Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
Pouring out like the waters - This is an obscure sentence because unfinished. It evidently relates to the defilement of his father' s couch; and the word pachaz , here translated pouring out, and in our Version unstable, has a bad meaning in other places of the Scripture, being applied to dissolute, debauched, and licentious conduct. See Judges 9:4; Zephaniah 3:4; Jeremiah 23:14, Jeremiah 23:32; Jeremiah 29:23.
Thou shalt not excel - This tribe never rose to any eminence in Israel; was not so numerous by one third as either Judah, Joseph, or Dan, when Moses took the sum of them in the wilderness, Numbers 1:21; and was among the first that were carried into captivity, I Chronicles 5:26.
Then thou didst defile - Another unfinished sentence, similar to the former, and upon the same subject, passing over a transaction covertly, which delicacy forbade Jacob to enlarge on. For the crime of Reuben, see Clarke on Genesis 35:22 (note).
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 honor was not united:
For in their anger they slew a man, ( 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.
Other Adam Clarke entries containing Genesis 49:4:
Genesis 35:22
Genesis 35:29
Genesis 49:1
Exodus 15:1
Numbers 2:2
Deuteronomy 27:26
Deuteronomy 33:6
1 Chronicles 5:1
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