Genesis 34–35

Dinah Is Attacked

34At this time Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. ²When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of the land, saw her, he took her and forced her to have sexual relations with him. ³Shechem fell in love with Dinah, and he spoke kindly to her. ⁴He told his father, Hamor, “Please get this girl for me so I can marry her.”

⁵Jacob learned how Shechem had disgraced his daughter, but since his sons were out in the field with the cattle, Jacob said nothing until they came home. ⁶While he waited, Hamor father of Shechem went to talk with Jacob.

⁷When Jacob’s sons heard what had happened, they came in from the field. They were very angry that Shechem had done such a wicked thing to Israel. It was wrong for him to have sexual relations with Jacob’s daughter; a thing like this should not be done.

⁸But Hamor talked to Dinah’s brothers and said, “My son Shechem is deeply in love with Dinah. Please let him marry her. ⁹Marry our people. Give your women to our men as wives and take our women for your men as wives. ¹⁰You can live in the same land with us. You will be free to own land and to trade here.”

¹¹Shechem also talked to Jacob and to Dinah’s brothers and said, “Please accept my offer. I will give anything you ask. ¹²Ask as much as you want for the payment for the bride, and I will give it to you. Just let me marry Dinah.”

¹³Jacob’s sons answered Shechem and his father with lies, because Shechem had disgraced their sister Dinah. ¹⁴The brothers said to them, “We cannot allow you to marry our sister, because you are not circumcised. That would be a disgrace to us. ¹⁵But we will allow you to marry her if you do this one thing: Every man in your town must be circumcised like us. ¹⁶Then your men can marry our women, and our men can marry your women, and we will live in your land and become one people. ¹⁷If you refuse to be circumcised, we will take Dinah and leave.”

¹⁸What they asked seemed fair to Hamor and Shechem. ¹⁹So Shechem quickly went to be circumcised because he loved Jacob’s daughter.

Now Shechem was the most respected man in his family. ²⁰So Hamor and Shechem went to the gate of their city and spoke to the men of their city, saying, ²¹“These people want to be friends with us. So let them live in our land and trade here. There is enough land for all of us. Let us marry their women, and we can let them marry our women. ²²But we must agree to one thing: All our men must be circumcised as they are. Then they will agree to live in our land, and we will be one people. ²³If we do this, their cattle and their animals will belong to us. Let us do what they say, and they will stay in our land.” ²⁴All the people who had come to the city gate heard this. They agreed with Hamor and Shechem, and every man was circumcised.

²⁵Three days later the men who were circumcised were still in pain. Two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi (Dinah’s brothers), took their swords and made a surprise attack on the city, killing all the men there. ²⁶They killed Hamor and his son Shechem and then took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and left. ²⁷Jacob’s sons came upon the dead bodies and stole everything that was in the city, to pay them back for what Shechem had done to their sister. ²⁸So the brothers took the flocks, herds, and donkeys, and everything in the city and in the fields. ²⁹They took every valuable thing the people owned, even their wives and children and everything in the houses.

³⁰Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have caused me a lot of trouble. Now the Canaanites and the Perizzites who live in the land will hate me. Since there are only a few of us, if they join together to attack us, my people and I will be destroyed.”

³¹But the brothers said, “We will not allow our sister to be treated like a prostitute.”

Jacob in Bethel

35God said to Jacob, “Go to the city of Bethel and live there. Make an altar to the God who appeared to you there when you were running away from your brother Esau.”

²So Jacob said to his family and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods you have, and make yourselves clean, and change your clothes. ³We will leave here and go to Bethel. There I will build an altar to God, who has helped me during my time of trouble. He has been with me everywhere I have gone.” ⁴So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had, and the earrings they were wearing, and he hid them under the great tree near the town of Shechem. ⁵Then Jacob and his sons left there. But God caused the people in the nearby cities to be afraid, so they did not follow them. ⁶And Jacob and all the people who were with him went to Luz, which is now called Bethel, in the land of Canaan. ⁷There Jacob built an altar and named the place Bethel, after God, because God had appeared to him there when he was running from his brother.

⁸Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak tree at Bethel, so they named that place Oak of Crying.

Jacob’s New Name

⁹When Jacob came back from Northwest Mesopotamia, God appeared to him again and blessed him. ¹⁰God said to him, “Your name is Jacob, but you will not be called Jacob any longer. Your new name will be Israel.” So he called him Israel. ¹¹God said to him, “I am God Almighty. Have many children and grow in number as a nation. You will be the ancestor of many nations and kings. ¹²The same land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you and your descendants.” ¹³Then God left him. ¹⁴Jacob set up a stone on edge in that place where God had talked to him, and he poured a drink offering and olive oil on it to make it special for God. ¹⁵And Jacob named the place Bethel.

Rachel Dies Giving Birth

¹⁶Jacob and his group left Bethel. Before they came to Ephrath, Rachel began giving birth to her baby, ¹⁷but she was having much trouble. When Rachel’s nurse saw this, she said, “Don’t be afraid, Rachel. You are giving birth to another son.” ¹⁸Rachel gave birth to the son, but she herself died. As she lay dying, she named the boy Son of My Suffering, but Jacob called him Benjamin. ⁿ

¹⁹Rachel was buried on the road to Ephrath, a district of Bethlehem, ²⁰and Jacob set up a rock on her grave to honor her. That rock is still there. ²¹Then Israel ⁿ continued his journey and camped just south of Migdal Eder.

²²While Israel was there, Reuben had sexual relations with Israel’s slave woman Bilhah, and Israel heard about it.

The Family of Israel

Jacob had twelve sons. ²³He had six sons by his wife Leah: Reuben, his first son, then Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun.

²⁴He had two sons by his wife Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin.

²⁵He had two sons by Rachel’s slave girl Bilhah: Dan and Naphtali.

²⁶And he had two sons by Leah’s slave girl Zilpah: Gad and Asher.

These are Jacob’s sons who were born in Northwest Mesopotamia.

²⁷Jacob went to his father Isaac at Mamre near Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had lived. ²⁸Isaac lived one hundred eighty years. ²⁹So Isaac breathed his last breath and died when he was very old, and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.