Now this indeed [is] to be denied. But nevertheless Rashi, Rashbal, and some other Rabbis murmur against [it]; and [what] they themselves would do, they say the Judaic tribe did — [namely, that] it bore the Simeonites (as guests, lodgers, and sharers-of-the-portion) very grudgingly and grievingly. But lest they seem to say nothing — as indeed they say nothing — they try to prove it from this: that the Jews afterward, when they prevailed in strength under King David, drove the Simeonites out of these seats, and forced [them] to rush off elsewhere (1 Chron. 4:39). But that force, exaction, and expulsion is nowhere either read or found. There [it] is only narrated how [the Simeonites] sought out other seats for themselves too, and extended their borders more widely — not by abandoning [their] old possessions in Judaea, but by adjoining new [ones] to them, both in Gador and in Seir. And perhaps those same lands, together with the little Judaic portion, had been attributed to them by the dividers at this very time of the casting-of-lots; but [they] could not then conquer and obtain them; and so [they] kept themselves within the Judaic soil, until a greater hope of obtaining them should shine forth. But [they] began to obtain [them] not in David’s time, but in Hezekiah’s — that is, more than three hundred years after David. For in that ch. 4, bk. 1 of Chronicles, v. 41, [it] is thus written concerning the Simeonites: “These came, whom above we described by name, in the days of Hezekiah King of Juda,” and the rest. But [as to] what is said (v. 31) concerning the same: “These [were] their cities unto King David” — [it] does not have this meaning, as if in David’s time all those cities ceased to be theirs; but [it means] that, about that time, David received one of them — namely Siceleg [Ziklag] — from Achis the Philistine King, and adjoined [it] to the Judaean cities themselves (1 Sam. 27). But that [Ziklag] was, as to right, [part] of the Simeonites’ portion — although perhaps [they] had never yet actually settled in it, or, if [they] had settled [there] before, [they] had certainly lost [it] afterward in some war. And so the Author of the Questions on Chronicles, and Abulensis (1 Chron. 4, q. 24), explain that place — where [Abulensis] contends sharply against Lyra, [faulting him] because, since the nets of the aforesaid Rabbis had ensnared him there, he fables [that] the Jews asked of King Saul that he eject the Simeonites from their tribe; but [that] David’s [—], who was a Jew,
(col. 1195)
[…continued from col. 1194.] did not refuse [the Simeonites], out of hatred; but [that] David, when he had taken the scepter [become king], immediately assented to the demands of his tribesmen, and expelled those [Simeonites]. For these are old-wives’ trifles, propped up neither by testimony nor by any reason. This only could be inquired: whether David rightly added to the Judaic tribe a city which was of Simeonic right, [and] did not restore [it] to the Simeonites? But — with the Reader’s kind leave — let [this] be a postponement [of the matter] to [the commentary on] 1 Samuel ch. 27.