Genesis 49:5

5. Simeon and Levi, brethren:

They have accomplished their fraudulent purposes.

6. Into their secret council my soul did not come;

In their confederacy my honour was not united:

For in their anger they slew a man, (איש ish, a noble,)

And in their pleasure they murdered a prince.

7. Cursed was their anger, for it was fierce!

And their excessive wrath, for it was inflexible!

I will divide them out in Jacob,

And I will disperse them in Israel.

Verse Genesis 49:5. Simeon and Levi are brethren] Not only springing from the same parents, but they have the same kind or disposition, head-strong, deceitful, vindictive, and cruel.

They have accomplished, c.] Our margin has it, Their swords are weapons of violence, i. e., Their swords, which they should have used in defence of their persons or the honourable protection of their families, they have employed in the base and dastardly murder of an innocent people.

The Septuagint gives a different turn to this line from our translation, and confirms the translation given above: Συνετελεσαν αδικια εξαιρεσεως αυτων· They have accomplished the iniquity of their purpose with which the Samaritan Version agrees. In the Samaritan text we read [Samaritan] calu, they have accomplished, instead of the Hebrew כלי keley, weapons or instruments, which reading most critics prefer: and as to מכרתיהם mecherotheyhem, translated above their fraudulent purposes, and which our translation on almost no authority renders their habitations, it must either come from the AEthiopic מכר macar, he counselled, devised stratagems, c., (see Castel,) or from the Arabic [Arabic] macara, he deceived, practised deceit, plotted, c., which is nearly of the same import. This gives not only a consistent but evidently the true sense.