Genesis 34:20

And Hamor and Shechem his son came unto the gate of their city, and communed with the men of their city, saying,

Hamor and Shechem ... came unto the gate of their city. That was the place where every public communication was made; and in the ready, obsequious submission of the people to this measure we see an evidence either of the extraordinary affection for the governing family, or of the abject despotism of the East, where the will of a chief is an absolute command. At the same time, the rulers laboured in a very plausible manner to show the personal and public advantages which would result to their subjects from an amicable and commercial league with the powerful and wealthy nomads (see the note at Genesis 34:10). The people were induced to comply with the conditions of the proposed union (see the note at Genesis 26:12-14); at the same time their facility of persuasion can be satisfactorily explained only from the then growing belief among many Eastern nations, that circumcision was, apart from religion, useful and important in a sanitary point of view.