Genesis 34–35

The Rape of Dinah

34One day Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, went to visit some of the Canaanite women. ²When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, who was chief of that region, saw her, he took her and raped her. ³But he found the young woman so attractive that he fell in love with her and tried to win her affection.^{n 4}He said to his father, “I want you to get this woman for me as my wife.”

⁵Jacob learnt that his daughter had been disgraced, but because his sons were out in the fields with his livestock, he did nothing until they came back. ⁶Shechem’s father Hamor went out to talk with Jacob, ⁷just as Jacob’s sons were coming in from the fields. When they heard about it, they were shocked and furious that Shechem had done such a thing and had insulted the people of Israel by raping Jacob’s daughter. ⁸Hamor said to him, “My son Shechem has fallen in love with your daughter; please let him marry her. ⁹Let us make an agreement that there will be intermarriage between our people and yours. ¹⁰Then you may stay here in our country with us; you may live anywhere you wish, trade freely, and own property.”

¹¹Then Shechem said to Dinah’s father and brothers, “Do me this favour, and I will give you whatever you want. ¹²Tell me what presents you want, and set the payment for the bride as high as you wish; I will give you whatever you ask, if you will only let me marry her.”

¹³Because Shechem had disgraced their sister Dinah, Jacob’s sons answered Shechem and his father Hamor in a deceitful way. ¹⁴They said to him, “We cannot let our sister marry a man who is not circumcised; that would be a disgrace for us. ¹⁵We can agree only on the condition that you become like us by circumcising all your males. ¹⁶Then we will agree to intermarriage. We will settle among you and become one people with you. ¹⁷But if you will not accept our terms and be circumcised, we will take her and leave.”

¹⁸These terms seemed fair to Hamor and his son Shechem, ¹⁹and the young man lost no time in doing what was suggested, because he was in love with Jacob’s daughter. He was the most important member of his family.

²⁰Hamor and his son Shechem went to the meeting place at the city gate and spoke to the people of the town: ²¹“These men are friendly; let them live in the land with us and travel freely. The land is large enough for them also. Let us marry their daughters and give them ours in marriage. ²²But these men will agree to live among us and be one people with us only on condition that we circumcise all our males, as they are circumcised. ²³Won’t all their livestock and everything else they own be ours? So let us agree that they can live among us.” ²⁴All the citizens of the city agreed with what Hamor and Shechem proposed, and all the males were circumcised.

²⁵Three days later, when the men were still sore from their circumcision, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, the brothers of Dinah, took their swords, went into the city without arousing suspicion, and killed all the men, ²⁶including Hamor and his son Shechem. Then they took Dinah from Shechem’s house and left. ²⁷After the slaughter Jacob’s other sons looted the town to take revenge for their sister’s disgrace. ²⁸They took the flocks, the cattle, the donkeys, and everything else in the city and in the fields. ²⁹They took everything of value, captured all the women and children, and carried off everything in the houses.

³⁰Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me; now the Canaanites, the Perizzites, and everybody else in the land will hate me. I haven’t many men; if they all band together against me and attack me, our whole family will be destroyed.”

³¹But they answered, “We cannot let our sister be treated like a common whore.”

God Blesses Jacob at Bethel

35^*God said to Jacob, “Go to Bethel at once, and live there. Build an altar there to me, the God who appeared to you when you were running away from your brother Esau.”

²So Jacob said to his family and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods that you have; purify yourselves and put on clean clothes. ³We are going to leave here and go to Bethel, where I will build an altar to the God who helped me in the time of my trouble and who has been with me everywhere I have gone.” ⁴So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and also the earrings that they were wearing. He buried them beneath the oak tree near Shechem.

⁵When Jacob and his sons started to leave, great fear fell on the people of the nearby towns, and they did not pursue them. ⁶Jacob came with all his people to Luz, which is now known as Bethel, in the land of Canaan. ⁷He built an altar there and named the place after the God of Bethel, because God had revealed himself to him there when he was running away from his brother. ⁸Rebecca’s nurse Deborah died and was buried beneath the oak south of Bethel. So it was named “Oak of Weeping”.

⁹When Jacob returned from Mesopotamia, God appeared to him again and blessed him. ^10*God said to him, “Your name is Jacob, but from now on it will be Israel.” So God named him Israel. ^11*And God said to him, “I am Almighty God. Have many children. Nations will be descended from you, and you will be the ancestor of kings. ^12*I will give you the land which I gave to Abraham and to Isaac, and I will also give it to your descendants after you.” ¹³Then God left him. ^14*There, where God had spoken to him, Jacob set up a memorial stone and consecrated it by pouring wine and olive oil on it. ^15*He named the place Bethel.

The Death of Rachel

¹⁶Jacob and his family left Bethel, and when they were still some distance from Ephrath, the time came for Rachel to have her baby, and she was having difficult labour. ¹⁷When her labour pains were at their worst, the midwife said to her, “Don’t be afraid, Rachel; it’s another boy.” ¹⁸But she was dying, and as she breathed her last, she named her son Benoni,^o but his father named him Benjamin.^p

¹⁹When Rachel died, she was buried beside the road to Ephrath, now known as Bethlehem. ²⁰Jacob set up a memorial stone there, and it still marks Rachel’s grave to this day. ²¹Jacob moved on and set up his camp on the other side of the tower of Eder.

The Sons of Jacob

^22*While Jacob was living in that land, Reuben had sexual intercourse with Bilhah, one of his father’s concubines; Jacob heard about it and was furious.^q

Jacob had twelve sons. ²³The sons of Leah were Reuben (Jacob’s eldest son), Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. ²⁴The sons of Rachel were Joseph and Benjamin. ²⁵The sons of Rachel’s slave Bilhah were Dan and Naphtali. ²⁶The sons of Leah’s slave Zilpah were Gad and Asher. These sons were born in Mesopotamia.

The Death of Isaac

^27*Jacob went to his father Isaac at Mamre, near Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had lived. ²⁸Isaac lived to be 180 years old ²⁹and died at a ripe old age; and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.