The 20th-century Reform Rabbi Gunther Plaut considered it likely that at a time when the tribes were already in Canaan, although not yet a nation, the author of collected old tribal songs and memories, wove them into a poem, and incorporated the product into Jacob's life story. Plaut argued that this author composed in the same general epoch as the song of Deborah in , at a time when the tribe of Levi fell short of the priestly importance that the blessing of Moses in assigned to it, when the tribe of Simeon (not named in Deuteronomy and later absorbed into the tribe of Judah) was still worth mentioning.