Catholic Commentary
The Inheritance of Simeon: Nested Within Judah (Part 2)
9Out of the part of the children of Judah was the inheritance of the children of Simeon; for the portion of the children of Judah was too much for them. Therefore the children of Simeon had inheritance in the middle of their inheritance.
Joshua 19:9 records that Simeon's tribal inheritance was carved out from Judah's allotted territory because Judah's portion was too large for its population. Consequently, Simeon received its inheritance surrounded entirely within Judah's territory, reflecting both a logistical adjustment to the land distribution and the partial fulfillment of Jacob's prophecy scattering Simeon among the other tribes.
Simeon's tribe survives not by having its own land, but by being buried in the heart of Judah—a map of how the Church survives: not isolated, but embedded in a larger body.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Church Fathers were alert to the typological richness of tribal geography. In the allegorical reading championed by Origen (Homilies on Joshua), each tribe represents a spiritual type or a dimension of the soul's inheritance in God. Simeon's position within Judah — the royal tribe, the messianic lineage — anticipates the pattern by which the smaller and the weaker find their security not in autonomous strength but in union with the greater. This is a figure of the Church herself: her members' inheritance is secured not in isolation but within the Body of Christ (the true Lion of Judah, Revelation 5:5), from whose fullness all receive (John 1:16).
There is also a penitential typology at work. Simeon's reduced inheritance traces back to the violence of Simeon and Levi at Shechem (Genesis 34), for which Jacob pronounced scattering (Genesis 49:5–7). That this scattering takes the form of absorption into Judah — the messianic tribe — rather than oblivion, is itself an act of grace: judgment transformed into providence.
Catholic tradition reads Joshua's allotment texts not as mere historical cadastre but as living Scripture bearing multiple senses simultaneously (cf. Dei Verbum §12; CCC §115–119). Joshua 19:9 illuminates several distinctively Catholic theological convictions.
Providence and Particular Judgment Redeemed: The verse presupposes that Jacob's curse upon Simeon (Genesis 49:7 — "I will divide them in Jacob, scatter them in Israel") is not annulled but transformed. This is a pattern St. Augustine (City of God, Book XVI) identifies throughout sacred history: God's judgments are never merely punitive but are ordered toward a deeper mercy. Simeon is scattered, yes — but scattered into the heart of the messianic tribe. Catholic moral theology sees in this the principle that divine punishment, properly received, becomes medicinal (cf. CCC §1459), ordered toward the healing and reintegration of the sinner into the community of salvation.
Communion Ecclesiology: Simeon dwelling bəṯôḵ — in the very midst of Judah — prefigures the Pauline teaching that the members of the Body cannot say to one another "I have no need of you" (1 Corinthians 12:21). The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium §7 describes the Church as a body in which diverse members share one life. Simeon, lacking the capacity to inhabit its own allotment independently, models the truth that no member of the covenant community is self-sufficient. This is not failure but vocation.
Type of the Church Among the Nations: The Fathers (notably Eusebius of Caesarea in his Onomasticon) noted that Simeon's towns were interspersed throughout southern Canaan, pointing to the Church's manner of presence in the world — not geographically consolidated, but leaven hidden in meal (Matthew 13:33), witnessing from within rather than from a separate enclave.
Joshua 19:9 offers a bracing corrective to the modern Catholic temptation toward spiritual self-sufficiency — the assumption that one's faith life is a private transaction between the individual soul and God, requiring no structural rootedness in a larger community. Simeon's inheritance existed only because it was nested within Judah's. Remove that enclosure, and Simeon disappears.
Contemporary Catholics who find themselves in small communities — a parish threatened with closure, a religious order diminished in numbers, a Catholic school struggling to survive — can find in Simeon's situation not humiliation but a genuine vocation. To dwell "in the midst of" a greater ecclesial reality, dependent on its vitality, is not a defeat. It is the normal shape of Christian life in the Body of Christ.
More pointedly: this verse challenges Catholics who have drifted from regular sacramental life, parish community, and accountability to the Church's teaching. One cannot maintain a genuine naḥalah — a real inheritance in God's covenant — while refusing to be embedded in the community that carries it. The inheritance is received together or not at all. The practical question this verse poses is concrete: In whose midst am I dwelling? Am I planted within the life of the Church, or have I claimed an inheritance I am trying to hold alone?
Commentary
Joshua 19:9 — Literal and Narrative Analysis
Joshua 19:9 stands as a parenthetical explanation embedded within the tribal allotment lists, and its brevity belies its significance. The verse operates on two levels simultaneously: it resolves a logistical problem in the distribution of Canaan, and it fulfills, without explicitly quoting, the prophetic curse of Genesis 49:7.
"Out of the part of the children of Judah was the inheritance of the children of Simeon"
The Hebrew term used for "inheritance" (naḥalah) is the same weighty word employed throughout Joshua for divinely granted tribal territories — land given not by military conquest alone, but by God's sovereign decree. That Simeon's naḥalah is carved directly from Judah's naḥalah is striking: it means Simeon does not receive a primary allotment via the sacred lot (cf. 18:6–10), but a secondary one derived from a neighboring tribe's surplus. The grammar underscores dependency — Simeon's existence as a territorial entity is contingent upon Judah's abundance.
"For the portion of the children of Judah was too much for them"
The word translated "too much" (rāḇ, great/much) indicates that Judah's lot exceeded what its population could settle and hold. This is not a correction of God's initial distribution — Catholic interpreters from Origen onward have resisted that reading — but rather a providential surplus deliberately built into the original grant so that Simeon might be absorbed into Judah's ambit. The Deuteronomist's theology of land never presents divine allotment as miscalculation. Rather, what appears as excess on Judah's side is precisely the room prepared for Simeon within it.
"Therefore the children of Simeon had inheritance in the middle of their inheritance"
The phrase "in the middle of" (bəṯôḵ, literally "in the midst of") is the heart of the verse theologically. Simeon does not dwell on Judah's border or margin — it dwells within Judah, surrounded by it, embedded in it. This spatial reality has profound implications for Simeon's future. Historically, Simeon gradually lost distinct tribal identity and was absorbed into Judah (cf. 1 Chronicles 4:24–43, where Simeonite clans seek land far afield because their assigned towns are fully Judahite). By the time of the monarchy, Simeon had effectively merged into Judah. The tribe's "inheritance" was real, but its identity was maintained only by dwelling inside a greater whole.