Week 2 Genesis 49
The Blessing: Simeon and Levi are brothers – their swords are weapons of violence. Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel.
Simeon & Levi (and Reuben, Judah, Issachar & Zebulun) were brothers who had the same mother – Leah. Simeon was born 2nd & Levi 3rd.
Jacob was probably thinking back to the Dinah Story when he gave Simeon & Levi their ‘blessing’. Dinah – who was Leah’s daughter and their sister – was raped by a local guy named Shechem. In revenge Simeon & Levi murdered Shechem (then went hog-wild and killed the other men in the town too). That story makes the best sense of Jacob’s description of Simeon & Levi’s anger and fury.
The only other reference I found for Simeon was when the brothers were down in Egypt and Joseph held him hostage until the others returned.
I found even less for Levi. Just an obituary notice saying he died when he was 137.
The revenge killings are about all I’ve got to go on to make some sense of Jacob’s promise that the boys would be scattered-and-dispersed. Which sounds closer to a curse than a blessing.
Note: quote from Genesis 49:5-7 (NIV). Also Genesis 34 (Dinah) 38:1-30 (Judah-Tamar) 42:24 Exodus 6:16