Genesis 34:30 Commentary and Bible Study

Jacob is not speaking selfishly. He is the patriarch, the holy seed, the head of the family of promise; he speaks as representative of that family. ‘Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land’ – the sin has given him great trouble, has taken away his peace and brought his family into danger. Jacob points out the absolute foolishness of this. How will their neighbours look at them now? You have double disgraced our family, Jacob says. He doesn't say that he is troubled because of the evil of this massacre to destroy a town because of what one person has done, but he clearly was troubled about that. But what is specifically recorded is that they've lost their reputation among the inhabitants of the land. All the neighbouring city states all the Canaanites and the Perizzites will turn against them. Their reputation had been built up over years. Abraham had such a good reputation; some of those people were even converted through his testimony. Isaac, a quiet man, also had a solid reputation: now it is ruined. There's been dishonour, a massacre, and the testimony is in pieces. Equally serious, the other Canaanites and Perizzites will obviously take action. ‘I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house.’ He is not just thinking about himself. He is thinking about the fact that the family carries the seed royal, the coming Messiah, they are now exposed to violence and possibly annihilation. They are bound to be attacked and but for the help of God, they are going to be destroyed. It is not said, but clearly he goes to prayer, earnestly before the Lord. Although these people have behaved wickedly, it is still the type of the church, and God will preserve it.Of course they are not easily persuaded of their guilt. The tenacity of sinfulness in us is enormous; wickedness has a remarkable ability for self-justification. You notice that the sons aren't a bit convicted or concerned, either from a moral point of view, or a practical point of view. They don't speak to their father Jacob in quite these terms, but under their breath you can almost hear them saying, You shouldn't talk to us like this. What we've done is the right thing to do. We are not taking any conviction; we are not taking any blame. There's nothing wrong with what we've done. ‘Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?’ Should he be allowed to get away with that? We've done the right thing. There is no repentance from them, and that was to be held against them because when Jacob at the end of his life blesses the family you remember what he says about Simeon and Levi. ‘Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall. ⁷ Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel’ (Genesis 49:5-7). Their future and their tribes’ future would be deeply affected always by this sin, so that it remained like a scar on the conscience of the Israelites: what those two had done.