We now come to a story of Dinah who goes to see the women of the land of Canaan. While there she is seized by Shechem, the pronice of the city and son of Hamor, who raped Dinah, but then afterwards desired to have her for his wife. Thus he asked his father, Hamor, to get her.
In the meantime, Jacob has heard what happened to Dinah and waited for her brothers to return from the field. As Hamor is coming to talk to Jacob, the brothers return from the field angry because they had heard what Shechem had done to Dina as well.
Hamor has come to talk to Jacob, but it is the brothers he ends up talking to. He says that Shechem wants Dinah as his wife, and that he desires to inter marry within the family of Jacob, where they would take each other’s offspring for marriage. He also offers not only whatever bride price they want but a great gift as well, if he can take Dinah to be his son’s wife.
The sons answered Hamor saying that all the men needed to be circumcised as they were in order for them to marry with Hamor’s people. If they remained uncircumcised, they would take Dinah and leave. This pleased Hamor and Shechem as they believed that there would now be peace between the men, and Jacob’s family so they convinced the men in the city to all be circumcised.
On the third day, when the men were sore, Simeon and Livi set against the men of the city and killed them all. Then all the brothers plundered the city taking everything including the wives and children. Jacob condemns Simeon and Levi for fear of the consequences of the actions by the Canaanites and the Perizzites. (Genesis 34).
God then appears to Jacob and tells him to go to Bethel and build an altar to God there. Jacob tells his family that they must purify themselves and put away false gods among them (remember Rachel had stolen her father’s household gods – Genesis 31:19). They gave Jacob the false gods and the gold in their ears (possibly meaning the false gods had gold in their ears – ESV footnote) and buried them under a tree near Shechem.
Here God divinely protected Jacob and his family on their journey as it states that a terror of God fall on the cities around them, so they did not pursue Jacob and his sons (Genesis 35:5). They journey to Bethel where Jacob built an altar and called it El-Bethel because God revealed himself when he fled from his brother, Esau.
Then God appears to Jacob again and affirms that Jacob is from then on to be known as Israel. He also affirms that kings and nations will come from Jacob, and that his offspring with inherit Canaan. (Genesis 35:1-15)
They then journeyed to Ephrath (Bethlehem). On the way Rachel went into hard labor. She named her son Ben-Oni as she was dying, but Israel changes his name to Benjamin , “Son of my right hand”. (Genesis 35:16-18)
Now there is a mention that Reuben went in and laid with Bilhah, Isreal’s concubine, and that Israel heard of it. (Genesis 35:22). No other mention is made of this. The reason for this may have been to establish authority over his brothers, but as we will learn in Genesis 48:3-7 it has the opposite effect.
We then learn that Isreal arrived back at Hebron in time to see his father Isaac before he died, where he again reunites with Esau to bury Isaac. (Genesis 35:27-29)
We now learn the generations of Esau. Esau had again departed from Isreal because the land was not big enough to support both families due to the size of their livestock. Esau settled in the region of Seir. Out of those descendants are kings who controlled the region of Edom before a king ruled over the Israelites (Genesis 36).
Now we turn our attention to Joseph. He goes to Israel with a bad report on his brothers. We do not know what the report was, but this was one reason that Joseph became alienated from his brothers. Next it states that Israel loved most out of all his sons because “he was the son of his old age”. Benjamin was born after Joseph, so this may indicate that Joseph showed unusual maturity for his age or that Joseph was closest to Jacob. (Genesis 37:1-3)
Israel gives Joseph a coat of many colors. His brothers saw that Israel loved Joseph more than the other sons, and for that they hated him.
At this point, Jospeh has two dreams. In the first, the brothers are all binding sheaves of wheat, and the other sheaves bow down to Jospeh’s sheave of wheat. Causing more division because they felt Joseph was declaring himself greater than his brothers and ruling over them. In the second dream, Jospeh said the sun, moon and eleven stars bowed to him leading to rebuke from the brothers and Israel. But Israel kept the dream in mind. (Genesis 37:5-11)
Now the brothers were pasturing near Shechem (a period of time must have passed since the massacre at Shechem). Israel sends Joseph to check on his brothers. He finds them near Dothan. When the brothers see Joseph coming, they initially conspire to kill him. However, Reuben convinced them not to do this with plans to rescue Joseph and bring him back to Israel. Instead, they stripped Jospeh of his cloak and threw him in a pit. Later they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites, and Judah convinced them to sell Joseph to them. The price was 20 shekels of silver.
Rueben returns to the pit and learns that Joseph was gone. He tears his cloak saying, “Where am I to go?” This indicates that Reubens intent for rescuing Joseph was to gain Israel’s good graces and not out of concern for Joseph. The brothers dip Joseph’s cloak in goats’ blood and let Israel believe that Joseph was killed by wild animals. This leads to a great mourning by Israel that neither the sons nor the daughters of Israel could comfort him from (Genesis 37:12-35).
My Bible Journey In A Year (Chronological) 