Genesis 34:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Genesis 34:1

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It is now ten or eleven years after Jacob’s return to Canaan. there had been the meeting with Esau his brother, and now he has been there all these years. There were problems in the home and polygamy and idolatry had penetrated. Jacob’s favourite wife, Rachel, was an idolater, so it was not surprising that there were family problems. Probably she had a fascination for idolatry, or she was in some form of rebellious state, but it did not seem to her like rebellion, temptation. We all pass through an age when we think it wholly reasonable to rebel or give way to temptation. There was not much restraint in the house. But we can find another reason for this trouble in the household. Following his vision at Bethel of the ladder up to heaven, Jacob had made a vow. He had solemnly taken a stone and set it up as a pillar. He had named the place Bethel – house of God – and vowed that he would build a house there for God, for which the pillar would stand as a token until he returned from Padanaram. That vow is still unfulfilled. But if God would keep him, he would build a house of God in that place as a memorial at Bethel. It seems that he has had plenty of opportunity to do so, but he hasn't yet done that, and that is important, because when a vow is delayed there are bound to be troubles and difficulties. Following the resolution to the present crisis at the end of this chapter, God requires him to go back to Bethel and do what he had said he would do, and build an altar to God.Based on Joseph being 17 at the time of his first dream (Genesis 37:2), and Dinah being a little older than him (Genesis 30:21-24), she was about 15 years old. She ‘went out to see the daughters of the land.’ Hamor was probably something like a squire, or lord of the manor, living in a large village with his family and servants, where he owned the land. They outnumbered Jacob and his family, and so it was important that Jacob live on peaceful terms with them. Why did Dinah want to go and view the daughters of the land? It is the Garden of Eden syndrome all over again! Something was being withheld from her and she said, ‘I want to see it.’ She was the only girl in the family and she craved female company, but she was naïve. She revealed a spirit of rebelliousness, restlessness, and dissatisfaction. Matthew Henry comments, ‘She went to see, yet that was not all, she went to be seen too’ – a shrewd observation. Bishop hall says, ‘As her mother Leah, so she hath a fault in her eyes, which was curiosity. She will needs see and be seen; and while she doth vainly see, she is seen lustfully.’ Curiosity made her want to find out what the women of the area were like – how they dressed, how they spoke, how they conducted themselves – but no doubt also, what the boys were like. Curiosity which is an engine for discovery must be kept within bounds, but she was a regular rebel. God had provided a wife for Isaac, and for her father Jacob, and faith would not have seen this situation as anything to panic about, or as something that required her to take matters into her own hands. She knew that God had spoken to Abraham and had promised to bless his descendants. She knew that her father Jacob was in the line of promise and that the family was a special family, and so she should have known that it was dangerous to mix with the Canaanites.

Application

There are many pastoral lessons in these chapters, because the family of Jacob – just as the family of Abraham and of Isaac – was a type, a foreshadowing of the church of Jesus Christ. The events that took place, the things that happened, their rewards of faith, their punishments for evildoing and disobedience – these things all bear lessons for us. They are not the same as the New Testament church, of course not. They are very much a mixed multitude, and many of them are not believers, are not sincere, as we shall see in this narrative, but they are a type.

Teenage years are years of discovery, and parents need to have prepared their children to cope with the rebellious inclinations that will arise, well in advance. The child is being trained for adulthood when they will make their own judgment s about what is right and what is wrong and their own decisions. The parent must gradually hand over the reins of power to the child. Nevertheless the parent sees dangers more keenly than the child, and must take into account of the degree of wisdom possessed by the child, and intervene or not as is appropriate. There seems to have been little intervention in the case of Dinah. Somebody in the family must have known what she was doing and ought to have stopped her.

After conversion, we can lose our way with our vows. We come to the Lord; we see what Christ has done on Calvary for his people. We are convicted of sin; we yield our lives to him; we promise to give him ourselves entirely. We pledge ourselves to him; we repent of sin; we abandon our worldly idols and we make our vows. But then we get used to the Christian walk, our vows can slip out of mind and we become more casual. There may be all kinds of things we once determined we would never do, and things which we long to do and yet we have not done them and we are not making the greatest effort to do them. This is a story of vows deferred and all kinds of problems and difficulties which arise.

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Genesis 34:1 Commentary and Bible Study