1. to go seeing among the daughters of the land. The infinitive in the Hebrew is literally “to see,” followed not by a direct object, as one might expect, but by a partitive (the particle b^e), which suggests “among” or “some of.” Although the sense of the verb in context may be something like “to make the acquaintance of” or “travel around among,” the decision of several modern translations to render it as “to visit” is misconceived. Not only does that term convey anachronistic notions of calling cards and tea, but it obliterates an important repetition of terms. This is one of those episodes in which the biblical practice of using the same word over and over with different subjects and objects and a high tension of semantic difference is especially crucial. Two such terms are introduced in the first sentence of the story: “to see” and “daughter.” Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, goes out among the daughters of the land, an identity of terms that might suggest a symmetry of position, but the fact that she is an immigrant’s daughter, not a daughter of the land, makes her a ready target for rape. (In the Hebrew, moreover, “sons” and “daughters,” banim and banot, are differently inflected versions of the same word, so Dinah’s filial relation to Jacob is immediately played against Shechem’s filial relation to Hamor, and that in turn will be pointedly juxtaposed with the relation between Jacob and his sons.) Shechem’s lustful “seeing” of Dinah is immediately superimposed on her “seeing” the daughters of the land.

2. saw . . . took . . . lay with . . . abused. As elsewhere in Genesis, the chain of uninterrupted verbs conveys the precipitousness of the action. “Took” will become another thematically loaded reiterated term. “Lay with” is more brutal in the Hebrew because instead of being followed by the preposition “with” (as, for example, in Rachel’s words to Leah in 30:15), it is followed by a direct object—if the Masoretic vocalization is authentic—and in this form may denote rape.

3. his very self clung. The Hebrew nefesh (life-breath) is used here as an intensifying synonym of the personal pronoun. (“His very self” in verse 8 represents the same Hebrew usage.) The psychology of this rapist is precisely the opposite of Amnon’s in 2 Samuel 13, who, after having consummated his lust for his sister by raping her, despises her. Here, the fulfillment of the impulse of unrestrained desire is followed by love, which complicates the moral balance of the story.

4. Take me this girl. “Take,” which indicated violent action in the narrator’s report of the rape, now recurs in a decorous social sense—the action initiated by the father of the groom in arranging a proper marriage for his son. In verse 17, Jacob’s sons will threaten to “take” Dinah away if the townsmen refuse to be circumcised, and in the report of the massacre, they take first their swords and then the booty. Shechem refers to Dinah as yaldah, “girl” or “child,” a term that equally suggests her vulnerability and the tenderness he now feels for her.

7. a scurrilous thing in Israel. This use of this idiom here is a kind of pun. “A scurrilous thing in Israel” (nevalah beYisraʾel) is in later tribal history any shocking act that the collective “Israel” deems reprehensible (most often a sexual act). But at this narrative juncture, “Israel” is only the other name of the father of these twelve children, and so the phrase also means “a scurrilous thing against Israel.”

for he had done a scurrilous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, such as ought not be done. This entire clause is a rare instance in biblical narrative of free indirect discourse, or narrated monologue. That is, the narrator conveys the tenor of Jacob’s sons’ anger by reporting in the third person the kind of language they would have spoken silently, or to each other. It is a technical means for strongly imprinting the rage of Jacob’s sons in the presence of their father who has kept silent and, even now, gives no voice to his feelings about the violation of his daughter.

10. go about it. The Hebrew verb saḥar has the basic meaning of “to go around in a circle” and the extended meaning of “to trade.” But at this early point of tribal history, Jacob and his sons are seminomadic herdsmen, not at all merchants, so the commercial denotation of the term seems unlikely in context.

11. And Shechem said . . . “. . . whatever you say to me, I will give.” The father had begun the negotiations by asking for Dinah as wife for his son and then immediately opened up the larger issue of general marriage-alliances with Jacob’s clan and the acquisition of settlement rights by the newcomers. Shechem now enters the discussion to speak more personally of the marriage and the bride-price. (According to biblical law, a man who raped an unbetrothed girl had to pay a high fine to her father and was obliged to marry her.) After the two instances of “taking” earlier in the story, he insists here on “giving”: he will give whatever the brothers stipulate in the expectation that they will give him Dinah as wife.

12. give me the young woman. Addressing the brothers, Shechem does not refer to Dinah now as yaldah, “girl,” but as naʿarah, the proper term for a nubile young woman.

13. deceitfully. This is the same term, mirmah, that was first attached to Jacob’s action in stealing the blessing, then used by Jacob to upbraid Laban after the switching of the brides.

they spoke as they did because he had defiled Dinah their sister. “As they did because” is merely a syntactically ambiguous “that” in the Hebrew—quite possibly a means for introducing another small piece of free indirect discourse.

14. We cannot do this thing. They begin as though their response were a flat refusal. Then they ignore the offer of generous payment and instead stipulate circumcision—to be sure, a physical sign of their collective identity, but also the infliction of pain on what is in this case the offending organ.

16. become one folk. This ultimate horizon of ethnic unification was perhaps implied but certainly not spelled out in Hamor’s speech.

19. the lad. There was no previous indication of Shechem’s age. The term naʿar is the masculine counterpart of the term he used for Dinah in verse 12 and suggests that he, too, is probably an adolescent.

23. Their possessions in livestock and all their cattle. Although, in keeping with the biblical convention of near verbatim repetition, Hamor’s speech repeats the language used by the sons of Jacob, there had been no mention before of the Hivvites becoming masters of the newcomers’ livestock. This may reflect a tactic of persuasion on the part of Hamor; it may equally reflect the Hivvites’ cupidity.

24. all who sallied forth. In Abraham’s negotiations with the Hittites in chapter 23, the town elders or members of the city council are referred to as “all the assembled [or, those who come in] in the gate of [the] town.” Here they are designated as “all who go out from the gate.” There are good grounds to suppose that the latter idiom has a military connotation: troops came out of the gates of walled cities to attack besiegers or to set out on campaigns, and “to go out and come in” is an idiom that means “to maneuver in battle.” The reference to the Hivvites as fighting men makes sense in context because they are about to render themselves temporarily helpless against attack through the mass circumcision.

26. by the edge of the sword. The Hebrew idiom is literally “the mouth of the sword”—hence the sword is said to “consume” or “eat” in biblical language.

and they took Dinah from the house of Shechem. Meir Sternberg (1985), who provides illuminating commentary on the interplay of opposing moral claims in this story, shrewdly notes that this is a shocking revelation just before the end of the story: we might have imagined that Shechem was petitioning in good faith for Dinah’s hand; now it emerges that he has been holding her captive in his house after having raped her.

27. for they had defiled their sister. This angry phrase becomes a kind of refrain in the story. Again, it sounds like the free indirect discourse of Simeon and Levi, offered as a justification for the massacre they have perpetrated. Precisely in this regard, the element of exaggeration in these words should be noted: only one man defiled Dinah, but here a plural is used, as though all the males of the town could in fact be held accountable for the rape.

30. stirred up trouble. The root meaning of the verb is “to muddy.”

31. Like a whore should our sister be treated? The very last words of the story are still another expression—and the crudest one—of the brothers’ anger and their commitment to exact the most extravagant price in vindication of what they consider the family’s honor. (The Hebrew might also be rendered as “shall he treat our sister,” referring to Shechem, but the third-person singular does sometimes function in place of a passive.) It is surely significant that Jacob, who earlier “kept his peace” and was notable for his failure of response, has nothing to say, or is reported saying nothing, to these last angry words of his sons. (Only on his deathbed will he answer them.) This moment becomes the turning point in the story of Jacob. In the next chapter, he will follow God’s injunction to return to Bethel and reconfirm the covenant, but henceforth he will lose much of his paternal power and will be seen repeatedly at the mercy of his sons, more the master of self-dramatizing sorrow than of his own family. This same pattern will be invoked in the David story: the father who fails to take action after the rape of his daughter and then becomes victim of the fratricidal and rebellious impulses of his sons.