Genesis 34: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Dinah, Jacob's daughter, goes out to see the women of the land, and Shechem the son of Hamor takes her and lies with her. Shechem wants to marry her, and Hamor proposes that the two groups intermarry, live together, and trade; Jacob's sons answer with deceit and set circumcision as their condition, which the men of the city accept. On the third day, while the men are in pain, Simeon and Levi kill every male, take Dinah from Shechem's house, and Jacob's sons plunder the city. Jacob tells the two brothers they have made him a stench to the people of the land, and they answer with a question about how their sister was treated.

Claim by Claim

1. 34:1
   • Dinah was the daughter of Leah.
   • Leah had borne Dinah to Jacob.
   • Dinah went out to see the daughters of the land.
2. 34:2
   • Shechem was the son of Hamor the Hivite.
   • Shechem was the prince of that land.
   • Shechem saw Dinah.
   • Shechem took her.
   • Shechem lay with her.
   • Shechem violated her.
3. 34:3
   • Shechem's soul clung to Dinah the daughter of Jacob.
   • Shechem loved the young woman.
   • Shechem spoke to the young woman's heart to win her.
4. 34:4
   • Shechem spoke to Hamor his father.
   • Shechem told his father to get him this girl as a wife.
5. 34:5
   • Jacob heard that Shechem had defiled Dinah his daughter.
   • Jacob's sons were with his livestock in the field.
   • Jacob kept silent until his sons came.
6. 34:6
   • Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob.
   • Hamor went out to speak with Jacob.
7. 34:7
   • The sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard of it.
   • The men were grieved.
   • The men were very angry.
   • Shechem had done a disgraceful outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter.
   • Such a thing ought not to be done.
8. 34:8
   • Hamor spoke with them.
   • Hamor said his son Shechem's soul longed for their daughter.
   • Hamor asked them to give her to Shechem as a wife.
9. 34:9
   • Hamor told them to intermarry with his people.
   • Hamor told them to give their daughters to his people.
   • Hamor told them to take his people's daughters for themselves.
10. 34:10
    • Hamor said they would dwell with his people.
    • Hamor said the land would be before them.
    • Hamor told them to dwell in the land.
    • Hamor told them to trade in the land.
    • Hamor told them to acquire holdings in the land.
11. 34:11
    • Shechem spoke to Dinah's father and to her brothers.
    • Shechem asked to find favor in their eyes.
    • Shechem said he would give whatever they said to him.
12. 34:12
    • Shechem told them to demand of him a very great bride-price and gift.
    • Shechem said he would give according to what they said to him.
    • Shechem asked them to give him the young woman as a wife.
13. 34:13
    • The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father deceitfully.
    • They spoke so because Shechem had defiled Dinah their sister.
14. 34:14
    • They said they could not do this thing.
    • They said they could not give their sister to a man who was uncircumcised.
    • They said that would be a reproach to them.
15. 34:15
    • They said they would consent only on this condition.
    • The condition was that the men become like them.
    • The condition was that every male among them be circumcised.
16. 34:16
    • They said they would then give their daughters to them.
    • They said they would take their daughters for themselves.
    • They said they would dwell with them.
    • They said they would become one people.
17. 34:17
    • They said that if the men would not listen to them and be circumcised, they would take their daughter and go.
18. 34:18
    • Their words were pleasing in the eyes of Hamor.
    • Their words were pleasing in the eyes of Shechem the son of Hamor.
19. 34:19
    • The young man did not delay to do the thing.
    • He did not delay because he delighted in Jacob's daughter.
    • He was the most honored of all his father's house.
20. 34:20
    • Hamor and Shechem his son came to the gate of their city.
    • They spoke to the men of their city.
21. 34:21
    • They said these men were peaceable with them.
    • They proposed that the men dwell in the land.
    • They proposed that the men trade in the land.
    • They said the land was wide enough for them.
    • They proposed taking the men's daughters for wives.
    • They proposed giving their own daughters to the men.
22. 34:22
    • They said the men would consent to dwell with them and be one people only on one condition.
    • The condition was that every male among them be circumcised as those men were circumcised.
23. 34:23
    • They asked whether the men's livestock, property, and all their beasts would not become theirs.
    • They urged consenting to the men.
    • They said the men would then dwell with them.
24. 34:24
    • All who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and to Shechem his son.
    • Every male was circumcised.
    • All who went out of the gate of his city were circumcised.
25. 34:25
    • On the third day the circumcised men were in pain.
    • Two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, were Dinah's brothers.
    • Simeon and Levi each took his sword.
    • They came upon the city while it was unsuspecting and met no resistance.
    • They killed every male.
26. 34:26
    • They killed Hamor with the edge of the sword.
    • They killed Shechem his son with the edge of the sword.
    • They took Dinah out of Shechem's house.
    • They went out.
27. 34:27
    • The sons of Jacob came upon the slain.
    • They plundered the city.
    • They did so because their sister had been defiled.
28. 34:28
    • They took their flocks.
    • They took their herds.
    • They took their donkeys.
    • They took what was in the city.
    • They took what was in the field.
29. 34:29
    • They carried off all their wealth.
    • They carried off all their little ones.
    • They carried off their wives.
    • They plundered everything that was in the houses.
30. 34:30
    • Jacob spoke to Simeon and Levi.
    • Jacob said they had brought trouble on him.
    • Jacob said they had made him a stench among the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
    • Jacob said he was few in number.
    • Jacob said the inhabitants would gather against him.
    • Jacob said they would strike him.
    • Jacob said he and his house would be destroyed.
31. 34:31
    • They answered.
    • They asked whether Shechem should treat their sister as a harlot.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

34:1

Dinah is the only daughter of Jacob named in Genesis. "Went out to see the women of the land" means she went visiting among the local Canaanite women, an ordinary social visit, but Jacob's household were newcomers and outsiders in the region.

34:2

"Hivite" is one of the names Genesis uses for the pre-Israelite peoples of Canaan. Shechem is both the man's name and the name of the town he rules, a common pattern, where a ruling family and its city share a name. The Hebrew verb behind "violated" (also translated "defiled" or "humiliated") means to force down or degrade someone; the text does not spell out the degree of physical force, and translators divide over how strongly to render it, but it clearly marks what happened as a wrong done to Dinah.

34:3

"Damsel" is simply the old word for a young unmarried woman, and "his soul clave unto Dinah" means he became attached to her. The chapter reports his feelings without excusing what he did, and Dinah herself never speaks anywhere in it.

34:4

In this world marriages were arranged between the two fathers as an agreement between families, not between the couple. Shechem asks his father to negotiate, which is the normal procedure, though here it follows an assault rather than a courtship.

34:5

Jacob's sons were away with the herds, which could keep them out for days at a time. Because negotiating a sister's marriage was family business involving her father and brothers together, Jacob waits rather than answering alone.

34:7

"In Israel" is striking this early: Israel is at this point one man's household, Jacob having just been renamed Israel. "A disgraceful thing" translates a set Hebrew phrase (nebalah) used for sexual outrages that violate the whole community's sense of order, not merely a private offense.

34:9

Marriage between groups was how two peoples merged into one. Hamor is proposing not a single wedding but a permanent alliance in which the two households become a single people, with the smaller newcomer group absorbed.

34:10

Resident foreigners normally could not own land; they grazed and traded at the locals' sufferance. Hamor is offering Jacob's family the right to buy property and trade freely, a substantial concession.

34:11

The King James says "Let me find grace in your eyes." That old phrase means "please look on me kindly" or "please say yes to me."

34:12

The bride-price was a payment from the groom or his family to the bride's father, standard in marriage arrangements; a separate "gift" could go to the bride or her family on top of it. Shechem is offering to name no limit.

34:14

Circumcision was the physical mark of the covenant God made with Abraham, identifying his descendants. Some neighboring peoples practiced it and some did not; the brothers' objection treats it as the boundary line between their family and outsiders. The word rendered "disgrace" means a public reproach, something that would shame them in others' eyes.

34:15

The brothers do not mean this offer. They know grown men who are circumcised are in real pain for days afterward.

34:16

"Become one people" means the two groups would merge completely through intermarriage, so that within a generation Jacob's family would no longer exist as a separate people.

34:17

"Our daughter" here means our sister. The brothers speak of Dinah as belonging to the household as a whole, which is how family membership was understood.

34:19

"Deferred not" means did not delay. "More honourable than all the house of his father" means he held the highest standing of anyone in his father's household, which explains why the whole city is willing to follow his lead in the next verses.

34:20

The open space at the city gate was where public business was done: legal cases, contracts and civic decisions. "The men of their city" means the adult males who held standing there.

34:23

Hamor and Shechem do not repeat their sons' argument to the townsmen; they sell the deal as a way to absorb Jacob's flocks and wealth into the town's own holdings.

34:24

"All who went out of the gate of his city" is an idiom for the city's full body of citizens, the men entitled to take part in public decisions.

34:25

Simeon and Levi were, like Dinah, children of Leah, so they were her full brothers among Jacob's sons by four different mothers, the ones on whom the duty to answer for her fell most directly. Adult circumcision left men incapacitated for several days, with the third day traditionally the worst. "The city, which felt safe" translates a word meaning unsuspecting or off guard.

34:26

Dinah was still in Shechem's house, meaning she had been kept there since verse 2 while the marriage was being negotiated.

34:27

"Spoiled" in 1611 English meant to plunder, to strip a place of everything valuable. It has nothing to do with the modern sense of the word.

34:29

Captured women and children became dependants or slaves of the captors' household. This was the standard outcome of a raid, not an incidental detail.

34:30

"A stench" is a Hebrew idiom for becoming repulsive or hateful to others, the reputational equivalent of a bad smell. "Canaanites and Perizzites" is a standard pairing for the settled peoples among whom Jacob was living; his complaint is practical, that his small household cannot survive their combined reprisal.

34:31

The comparison is to a woman with no family standing behind her, who could be used and then paid off; the brothers' argument is that Shechem treated Dinah as if no one would answer for her.