Genesis 34:4

The whole of Genesis 34 is filled with the unhappy results of Jacob lowering his separation from the world. The evil effects did not show in Jacob himself, but in his family. The tide of evil runs in two broad channels: violence and corruption... The world is just the same today. How often we, as Christian parents, have to hang our heads in shame. We must admit that a little compromise with the world on our part has led to sorrow and even disaster in our families.

"And Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land." Genesis 34:1. Was this the way of the house of Abraham? Was this the family of the separated patriarch keeping the way of the Lord? Had Abraham been this slack? What contact had he arranged for his children with either the sons or the daughters of the land?

When Shechem saw Dinah he said to his father, "Get me this girl for my wife." So Hamor asked Jacob. Jacob and his sons all knew they should not agree, but they spoke deceitfully. Hamor also promised to give Jacob many things. He suggested the two peoples might be one, living in the land, trading, and marrying together. Just like the world of today; they want Christians to be one with them — no difference. Christians, be careful! The Lord says, "Go out from their midst, and be separate." (2 Corinthians 6:17.) The world says, "We may be one."

What did she have to do with them at all? All but the godless knew that the time for judgment on these people would come, and that Abraham's descendants would possess the land. Their sin was great, though not yet full... Her wandering curiosity exposed her to the young prince of the land. He was taken with her, and his passion carried him away. He seduced her, if he did not force her. Meanwhile Shechem was eager for marriage at any price. His father went to Jacob and pleaded hard for his son's fixed desire to have her as wife. He offered the readiest terms of peace between the two peoples, while Shechem pressed his own case.

She became sexually involved with a young man, son of the prince of that land. The young man was guilty of fornication. Even so, he did not reject her afterwards, as many would do. He seems to have truly loved her, and he spoke kindly to her (v. 3).

Jacob's sons then answered with a trick. They made circumcision of every male their condition. They had not the smallest thought or wish of bringing the Shechemites into the covenant. It was the basest treachery, meant to trap and massacre them... Shechem was guilty of a great wrong, but Dinah too was at fault. Their own mothers and their grandmother did not come from circumcised fathers, and no godly or careful reluctance had appeared in their own marriages. The condition was a lying and cowardly excuse, used to carry their resentment through to the end.

The anger came to a head in the terrible violence of Simeon and Levi. Jacob never forgot it, and neither did God. At the end of his life Jacob spoke of his sons as a prophet. He foretold the future of the tribes and gave certain blessings. He condemned these two sons and cursed their anger, as recorded in Genesis 49:5-7.