clauses rather favours the former rendering. The true spirit of Israel will have nothing to do with the savage policy hatched in the secret conclaves of these two tribes. my glory] The word “glory” is used to denote the “soul,” or the “spirit,” as man’s most glorious possession. Cf. Psalms 16:9, “my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth”; Psalms 30:12; Psalms 57:8; Psalms 108:2. The LXX, reading the same Hebrew consonants with different vowels, translates “my liver” = “my affections,” and, instead of “united,” renders a slightly different text “contend,” μὴἐρίσαιτὰἥπατάμου. a man] or, as R.V. marg., men. houghed] i.e. “mutilated,” by cutting the sinews of the leg. Cf. Joshua 11:6; Joshua 11:9; 2 Samuel 8:4. LXX gives an exact rendering ἐνευροκόπησαν. The Old English “hox” is the form found in Shakespeare: Wint. Tale, i. 2, “thou art a coward, Which hoxes honesty behind.” an ox] or, as R.V. marg., oxen: so A.V. Instead of the Heb. shor, another reading, shur, “a wall,” is followed by Lat. suffoderunt murum, and by Targ. Onk., Syr. Pesh., Symmachus, and Jerome; probably on account of the apparent contradiction in Genesis 34:28-29, where the sheep and oxen are not mutilated, but carried off as booty.

6. Their secret council — Allusion to their private conspiracy to massacre the men of Shechem. Unite not — This uniting in secret assembly is to be punished by dividing and scattering them. Genesis 49:7.