This is a difficult chapter which covers difficult material, but it is the Word of God. So listen now to God's Holy Word from Genesis chapter 34. Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her, and lay with her and humiliated her. And his soul was drawn to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor saying, give me this girl from my wife. Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter Dinah, but his sons were with his livestock in the field. So Jacob held his peace until they came. And Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to Jacob to speak with him. The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done. But Hamor spoke with them saying, the soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife. Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us and the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it and get property in it. Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, let me find favor in your eyes and whatever you say to me I will give. Ask me for as great a bride price and gift as you will, and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman to be my wife." The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah. They said to them, we cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us. Only on this condition will we agree with you, that you will become as we are by every male among you being circumcised. Then we will give our daughters to you and we will take your daughters to ourselves and we will dwell with you and become one people. But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and we will be gone." Their words pleased Hamor. Hamor's son Shechem. And the young man did not delay to do the thing because he delighted in Jacob's daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his father's house. So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of the city and spoke to the men of the city saying, these men are at peace with us. Let them dwell in the land and trade in it. For behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives and let us give them our daughters. Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us, to become one people, when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised. Will not their livestock, their property, and all their beasts be ours? Only let us agree with them, and they will dwell with us. And all who went out of the gate of his city, listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, And every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city. On the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males. They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem's house and went away. The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city because they had defiled their sister. They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys, and whatever was in the city and in the field. All their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered. Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household. But they said, should he treat our sister like a prostitute? Thus ends our reading in God's word. Let's ask his help in word of prayer. Lord, we come tonight to what we perceive to be a difficult text. We pray, Lord God, that in the darkness of this passage, you would show us your light. that you would teach us what it is we're supposed to learn from this, Lord God, and that we would tremble at the thought of our sin and marvel at the thought of your grace. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen. There are no heroes in Genesis 34. If you go looking for one, you'll be disappointed. And if you think you've found one, you've misunderstood. This is a story full of sinners whose actions are complicated and at times difficult to evaluate. God is conspicuously absent. That's not to say that any of this escaped his notice or took place apart from his decree, but he isn't mentioned. He neither speaks out nor is he spoken to. All that we hear really here are the words of sinners and outcries against their various atrocities. And this is somewhat surprising when you consider where we ended up last week in Genesis chapter 33. Last week we witnessed that long-awaited reconciliation between Jacob and Esau. The patriarch was purchasing land in Canaan. He was worshiping the God who had delivered him out of the clutches of his enemies. The Lord was pouring out blessings upon his servant who walked with a limp now as he leaned upon the promises of God. So things were looking up. Things were looking bright. Progress had been made. But Jacob had not died and gone to heaven. He was not yet morally perfect and he was not yet living in paradise. In fact, he wasn't even living in close vicinity to the earthly locale where he was supposed to be. Before leaving for Mesopotamia, think back on this, Jacob had vowed to return to Bethel, Genesis chapter 28, verse 21. And when he decided that it was time to return to Canaan, he announced to his wives that he had been called home by the God of Bethel, Genesis 31, 13. But for some reason, when he got to Canaan, he did not go to Bethel. He stopped short in Shechem. He had not done what he was supposed to do. And the results were tragic. Jacob's daughter Dinah would wander off to spend time with the residents of Shechem, and to put it frankly, get raped. Jacob would get left standing by, mostly speechless, exposed as a neglectful father who cared more about his own reputation than the safety of his daughter. And Jacob's sons, would become murderers and robbers when they decided to step into the void and pursue unbridled vigilante justice. The message which seems to shine through at all, if we can perceive a positive message here, is that God's promises had come to sinners, real sinners, serious sinners. God's promises had come to sinners and only He could maintain the covenant, which He would do despite the failures, serious failures of the covenant family. This is a chapter about God getting His people and His covenant through one of the darkest days in their life. So we're going to work our way through the passage and make some observations along the way. All the trouble in this passage starts after Jacob has settled in Shechem and when Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. As a reminder, Dinah is the only daughter of Jacob's that we've been told about. And we've not heard about her since she was born. And several years have passed since that time. She's now a young lady. We're not told exactly how old she is, but it's reasonable, I think, to surmise that she's something like a teenage girl. And having moved into a new neighborhood, Dinah's curiosity gets the best of her. She wanted to go out and see the women of the land. The meaning of that phrase is obscure, and that's led to a lot of speculation about just what it meant that she would go out and see the women of the land. Some commentators go so far as to insinuate that Dinah was looking for trouble. I think that's nearly impossible to prove. But we are, I think, left with the impression that she had developed some unhealthy fascination with the young pagan women living in the land. She wanted to get to know them better and that was not necessarily good for her. When you recall that Dinah spent most of her years cooped up with the Levin Brothers, you might sympathize with their designers. Meeting other girls might make for a refreshing change of scenery, but what she was doing was risky, inherently risky. A young girl spending time alone among the heathens could lead to all sorts of trouble. And frankly, Jacob should have, as her father, as her protector, as her head, should have kept her close to home. But he allowed her to wander into town by herself and multiple nightmare scenarios commenced. Verse 2 explains very tersely that she went in to see the women, the land, Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her, and lay with her and humiliated her. So we may surmise that Dinah was acting recklessly or foolishly by going where she was going by herself, but we cannot blame her for what happened next. This is not a case of she was asking for. No. Blame for what happens next falls to a young man named Shechem, the son of the local ruler. And he becomes an aggressor and Dinah becomes his victim. He sees her wandering. He takes her and he sexually abuses her. He abuses her. He humiliates her. And it's a disgusting, abominable, condemnable act. The text is going to refer to this as something that should never be done. But then things get strange. Because rather than simply moving on after the deed was done, Shechem's desire for Dinah only grows in the aftermath of the crime. He begins to fall in love with her. The text tells us that he speaks tenderly to her in hopes, we assume, that She would fall in love with him, that there would be some sort of reciprocity to this relationship. In fact, he is so smitten that instead of covering up his crime, he brings the whole thing to his father's attention. Shechem takes Dinah to Hamor, his dad, and asks him to help him procure her as a wife. So what we see in these opening few verses here, verses 1 through 4, is a wicked man who has committed a wicked deed, and he feels no shame. He feels no shame. Clearly, Jacob's family had stopped in the wrong place at the wrong time, and calamity has come from it. Jacob had disobeyed God, he had broken his vow, and now his whole family was going to pay the price. And because this heinous act wasn't swept under the rug, news quickly spread, as you can imagine. Everybody could see that Shechem, a member of the royal household, he had taken one of the new residents in town into his house. Before long, reports reached Jacob himself. Your daughter Dinah has been defiled by the prince's son. Now you would think that Jacob would go ballistic. But his response to this report is a curious one. Because according to verse 5, Jacob did what? He held his peace and he kept quiet about the thing until his sons came home from tending the livestock. And that's a curious response because in previous chapters, Jacob has shown a propensity to be quite a talker. We've seen Jacob make expressive speeches on a number of occasions. He's spun yarns to his father. He's professed his love for Rachel. He's harangued an oppressive Laban. He's cried out to the Lord in prayer. He's settled scores with his brother Esau. Yet when the daughter of his least favorite wife is sexually defiled, he keeps his mouth shut. He's got nothing to say. Now, we might for a moment want to sympathize with Jacob. Perhaps he feels his grief so acutely and he feels so boxed in as if there's nothing that he can do that he's paralyzed. Later on in this book, the book of Genesis, when he thinks he has lost his beloved son Joseph, he is going to have an emotional breakdown. He is going to make his grief quite apparent. When it's Dinah, he keeps his peace. Meanwhile, Hamor is on his way to talk things over with Jacob, and as he's on his way, Jacob's sons hear what's happening. They come home because they are furious. Their father has been left standing speechless and inactive, but they are fuming. In their eyes, the text says, something outrageous, something unforgivable had been done. That's the evaluation which we get in verse seven. He had done an outrageous thing in Israel by laying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done. Their sister had been defiled and humiliated and she was still, note this, it's not immediately clear early on in this passage, but it's clarified as you get towards the end. She's still being kept in her abuser's house. This didn't happen and then she was sent home. She was still in Shechem's house. And so it was an outrage. and they respond appropriately. However, when Hamor arrives with his son Shechem by his side, the boys approach the issue much more coolly. They listen as Hamor explains how Shechem wants Dinah as a wife and how he would like Jacob to grant her to him. In fact, Hamor argues that this could be the first of many happy marriages. And so the prince proposes what we might describe as a multi-generational agreement to intermarry and live as one people. They're going to get the tribes together. If Jacob's foes will play along, they can stay in the land, participate in trade, and purchase more property. They have a lot to gain, after all. And on top of this, Shechem we're told, Hamor is making the opening spiel, but then Shechem jumps in and he explains he's personally prepared to sweeten the deal. He will contribute as large a bride price as Jacob cares to name. This is quite generous. And he will, on top of that, give additional gifts to Dinah. We see here a lustful young man who will do whatever he needs to do so long as he can have the young woman whom he's victimized as his bride. What started as an impulsive act born of Shechem's lust had obviously turned into real feelings for the girl. But notice what's missing in Shechem and Hamor's proposal. There's no apology. There's no contrition. There's no repentance. They just hope to put this to rest by legalizing the illicit union which Shechem had forced on Dinah. And they bargain towards this end from a position of strength since they've already got Dinah in their home. But Jacob is once again speechless. That's remarkable, isn't it? He's once again speechless. If you look in verses 13 through 17, it's his furious sons who answer for him. He was the head of the household. This was his daughter. He should have been very involved in the conversations with Hamor. But his sons answer for him and they answer, we're told, deceitfully. Verse 13, the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully because he had defiled their sister Dinah. They are going to pretend to go along. But really what they're doing is they're mimicking their dad's old tricks. They're being deceitful. They're trying to pull the wool over. Shechem had defiled their sister as a pagan, forcing himself upon one of God's people, and they were going to figure out some way to turn this evil back on his head. And so they tell this devilish father-son duo that there's one thing standing in the way of making a deal. They are circumcised, and the Shechemites are not. So it would be improper to give their sister to uncircumcised heathen. It would be a disgrace to be honest. It's not the way their family operated. And so if there was to be any sort of marriage agreement, the men of Shechem, all of them, would need to be circumcised just like them. Then, and only then, would Jacob's kin unite with the men of Shechem. Now this would be, this strisis is strange perhaps, but this would be analogous to tricking someone into baptism today in order to somehow bring them on. God had given this as a sign of the covenant and now they're trying to use it to bring evil upon others. We might call this a violation of the third commandment, a profaning of the sacraments, treating them vainly, but Jacob's sons are willing to try. They're not much concerned with piety at the moment. And though they were really bargaining from a position of weakness because they already had the girl, they try to project strength. They say, but if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, well, then we'll take our daughter and we'll be gone. What would you do? Well, neither Hamor nor Shechem flinched. No big deal. Those are acceptable terms. And so Shechem quickly got to work. He was the most honorable son of the chief of his people. So he didn't have any trouble getting a hearing at the city gate. And so Shechem gathered all the menfolk together. He made his pitch. And one of the things we might observe is that his pitch included its fair share of deceit. His description of the arrangement includes more perks, if you want to call them that, than were mentioned during the negotiations. Shechem and his father explained that Jacob's people, they're a peaceful people. They ought to be welcomed with open arms, allowed to participate in Hivite society. And everybody ought to be eager to seize the opportunity to create ties with his family through marriage, if possible. And they were going to become one. They were going to prosper because of it. All that the town folks would need to do is they need to get circumcised and then they would stand to gain a great deal. Because he says here, not only would they secure future wives for their sons and husbands for their daughters, but Shechem suggested that somehow this would make the people rich. With enough intermarriage, he argues, all of Jacob's stuff, and he had a lot of stuff, it's all going to end up in our pocket eventually anyways. He's promising really more than he had to give, more than he had bargained for, but it's persuasive. It works. So we see here in these verses that all the men agreed to be circumcised and enter into this arrangement with Jacob's family. But little did they know they'd just fallen into a trap. We were told earlier that Jacob's brothers were speaking deceitfully when they offered peace terms to the Hivites. And now, beginning in verse 25, down through verses 29, we see the nature of the deception. On the third day, after what was a mass circumcision, the men are still sore. They've just had a surgical procedure. They're perhaps still weak with fever. Maybe there's some infection setting in. They're not in much shape to do anything. Just when that is the condition of the men of Shechem, Simeon and Levi, two of the sons of Jacob, they pounce. And these were Dinah's, two of Dinah's full siblings. They shared both father and mother. And if their father was going to do nothing, well, they were going to avenge their sister's defilement themselves. That's what we see beginning in verse 25. On the third day, when they were sore two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi died, his brothers took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males. With the men of Shechem weak and bedridden, we see that these two young men, they go through the city, they slaughter all of its residents with their swords. They kill Hamor and Shechem, yes, thereby liberating Dinah. Again, let's remember that they had Dinah this whole time. They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword. This is verse 26. And took Dinah out of Shechem's house and went away. And so they kill Hamor and Shechem, thereby liberating their sister. Clearly, they didn't stop there. They killed every last male. And then, when all the men are dead, Their other brothers come and join them, and they plunder and loot the city. They take everything. At the end of the day, they take animals, money, children, women, keepsakes, you name it, they take it. They wipe this city out. Let me ask you a question. Congregation, do you sympathize with Simeon and Levi? I do. I sympathize with Simeon and Levi. Their sister had been treated wickedly. Their father had done nothing. And so they took matters into their own hands. They were going to set things straight. They set out to execute justice where others had failed to act. But if you sympathize with these brothers, as I've already mentioned and admitted that I do, then be warned. Simeon and Levi are not heroes in this story. I told you when you think you've found heroes in Genesis 34, you've misunderstood it. Their actions may have been rooted in a gut level desire for justice, that sense that something had to be done. And that's why we can sympathize with them. because sometimes we get that sense, we get that gut level feeling that if nobody else is gonna do something, somebody's gotta do something. But they ended up overseeing even greater injustices in the process. You see, not, this may be a struggle for us, not even the law of Moses would call for death in a case like this. Listen to the words of Exodus chapter 22, verses 16 through 17. If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride price for virgins. Deuteronomy 22 addresses the same issue, verses 28-29, and it's even more explicit. It applies the same rule when a man seizes an unbetrothed woman and lives with her. In both texts, a man who fornicates with an unbetrothed virgin was to pay a hefty bride price and make the girl his wife. That's similar to what we've seen Shechem doing. But if the father refused to give the girl for some reason, as we might expect in a case like this, restitution was still a monetary payment, not death. That's what the law of God called for. Now, some have contested the applicability of that law to this case because in Exodus and Deuteronomy, the law is regulating offenses committed by Israelites against Israelites. That's typically what's in view there. God's people sinning against God's people. And perhaps comparing the two situations then, maybe it's apples and oranges, maybe an outsider would be treated more harshly. But here's what I think we can say. If the law wouldn't clearly condemn someone like Shechem to death, then surely it was unjust for Levi and Simeon to kill Shechem and every man in his city. Their rage was unbridled. The punishment didn't fit the crime and they became murderers and thieves. Now most assuredly they didn't live up to the high standard that would later be enshrined in Romans chapter 12, 17 and 19. We pay no one evil for evil, but give thought to what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. No doubt the brothers were in a tough spot. When a crime has been committed, you appeal to those who rule over you, but Hamor is the ruler in this case. Still, Jacob is responsible for Donna. He's the head of the household. He is officially the ruler over her as the head of his tribe. And so he should have pressed for justice, which could have been done in the negotiations, but he didn't do it. He was silent. And so the brothers were really at the end of their lawful avenues to pursue justice. And so sadly, they should have left vengeance to the Lord. but instead they took it into their own hands. And so let this be a lesson to us. Remember, there's no heroes in this chapter. Even our desire for justice is frequently tainted by sin. I am a social media guy. I'm on Facebook. I read comments when there are news stories which rise about crimes and things like this. We are quick to become bloodthirsty and merciless. We see somebody who's done something we don't like and the court didn't do, hang them high, kill them. We judge the sins of other sinners are worse than our own. Oh, we want blood. And sometimes that's proper. Sometimes that would be justice. And it's good to seek justice within the proper channels, but when the proper channels have been exhausted, we can't go the path of Levon Simeon. We have to entrust ourselves and our need for vengeance to the Lord. Many injustices will go unpunished in this life. That's just a fact. Many injustices will go unpunished in this life. But the thing the Bible tells us, and we can hang our hat on this, is that the Lord will balance all the scales in the end. He'll balance all the scales. It was too late for Simeon and Levon to learn that lesson. Their deed had been done. And finally, Jacob, here at the end of the chapter, he's able to work up what we might call a tepid response to the whole rotten affair. He still has nothing to say about his daughter who has been raped and kidnapped and liberated amid a bloody massacre, but he sure has something to say about the hit that his reputation is going to take because of this. When the dust settles, this is amazing, Jacob's main concern is for himself. No sympathy for Dinah, no condemnation of Shechem, no clear moral condemnation of Levi, and his brother Simeon even. In fact, we are going to see a clear condemnation of Simeon and Levi when Jacob gives his final blessings to his children. Instead, he's worried about potential consequences for him. Specifically, he's worried that other groups like the Canaanites and the Perizzites, well, they might attack him when they find out what his family has done. That's what we see in verse 30. That's what he's worried about. To put things in the language of 2 Corinthians chapter 6 which we read earlier, Jacob had allowed himself to become unequally yoked with unbelievers. He had not remained separate from the wicked. He had not remained unstained from defilement. He had actually gotten quite comfortable with the world and the world's view of him had become important to him. And so now his mind is on the perception of the world rather than upon the demands of holiness, which he has ignored throughout this chapter. At the same time that he should have been worshiping at Bethel, he found himself standing over dead bodies and griping about his sons. But his sons, though not acting in a holy manner themselves, they get the last word in this story. When their father derides them for their actions, they respond and they ask a simple question. The Bible is so good about, so powerful in the way that simple questions really make loud statements. Here's what they asked, but they said, should he treat our sister like a prostitute? The identity of the he in this sentence could be taken in different ways. And because he doesn't say shechem in particular, and perhaps that ambiguity is purposeful. Shechem had surely treated Dinah like a prostitute by having his way with her and then trying to buy her father off. He treated her like a prostitute, yes. But in a sense, Jacob had also treated her like a prostitute by allowing his daughter to be abused, doing nothing, and then accepting gifts in return. Jacob is a man of faith. To him belongs the covenant. But in Genesis 34, he stands condemned alongside everybody else in this whole sort of thing. As we close, I want you to note one more time, and this is really what we want to take away from this chapter, is that these are the sort of sinners whom God trusted His promises to. They were too cozy with the world. Their moral compasses were, they were all askew. And their dependence upon God suddenly vanished when disaster struck. But despite it all, God had cursed those who cursed His covenant people. Remember, that's what God said to Abraham, I'll bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you. And now Shechem and his family have cursed the people of God. They have fallen under God's curse. God has, through the violent, sinful deeds of Jacob's sons, judged the perpetrators. He has sustained the covenant. If it was left to Jacob, the covenant would crumble because obviously his resolve was not all that strong, but God preserved it through this dark hour because the covenant was, at root, a covenant of grace. because the Lord is a merciful deliverer. Jacob would live to fight another day, and he would, as we're going to see in chapter 35, he would worship the Lord at Bethel. So congregation, let us close with this reflection, that we are also sinners. And that's true whether you've done something as outwardly heinous as has been done in this chapter, or not, whether you think your sins are much less severe. Either way, you're a sinner. And our only hope lies in the fact that God knowingly directs, from the very beginning, His promises of salvation to sinners. That's who He gives the promises to. And He will keep His promises and sustain His covenant even when we fail. If we could lose our salvation, we would lose it. If we could lose it, we would. But when God gets us, truly gets us, we have true saving faith, then He's got us and He keeps us. If He gets us, He's got us, He keeps us. And so, as we think on all the terrible things that happened in Genesis 3-4, we ought to be giving thanks to God for His grace. Because we don't deserve anything more, at the end of the day, in the scales of divine justice, we don't deserve anything more than the people in this chapter deserve, apart from Christ. And so, let's give thanks to God for His grace. Let's examine ourselves for unrepentant of sin lurking within, lest we walk these terrible pathways. and let us entrust ourselves to Christ, who bore the punishment our sins so royally deserve. He bore the stroke of justice in our place, and yet, having been punished in our place, He still said, John 6, 39 and 40, this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given to me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. Our covenant Redeemer mediates to us a covenant of grace, a salvation undeserved. And once he draws us into that covenant, he will not lose us. And our security lies with him, who atones for sinners, and shows grace to those in need. Let's pray.