Genesis 34:2. Shechem took her, and defiled her — Hebrew, humbled her. “The word,” says Bishop Kidder, “intimates his violence, as well as her dissent.” Young women may learn from this to be “chaste, keepers at home,” (Titus 2:5,) which qualities have a closer connection than many are willing to believe. They that are fond of going abroad, and intermixing in company with persons of whose piety and good conduct they have no proof, often expose their virtue to a snare. From what happened to Dinah, all may learn to avoid all occasions of falling into temptation, or leading others into it.

34:1-19 Young persons, especially females, are never so safe and well off as under the care of pious parents. Their own ignorance, and the flattery and artifices of designing, wicked people, who are ever laying snares for them, expose them to great danger. They are their own enemies if they desire to go abroad, especially alone, among strangers to true religion. Those parents are very wrong who do not hinder their children from needlessly exposing themselves to danger. Indulged children, like Dinah, often become a grief and shame to their families. Her pretence was, to see the daughters of the land, to see how they dressed, and how they danced, and what was fashionable among them; she went to see, yet that was not all, she went to be seen too. She went to get acquaintance with the Canaanites, and to learn their ways. See what came of Dinah's gadding. The beginning of sin is as the letting forth of water. How great a matter does a little fire kindle! We should carefully avoid all occasions of sin and approaches to it.Dinah went out to see the daughters of the land. The Jewish doctors of a later period fix the marriageable age of a female at twelve years and a day. It is probable that Dinah was in her thirteenth year when she went out to visit the daughters of the land. Six or seven years, therefore, must have been spent by Jacob between Sukkoth, where he abode some time, and the neighborhood of Shekerm, where he had purchased a piece of ground. If we suppose Dinah to have been born in the same year with Joseph, who was in his seventeenth year at the time of his being sold as a bondslave Genesis 37:2, the events of this chapter must have occurred in the interval between the completion of her twelfth and that of her sixteenth year. "Shekem." This name is hereditary in the family, and had taken hold in the locality before the time of Abraham. The Hivite was a descendant of Kenaan. We find this tribe now occupying the district where the Kenaanite was in possession at a former period Genesis 12:6. "Spake to the heart of the damsel." After having robbed her of her honor, he promises to recognize her as his wife, provided he can gain the consent of her relatives. "Shekem spake unto his father Hamor." He is in earnest about this matter. "Jacob held his peace." He was a stranger in the land, and surrounded by a flourishing tribe, who were evidently unscrupulous in their conduct.CHAPTER 34

Ge 34:1-31. The Dishonor of Dinah.

1-4. Though freed from foreign troubles, Jacob met with a great domestic calamity in the fall of his only daughter. According to Josephus, she had been attending a festival; but it is highly probable that she had been often and freely mixing in the society of the place and that she, being a simple, inexperienced, and vain young woman, had been flattered by the attentions of the ruler's son. There must have been time and opportunities of acquaintance to produce the strong attachment that Shechem had for her.

No text from Poole on this verse.

And when Shechem the son of Hamor,.... From whom the city had its name, near which Jacob and his family now were:

the Hivite, prince of the country; Hamor was an Hivite, which was one of the nations of the land of Canaan, and this man was the prince or a principal man of that nation, as well as of Shechem. Josephus (c) calls him a king: when the son of this man

saw her; that is, Dinah, what a beautiful person she was, and was enamoured with her:

he took her: by force, as the Targum of Jonathan:

and lay with her, and defiled her; or "humbled" or "afflicted her" (d); and it is a rule with the Jews, that every such act, which is done by force, is called an humiliation and affliction (e): the child begotten in this act of fornication is said (f) by them to be Asenath, who was had into Egypt, and brought up by Potipherah's wife as her daughter, and afterwards married to Joseph, Genesis 41:45.

(c) Ut supra. (Antiqu. l. 1. c. 21. sect. 1.) (d) , Sept. & afflixit eam, Pagninus, Montanus. (e) Gerundensis apud Munster, & Drusium in loc. (f) Pirke Eliezer, ut supra. (c. 33. fol. 42. 2.)

And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.