of Symm. תּותר is to be explained by יתר: have no pre-eminence. His crime was, lying with Bilhah, his father's concubine (Gen 35:22). חלּלתּ is used absolutely: desecrated hast thou, sc., what should have been sacred to thee (cf. Lev 18:8). From this wickedness the injured father turns away with indignation, and passes to the third person as he repeats the words, “my couch he has ascended.” By the withdrawal of the rank belonging to the first-born, Reuben lost the leadership in Israel; so that his tribe attained to no position of influence in the nation (compare the blessing of Moses in Deu 33:6). The leadership was transferred to Judah, the double portion to Joseph (1Ch 5:1-2), by which, so far as the inheritance was concerned, the first-born of the beloved Rachel took the place of the first-born of the slighted Leah; not, however, according to the subjective will of the father, which is condemned in Deu 21:15., but according to the leading of God, by which Joseph had been raised above his brethren, but without the chieftainship being accorded to him. ==verses 5-7== Gen 49:5-7 “Simeon and Levi are brethren:” emphatically brethren in the full sense of the word; not merely as having the same parents, but in their modes of thought and action. “ Weapons of wickedness are their swords.” The ἅπαξ lec. מכרת is rendered by Luther, etc., weapons or swords, from כּוּר = כּרה, to dig, dig through, pierce: not connected with μάχαιρα. L. de Dieu and others follow the Arabic and Aethiopic versions: “plans;” but חמס כּלי, utensils, or instruments, of wickedness, does not accord with this. Such wickedness had the two brothers committed upon the inhabitants of Shechem (Gen 34:25.), that Jacob would have no fellowship with it. “ Into their counsel come not, my soul; with their assembly let not my honour unite.” סוד, a council, or deliberative consensus. תּחד, imperf. of יחד; כּבודי, like Psa 7:6; Psa 16:9, etc., of the soul as the noblest part of man, the centre of his personality as the image of God. “ For in their wrath have they slain men, and in their wantonness houghed oxen.” The singular nouns אישׁ and שׁור, in the sense of indefinite generality, are to be regarded as general rather than singular, especially as the plural form of both is rarely met with; of אישׁ, only in Psa 141:4; Pro 8:4, and Isa 53:3; of שׁור־שׁור, only in Hos 12:12. רצון: inclination, here in a bad
