It harmonises well with this view to suppose that Simeon and Levi must have made at the same time their attempt to effect a settlement in the hill country of Ephraim.  One of their families, Dinah bath Leah, met with a favourable reception in the town of Shechem, and began to mix freely with its population, and thus the way was paved for the establishment of peaceable relations between the old inhabitants of the land and the new importations.  But these relations were brought to an end by the two brothers who, in concert it must be supposed with their sister, fell upon the Shechemites and massacred them.  The final result proved disastrous.  The Canaanites of the surrounding country united against them and completely destroyed them.  There can be no doubt as to the trustworthiness of the somewhat enigmatical records of those events which are given in Gen. xlix. and xxxiv.; in no other way is it possible to explain why Simeon and Levi, which originally came upon the stage of history on an equal footing with Reuben and Judah, should have already disappeared as independent tribes at the very beginning of the period of the judges.  Now, that the destruction of Shechem by the Manassite Abimelech is quite distinct from the attack made by Simeon and Levi need hardly be said.  On the other hand, the occurrence cannot be regarded as pre-Mosaic, but must be assigned to a time previous to the conquest of the hill country of Ephraim by Joseph; for after Joseph’s settlement there the two sons of Leah had manifestly nothing more to hope for in that locality.  We are shut up, therefore, to the conclusion that they crossed the Jordan at the same time as Judah separated himself from the main body in search of a suitable territory.  That Simeon accompanied Judah in the first westward attempt is expressly stated in Judges i.  The fate of Levi, again, cannot be separated from that of Simeon (Gen. xlix. 5-7); that he is not expressly mentioned in Judges i. ought not to cause surprise, when it is considered that later generations which regarded Levi as neither more nor less than a priest would have some difficulty in representing him as a thoroughly secular tribe.  Such nevertheless he must have been, for the poet in Genesis xlix. 5-7 puts him on a footing of perfect equality with Simeon, and attributes to both brothers a very secular and bloodthirsty character; he has no conception that Levi has a sacred vocation which is the reason of the dispersion of the tribe; the dispersion, on the contrary, is regarded as a curse and no blessing, an annihilation and not the means of giving permanence to its tribal individuality.  The shattered remains of Simeon, and doubtless those of Levi also, became incorporated with Judah, which thenceforward was the sole representative of the three sons of Leah, who according to the genealogy had been born immediately after Reuben the first-born.  Judah itself seems at the same time to have suffered severely.  Of its three older branches, Er, Onan, and Shelah,