Dinah

34 Dinah was the daughter of Leah and Jacob. One day she went out to visit the young women who lived near Shechem city. ² Hamor the Hivite ruled that region. When his son, Shechem, saw Dinah, he took hold of her. Dinah could not get free and Shechem had sex with her. ³ He liked Dinah very much. He loved her. He spoke kind words to her so that she would love him too. ⁴ Shechem said to his father, Hamor, ‘I want to marry this girl. Please get her for me.’ ⁵ Jacob heard that Shechem had had sex with his daughter. At that time, Jacob's sons were taking care of his animals in the fields. So he did not do anything until his sons came home.

⁶ Shechem's father, Hamor, went to talk to Jacob about Dinah. ⁷ Jacob's sons now heard what had happened and they came home from the fields. They were very angry because Shechem had done such a bad thing. When he caught Dinah and had sex with her, he had brought shame on Jacob's family. It was a bad thing that nobody should ever do.

⁸ Hamor said to Jacob and his sons, ‘My son Shechem loves your daughter. Please give her to him so that she can be his wife. ⁹ There should be more marriages between your people and our people. Our men should marry your daughters and our daughters should become wives for your men. ¹⁰ Then you can live among us. You can live anywhere you want to in this land. You should live here, buy and sell things. Buy land and houses here.’^[a]

¹¹ Then Shechem said to Dinah's father and brothers, ‘I would like to make you happy. So ask me for whatever you want and I will give it to you. ¹² I will pay you the gifts that you ask for Dinah. It can be as much as you like. I will pay it all, because I want to have Dinah as my wife.’

¹³ Because of the bad thing that Shechem had done to Dinah, Jacob's sons decided to deceive him. And they deceived his father Hamor too. ¹⁴ They said, ‘We cannot give our sister to a man who has not been circumcised. We would be ashamed to do this. ¹⁵ If you want to marry Dinah, you must do one thing. You must circumcise all your males. Then you will become like us and we will agree for you to marry Dinah. ¹⁶ Then we will give you our daughters so that your men can marry them. And our men will marry your daughters. We will live among you, so that we become one people with you. ¹⁷ But your men must agree to be circumcised. If not, we will take our sister with us and we will leave this place.’

¹⁸ This idea seemed good to Hamor and his son Shechem. ¹⁹ Shechem's family respected him as an important person. So Shechem and his father quickly did what Jacob's sons told them. Shechem agreed to do it because he wanted very much to marry Dinah. ²⁰ So Hamor and his son Shechem went to the gate of the city. They spoke to their men there. ²¹ They said, ‘Jacob's family are our friends. Let them live in our land, and buy and sell things. This land is big enough for them and us. We can marry their daughters, and they can marry our daughters. ²² But we must do the one thing that they have asked us to do. We must circumcise all our males in the same way that they do. If we do that, they will agree to live among us. ²³ Then their things and their animals will all become our things. So we should agree to be circumcised, as they ask. Then they will live among us.’

²⁴ All the men who were at the city gate agreed with Hamor and Shechem. So every male in the city was circumcised.

²⁵ Three days after the men were circumcised, they still had a lot of pain. Then two of Jacob's sons attacked Shechem's men with their swords. None of the men were ready to fight. Jacob's two sons were Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers. They killed every male in the city. ²⁶ They killed Hamor and his son Shechem. Then they took Dinah from Shechem's house and they left.

²⁷ Jacob's other sons also saw that the men of the city were dead. So they took everything that they wanted from the city. They did that because it was the place where Shechem had done a very bad thing against their sister. ²⁸ They took all the sheep, goats, cows and donkeys. They took everything that was in the city and in the fields near there. ²⁹ They carried away every valuable thing for themselves. They also took all the men's wives and their children. They took everything from the houses in the city.

³⁰ When they returned to Jacob, he said to Simeon and Levi, ‘You have brought bad trouble to me! The people who live in this land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, will hate me. I will be like a bad smell to them. We do not have many men to fight for us. If the Perizzites and Canaanites join together and they attack us, they will destroy our whole family!’ ³¹ But Simeon and Levi replied, ‘Shechem should not have had sex with our sister as if she were a prostitute.’