Genesis 34

Dinah raped (vs. 1-7)--Over the next few chapters we’re going to see some mighty corrupt young people in the house of Jacob. Perhaps seven or eight years have passed since Jacob settled near Shechem. Dinah is probably 14 or 15 by now, and she “went out to see the daughters of the land” (v. 1). Some commentators have condemned her for mingling with heathen women, but she’s a lone daughter with a houseful of miscreant brothers; it’s not surprising she’d want some female companionship. But, one of the young men of the city, confusingly named Shechem, rapes her. Yet he loves her and wants to marry her. He asks his father to approach Jacob about it; arrangements have to be made between parents, it’s not an individual choice of the two young people. Jacob’s brothers are very angry about the mistreatment of Dinah, “because [Shechem] had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, a thing which ought not to be done” (v. 7). Not just the rape, but rape by an uncircumcised man. It will lead to horrible consequences. 

The "pact" between Jacob’s sons and the men of Shechem (vs. 8-24)—Hamor, Shechem’s father, does indeed ask Jacob to allow Dinah to marry his son. And he suggests a little more than that: “And make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters to yourselves. So you shall dwell with us, and the land shall be before you. Dwell and trade in it, and acquire possessions for yourselves in it" (vs. 9-10). Shechem apparently really loved Dinah: “Then Shechem said to her father and her brothers, 'Let me find favor in your eyes, and whatever you say to me I will give. Ask me ever so much dowry and gift, and I will give according to what you say to me; but give me the young woman as a wife'” (vs. 11-12). And the Bible indicates that, in spite of the rape, he was an honorable young man, or at least more so than his father (v. 19).  We have absolutely no idea what Dinah thought about all of this.

Nor do we know what Jacob thought.  His sons step up and take charge—and behind their father’s back, as we shall see. They told Hamor and Shechem they could not intermarry with the people of the city unless all the men were circumcised. This was acceptable to Hamor and Shechem and they broached the men of the city of Shechem with the idea. Hamor sweetens the pot a little by saying, “Will not their livestock, their property, and every animal of theirs be ours? Only let us consent to them, and they will dwell with us” (v. 23). There wasn’t really any reason why the men of Shechem should agree to being circumcised; after all, Jacob and his family had lived in the area for several years now. But the possibility of gaining some of Jacob’s wealth for their own was sufficient to convince the men to be circumcised. So they were (v. 24).

The murder of the men of Shechem (vs. 25-31)—But Jacob’s sons were not serious in this agreement made with Hamor and Shechem. On the third day after the circumcision, when the men of the city were virtually helpless with pain and recovery, Simeon and Levi entered into the city “and killed all the males” (v. 25). “They killed Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah from Shechem's house” (v. 26); they “plundered the city," (v. 27), and “took their sheep, their oxen, and their donkeys, what was in the city and what was in the field, and all their wealth. All their little ones and their wives they took captive; and they plundered even all that was in the houses” (vs. 28-29). This was atrocious, of course, and Jacob knew it: He said to Simeon and Levi, "’You have troubled me by making me obnoxious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and since I am few in number, they will gather themselves together against me and kill me. I shall be destroyed, my household and I’" (v. 30). The only excuse Simeon and Levi gave was “’Should he treat our sister like a harlot?'" (v. 31). What Shechem did was no doubt wrong and totally inexcusable; he probably could have had Dinah if he had just controlled himself and asked. But rape doesn’t justify lying, wholesale murder, theft, kidnapping, and enslavement. As noted, we will see further examples of the utter depravity and wickedness of Jacob’s sons. Whether he was just a lousy father, or whether this was some of the fruit of polygamy, we do not know. Perhaps a bit of both. We do know that he favored Rachel’s children (Joseph and Benjamin) and that’s going to lead to disagreeable consequences as well.