Genesis 34:30-31

"And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me, to make me odious to the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and, I being few in number, they will gather themselves against me and smite me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house. And they said, should he deal with our sister as with a harlot?"

Jacob was a man of faith, but the fear and anxiety expressed here were not an expression of that faith. It was a moment of weakness, doubt, confusion and uncertainty in the life of the patriarch. Who can fail to sympathize with his grief and fear. Through his weakness in allowing his sons to settle a matter that he should have dealt with himself, he had been irrevocably compromised by the malignant cunning and vicious violence of his angry sons. He simply did not know what to do. Jacob, like everyone else in the narrative, exhibited all the sinful incompetence that is common to all men.

The phenomenal objectivity of the Bible is most conspicuous in this chapter. "There is no glorification of leading figures and no glossing over their faults and their crimes."[20] It is impossible intellectually to assign any authorship of the Bible except to God Himself. "Never man so spake."

"This event shows us "in type" all of the errors into which the belief in the pre-eminence of Israel was sure to lead in the course of history, when that belief was rudely held by men of carnal minds."[21]

Francisco's comment on the attitude of Jacob as contrasted with that of his sons is as follows:

"Jacob was alarmed, but his sons were not impressed by it. The honor of their sister was worth more to them than the risk of their own lives. Thus, it always is. Those who are young and have not fully lived place relatively little value upon life, and venture into mortal danger without fear. Those who have lived much longer tend to nurse life to its last hour."[22]

"Should he deal with our sister as with a harlot ..." One may deplore the rejection by many writers of this blunt statement of fact by Jacob's sons. Whitelaw, for example, has this as his total comment on this verse: "But Shechem offered Dinah honorable marriage!"[23] How could marriage to a lust-motivated pagan be considered "honorable marriage"?

"As with a harlot ..." The etymology of this word is interesting. There are two possible derivations of it. The word "horolet" is a diminutive form for "whore," meaning "little whore." Another possibility was cited by Adam Clarke:

"Robert, Duke of Normandy, saw a fine-looking country girl dancing with her companion on the green, and took her to his bed. She was the daughter of a skinner, and her name was Arlotta; and of her, William, surnamed The Conqueror, was born. Thus, such women were called, from her, harlots as William himself was usually called The Bastard."[24].

This chapter, like Genesis 19, is a sad one, but the sacred author was telling it like it was, with an objectivity that proclaims in tones of thunder that "God is no respecter of persons." This is only the first in a series of sad events about to be related, all of which were part of the discipline by which Jacob came in time to be truly "The Israel of God."