The sons of Simeon were the immediate male offspring of Simeon, who was the second son of Jacob. The six names, including the phrase the son of a Canaanite woman, are given here exactly as they are in Gen 46.10. Shaul is spelled “Saul” in New English Bible and New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, for the name is the same in the Hebrew. To identify him as the son of a Canaanite woman distinguishes him from the King Saul, who lived much later. But the purpose in this genealogy was probably to identify him as the son whose mother came from one of the non-Israelite tribes living in the territory called Canaan.

These are the families of Simeon points back to the six names just mentioned, but they became the names of the “Simeonite clans” (Translator’s Old Testament). Good News Translation is clear: “they were the ancestors of the clans that bear their name”; but one may also say something like “they were the great fathers [or, big grandfathers] of the clans.” (For other ways of expressing “ancestors,” see the comment at 3.6.)

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .