‘And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me, to make me an unpleasant odour among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites, and I being few in number, they will gather themselves together against me, and smite me, and I will be destroyed, and my household.”

Jacob is not pleased at what his sons have done and had clearly not been expecting it. They had not brought him in on their plans. But his concern is not so much over what has been done as with its consequences. If the surrounding close neighbours gather together to take revenge they are not strong enough to fight them and thus Jacob will lose all he has as well as being in danger of being killed himself. It was not for this that he had built up his wealth. So he rebukes them severely. Was the rape of Dinah worth it?

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