Chapter 34

Dinah, Leah's daughter, goes exploring.  A man sees her and rapes her.  He decides he loves her and asks his father to arrange a marriage to her.  

Or he wants to cover up his evil deed by making it legal.  He is Shechem, prince of the land who's sons sold Jacob his property and his father is Hamor.  

Jacob gets word of what's happened.  His sons are all in the fields, so he sits tight for a time.  Shechem and Hamor show up to negotiate for Dinah.  By now, the sons are home and pretty angry.  Hamor offers peace in the land, their daughters for Jacobs sons, their sons for Jacobs daughters, peace, trading and prosperity. Shechem offers any bride price that Jacob cares to ask for and says he will pay it.

Jacob's sons answer deceitfully.  Perhaps they learned this from Jacob and Laban and their dealings with each other, as Lot's daughters had learned their morals in Sodom.  Our choices, and especially our sins, have consequences.  Little eyes are always watching, and they learn from their parents, and from the environments where their parents take them.  Jacob's sons require Shechem and his party to be circumcised if Dinah is to be given in marriage.  They agree.  Indication is that Jacob is not a party to this deal, but his sons alone are negotiating.  

2025 - Jacob's sons pervert their covenant with God by using it not as something sacred but as a way to manipulate and gain advantage over others.  And they are successful really.  It works, and they run amok.  Worse, they are using a sign meant to keep Israel separate from the tribes around them for the opposite purpose.  It was not a means of "converting pagans to God", but to a means of separating Israel from the surrounding pagans.

Hamor and Shechem, being very honored in the town, convince all the townsmen to be circumcised also.  The name of the town is Shechem, I believe, which tells you something about who these people were.  On the third day after circumcision, when the men are all sore, Levi and Simeon attack the city, kill Shechem and Hamor both, retrieve their sister, loot the town, steal the flocks.  They also take their little ones and their wives, I'm guessing to enslave the children for life and to use the wives as concubines and slaves.  

Jacob hears of it and tells Levi and Simeon they have caused him a lot of trouble, because if the Canaanites and the Perizzites combine, Jacob will be destroyed. 

But they said, "Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?"

Genesis 34:31 ESV

Seems to me the punishment went far beyond the crime.  Levi and Simeon enriched themselves.  Their motives seem more about the loot than about their sister.  The wrong another does is not carte blanch for us to do whatever we want.  Justice works both ways.