Genesis 29:33
And she conceived again, and bare a son; and said, Because the LORD hath heard that I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also: and she called his name Simeon. And she conceived again, and bare a son; and said, Because the LORD hath heard that I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also: and she called his name Simeon.
The verse belongs to the continuing story of Abraham and his family, which shows the defects of Isaac and his two sons and Jacob's gradual growth in faith toward the victory that made him Israel, meaning prevailer with God. It falls within the account of Jacob's trials and victories that end in a change of heart, and the chapter forms part of the record of the lines through which the promised Seed would come. It belongs to the section where Jacob the deceiver is himself deceived and then turns homeward, pressing the question whether one is always ready to obey God's leading. It belongs to the checkered and unsatisfactory experiences of Esau and Jacob in which Jacob's selfish scheming and plottings brought suffering, showing that as he overreached and supplanted others he was overreached in return.
God's providence brings retribution sooner or later though it may seem slow. The verse stands in the account in which Jacob served Laban seven years twice told, illustrating Scripture's use of seven as a complete period signifying completeness or the whole. It belongs to the account of Leah bearing sons to Jacob, with six of his sons attributed to her.
The hatred of Leah and the rivalry over sons expressed in the giving of Simeon's name proves the very great unhappiness that polygamy brings to every family where it enters. The verse belongs to the history of Jacob's polygamous family and to the patriarchal violations of the marriage institution, yet such violations do not lessen marriage's sacred character, which was established before the fall, with the original order in Eden as the right rule. Polygamy was never anything but evil and wrong, though it was long allowed and tolerated because of hardness of heart. The uncertain origin of Leah's name cannot be used to argue that it means wild cow and that her sons' tribes shared a bovine totem, for such conclusions from uncertain names are speculation, not a sound explanation of the record.