Simeon (Hebrew Bible)

According to the Book of Genesis, Simeon (Hebrew: שִׁמְעוֹן orˈsɪmiən, Modern Shim'on, Tiberian Šim‘ōn) was, the second son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Simeon. However, some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an etiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. With Leah as a matriarch, Biblical scholars regard the tribe as having been believed by the text's authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation, however, the tribe is absent from the parts of the Bible which textual scholars regard as the oldest (for example, the ancient Song of Deborah), and some scholars think that Simeon was not originally regarded as a distinct tribe.

The text of the Torah says that the name of Simeon refers to Leah's belief that God had heard that Jacob preferred her sister, Rachel, implying a derivation from the Hebrew term shama on, meaning he has heard of my suffering; this is a similar etymology as the Torah gives for the theophoric name Ishmael (God has heard), implying that the names are cognate. The name is sometimes interpreted as meaning he who listens to the words of God, and at other times thought to derive from sham 'in, meaning there is sin, which is argued to be a prophetic reference to Zimri's sexual miscegenation with a Midianite woman, a type of relationship which rabbinical sources regard as sinful.

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