Well, good evening, everybody. It's a couple of minutes after six. So go ahead and get ready. What's that? Good evening. What'd I say? Good morning. I was right. She just replying to me. Okay. You never know what might come out of my mouth. Genesis 34, reading through this chapter again this week. I don't know why Brother James didn't just go and cover this one for me last week. There's a, we've got rape, deception, vengeance, murder, all rolled into this chapter tonight. I don't really know that we need to do a ton of catch-up two weeks ago. And again, thanks, Brother James, for leading last Wednesday night. When we last left off, we finished Genesis 33. That's the chapter in which Jacob and Esau reunited. Things went much differently than they expected, and we would have expected had we been reading it for the first time, I'm sure. Except that Jacob, again, in his slightly deceiving ways, tells Esau that he'll meet up with him down in Seir, and of course Jacob goes west and his brother goes south. We did read at the very end of chapter 33, the last three verses, now Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came to Padan Aram and he camped before the city. Then he bought a portion of a field where he had pitched his tent from the hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, for one hundred kwesetha. Then he set up there an altar and called it El Eloi Yisrael." That's how we ended two weeks ago, chapter 33. And I want to bring your mind to the fact that God is mentioned there in the naming of that place. And God is mentioned at the very start of chapter 35 However, God is not referenced, mentioned, spoken of, discussed at all in the chapter we're gonna look at tonight. So before we jump in, because instead of reading all the way through it, because there's way too much intrigue in this chapter, reading all the way through it and then backing up, we're gonna take bite-sized portions as we go. Let's go ahead and go to the Lord in prayer before we get started tonight. Father, we're grateful once again to be gathered here together with brothers and sisters in Christ. with those that we know and that we've grown to love, Lord, as we know that you love them. God, I ask your blessing upon our time together tonight, that we would do all that we do in a way that glorifies you and your word, that you've entrusted to us. God, that you would guide and direct us in our study, Lord, but more importantly, in every aspect of our lives. We would heed your voice, search out your desires, and lead us in still waters. In Jesus name I pray, amen. I'm interested for y'all that have Bibles that have titles at the start of chapters, if any of you have a title to this chapter in your copy of God's Word. Jacob's children, okay. Anybody else have anything? The defiling of Dinah. Okay. Y'all got to read down the same Bible there. The Dinah incident. Sounds almost like a movie, doesn't it? What's that brother? Okay. Mine says Simeon and Levi deceive Shechem. Let's just dive in. This chapter, I've already mentioned that God's name is mentioned at the end of 33, at the beginning of 35. One commentator I looked at said, the fact that God's not mentioned in 34 says, I believe this omission highlights the very secular and seedy nature of the present chapter. Without God, mankind easily falls prey to sin and malice. There's also this thought process, as we close chapter 33, I think I made this comment two weeks ago, and I didn't go back and listen to myself talk to see if I did, but I think I did, that Jacob had been a nomadic, or at least a semi-nomadic people, and at this point, he buys land and he settles down. Not exactly what God had told him to do. He told him to go back home, but this change of existence, change of lifestyle, leads into some other things, I believe. Intermarriage comes into play, right? Because now you're trying to set up your permanent roots here. Remember, what did we say that he did? He camped before the city, pitched his tent, all these kind of things. He's staying there now because he's bought some property there. And then you get, how do you live amongst the people groups where you're at? This brings into focus pretty quickly the danger of intermarriage within the Hebrews and other people, Canaanites specifically here. But let's read the first three verses. Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. Then Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her and took her and lay with her and violated her. I know some different translations say something different, but I think we get the point of what happened right there. And he was deeply attracted to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman and spoke to the heart of the young woman. I don't know that I need to explain what just happened there. but let's look at some of these details. He purchased the land, they're living in the highlands in Northern Canaan, near Shechem, the city, and then now we're introduced to a man named, with the same name. This was a large and important town. Why would Jacob even want to set up close to this large town? Trade is one of the big things, right? A little bit of protection too. Often when we see that though it turns into something much different than that. But the influence of that culture gets all over somebody pretty quick. Dinah. Remember we heard about Dinah. She's the only daughter mentioned by name of Jacobs. It says they had other ones, but she's the only one meant to remember. We talked about her a while back, and I said it's important that we name her because something's gonna happen later on that's gonna affect and impact everything based on her. Well, guess what? This is later on. We're at later on tonight. That's what this chapter is. She's the oldest daughter of Jacob. Why does she go, went out to see the daughters of the land? Anybody have anything different there at the end of verse one? Went out to see the daughters of the land. Guess not. Something pretty close to that, I guess. So what's she doing there? What's that mean? Well, how do these women from Shechem live? Tired of being around her brothers, Billy said. Tired of being around all the goats and the sheep. Everything else? But she also was kind of a little curious there. What are these, you know, how do they dress? How do they walk? How do they talk? That kind of thing. Maybe a little bit of curiosity there, but I got a blunt Billy. Slumming? Wanted a part of it? I mean, we're speculating, right? It didn't tell us exactly. It just says she went in to see what the ladies were all about. What happens to her? Well, Shechem, the son of Hamor. This is obviously, if it's not obvious before, I'll just spill it out to you. He raped her. That's what, he violated her. He took her by force. That's what he did. He raped her. Did you notice, I've pointed this out a time or two in the past, in the Hebrew, the way the Hebrew literature lays out, when you see this rapid succession of and in a verb, and in a verb, and in a verb, this emphasis of it kind of just making it more and more and more heinous and or good, depending on the circumstances. We see that in this text. Your commentaries indicate Yeah, yeah, so I looked at that pretty in-depth. I know where you're going with that. When you get to verse 3, so most agreeance of people that I respect on it believe this is kind of the arrogance, which we'll see in Shechem a little bit later on in this chapter, and bravado of, he took her, but here's the other thing, we're gonna find out later on, he didn't just take her, whatever happened to her, and then she went back. He took her physically and held her because later on, when the brothers get involved in this, they bring her back from there. which I don't think the first few times I've ever read this text, it dawned on me until I read through it again this week and I was like, they didn't, he took her in, I think it's just an indulgence in his fleshly desires and he doesn't care and he's at the power and authority probably to do it as many times as he's ever wanted being the son of this powerful man. But he says he loved her. But the word, the literal word, means to afflict or humiliate. That leads you again to thinking, we're probably talking about sexual violation there, a rape. And the response of the brothers will lead us to believe that it was that worst thing that he could have done as well. There's no evidence in the text that she was a willing participant in it. And after doing this, it says he did what? He's deeply attracted to her. He loved the woman and spoke to the heart of the young woman. Some of y'all's translations might say he clung to her, that he clung to her. The word used, the same word in Genesis 2, 24, talking about the marriage relationship created by God, the leave and cleave analogy. But in this, the commentator I read said he thinks this is a perversion of that in the way that the language is used, perverting what God's standard is by taking her forcefully, raping her, and holding her captive, basically. It's kind of the interpretation that I read from a couple of places. I also read this, that the real situation of what happens described in verse two, what Shechem hopes for is described in verse three. So let's move on and read verses four through seven. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor saying, get me this girl as a wife. Now Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter, but his sons were with his livestock in the field. So Jacob kept silent until they came in. Then Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him. Now the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it and the men were grieved. And they were very angry because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter for such a thing ought not to be done. So what is Shechem's response? Speaks to his father to try to arrange a marriage now. I don't think there's any inclination that he did this to try to honor her, because it tells us his desire was to have her. This isn't a, well, let me try to make this thing right. This is just, this is who I want. And Jacob was of enough higher standing and had enough that he couldn't just do it that way. He demands the verb, the word used there is an imperative word. He should take her to be his wife. Now, Before any negotiation happened though, Jacob hears that Dinah had been sexually defiled already. So he had heard about it. Y'all see that? Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah, his daughter. So we're gonna continue to read through this though. Again, the Billy's points of his thoughts of Jacob so many times as we've read through here. He's actually kind of passive in his response. Jacob is. Now, some might say, well, yeah, but he was waiting for the boys to come in. But by the time we get to the end of the chapter, he doesn't really like what the boys did. So there's some passivity again here on the front end from Jacob is the way that I look at it. What might be a reason for him to be passive about it and not be proactive about what had happened to his daughter? Your thoughts? We don't really know anything about this guy. Not much. Is he perhaps, now we're speculating, right? We're kind of speculating on this, but is he reluctant to confront the people of Shechem? To call into account this The leader of this town's son, when he's on the outskirts of this big city, afraid of what might happen, if he says something or does something. We get more hints of this as we get further in the text, so we're gonna get to some of this as we get there. Jacob's waiting, Hamel arrives to talk about these negotiations. Jacob's sons are coming in from the field, they had heard about what had happened. Now back to the point or the question that was asked earlier about Roy, when it says this disgraceful thing in the Hebrew, the term in the Hebrew is used a couple other places. It's used in Deuteronomy 22, 21. Then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father's house. The men of her city shall stone her. She will die because she was committed a disgraceful act in Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house. Judges 20 and six, and I seized my concubine and cut her in pieces and sent her throughout the land of Israel's inheritance for they have committed a lewd and disgraceful act in Israel. So speaking of a sexual act, either way you look at it. And the fact that it says he took her as credence to the kind of sexual act it was. So there to be angry, but do you catch what it says they were first? They were grieved. Verse seven, they came in from the field when they heard it and the men were grieved. And he also says, it sounds like that's what led them to come in from the field when you look at the verse. You see where it says, now the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it. So did they hear about it while they're out in the field and that's what drives them back in from the field to figure out what's going on and is this true type thing? I tend to think it probably is. They're grieved first and then they become angry. It's the same word used in Genesis 6-6 when God talks about the state of mankind on the face of the earth. He was grieved at man. Now, the anger part though, the word often used in Hebrew for angry or anger to this degree is a word that translates hot or red in the face. So, you know, have you ever been in that point of anger where you're red in the face? That's kind of what they're talking about here. That's pretty hot, pretty mad. Maybe I shouldn't use the word hot with the temperatures we've got outside right now. It says, the brothers see this act as what? A disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter for such a thing ought not be done. Now let me ask you a question. Had the nation of Israel been formed yet? We're a ways off from that happening. What is meant by that then? Jacob's name had been changed to Israel. That's pointing to what's coming, right? That already happened a little bit back. Who wrote this? Who was the human author of Genesis? Moses. And he's writing about it when they're about to come back into the land of Canaan, or reading it back to them, the history of how they got to where they were. He's telling them, this is a grievous sin. This is from whom Israel would come from. This is from whom the nation would be born from. This is a grievous sin. This is an evil against the nation and not just the individual. There are several indications in Genesis that some kind of law exists. Yeah It does you're right you're right Yes Yeah, I mean you could even If you want to go to what we do know as far as what they were following We have the example of Adam and Eve when God said, you know to join together and the whole marriage covenant pact was early on in Genesis for sure and But ultimately, against the people of God. I think Moses is kind of laying that groundwork, too, of this is a sin against the people of God. This is the set-up, select people that God had called out of all the peoples. It may be true, Pastor, that not only were the sons enraged, but they were tempted to Yeah. Yeah. Now are these the two oldest brothers? There's one older. Reuben. Reuben, Simeon, Levi. But what is unique about these two and Reuben and Dinah? They're Leah's children. They all have the same mother. So these two boys They're her, well, full brothers, yeah. Same mother and same father. So the reactions to this rape are varied. It does not appear that the people of Shechem see it as a moral issue. Jacob is somewhat passive. But these two boys are red in the face mad. I know what We're thinking, we're kind of pulling for these two boys that are red in the face mad right now, right? I mean, their sister just got raped. And now this guy has audacity to stand and say, my son wants to marry her. You can kind of see it, right? I mean, you can see where the red face comes in there. Let's move on. Eight through 10. But Hamer spoke with them. So them, so this means the brothers are involved in the conversation at this point. Hamor spoke with them, saying, the soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him as a wife and intermarry with us. Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves, lest you shall live with us. The land shall be opened before you live and trade in and take possessions of property in it. He's laying out a pretty good deal there for them, right? Sounds like it. What's he saying this will lead to? If you let this happen, We'll open the floodgates, we'll intermarry with one another, we'll share, you'll gain this and you'll gain that and all this stuff. It'd be a good time. They would gain two. Yeah, this is, the offer by Hamor literally says, and with us you shall dwell in the original Hebrew. So the whole point of this luring them in is believing that they will be one as people and people of the land. Now, Jacob of all people understands from the marriages of Esau and himself out of his father and then the marriage of Isaac, they sent them off, they didn't want them intermarrying with the people of the lands in which they were at. We go back and remember those stories. Jacob was sent a long ways away to go find his wife. Ended up with two of them and some concubines, but we've already studied all that, so we're not gonna rehash all that again tonight. But the true intent of Hamor is different. To Diane's point of, they're gonna get something out of it too. They wanna get much more than just something out of it. When we get down to verse 23, you're gonna see. So don't read ahead. All y'all put on your reading glasses and read ahead. Don't read ahead. He argues their relationship because of what they're gonna take from them, basically. So he's lying to them in order to gain the upper hand. And don't forget, Dinah's still over there. She's still there. They've got her. So that changes the negotiations, too, a little bit, right, by the dad and the brothers? They've still got her. Verse 11, Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, if I find favor in your sight, then I will give whatever you say to me. Some of y'all stranglers might say, if I find grace in your sight. Ask me ever so much bridal payment and gift, and I will give according as you say to me, but give me the girl as a wife. Shechem interjects himself into the conversation now, right? It should have been Jacob and Hamor hashing this out, but Shechem interjects himself into the conversation. He's quite smitten by her, apparently. There's no remorse. There's no repentance. There's no, I shouldn't have done that, but I do love her. I overstepped my bounds. It's full speed ahead. Yeah, that's the whole thing is the moral and the legal structure of them compared to the early beginnings of the Hebrew nation. His desire is underscored by the fact that, what does it say he's willing to give? You name your price. He's telling them, name your price. Now, the ancient culture would be that there'd be a pretty standard dowry type situation set up of this for a bride. I mean, there would be kind of a weights and balances structure, but he's saying beyond that. Now, the key to all this is Shechem and Hamor had no intentions of honoring it to begin with. We're about to see that as this begins to expand even further. What else have we not seen come into play at all? And I kind of hinted to this earlier. What do we see in the chapter 33 and we see at the beginning of chapter 35? There's no mention of God. There's no Jacob seeking God's face. We don't see any of that yet and we won't in this chapter. And what else does he say there? Asked me ever so much bridal payment and gifts. So not just a payment, but a gift as well. So that I might take her. Give me the girl as a wife. Let's go on. But Jacob's sons answered Shechem. So now that Shechem has decided to interject himself in the negotiation, the boys say, you know what? We're gonna, it's time for us to get in on this conversation too. But Jacob's sons answered Shechem, and his father Hamor with deceit. And thus they spoke, because he had defiled Dinah their sister. And they said to him, we cannot do this thing to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a reproach to us. Only on this condition will we consent to you. If you will become like us, and that every male among you be circumcised, then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters for ourselves. We will live with you and become one people, but if you will not listen to us to be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and go. I don't think he saw that one coming. No, he didn't see that one coming. We're going to see it in a minute. They go through with it. They don't just give lip service to it. They actually go through with it. Yeah. But it looks like the brothers had a plan. I mean, this came out way too easily for it to be thought of on the site. I mean, this is a pretty detailed thing to think about, to bring to light, but here's the thing that should be frustrating to us a bit here, as we read through this, or a little unsettling, perhaps. God had given the sign, the covenant of circumcision. They're using that very thing in a deceitful way, taking that which God had called holy and using it for a deceitful purpose. That should unsettle you a little bit when you think about it. It probably should make us search our hearts a little bit if we ever done something like that before, but anyway. There's also, Courtney's not in here tonight, so I don't have to be as careful with what I'm about to say. There's also a little bit of poetic justice or irony, you might say, in the fact of that in which he used to defile her with, is the very thing that the brothers are going to say, you need to cut this. And all the men need to do it. Yeah. Yep. Yes, they are. We see this if and then statement. If you do this, then we'll do that. If you do this, then we'll do that. If you do this, we can do that. And they even cloak this or disguise this maliciousness of this will make you like us. Physically, yes. But that's the only way in which it'll make them like them, right? I mean, Paul deals with the circumcision of the flesh later on, way on down the road from this event, too, right? It wouldn't make them like them. They had to be careful not to show their hand though. As we're about to see, he took her, Shechem took her. There was no intentions of giving her back. They were there to figure out what kind of plan they can come up with because they already had her. And they were in a stronger city instead of living in tents out in the fields. But, verse 18, Now their words seemed good in the sight of Hamor and Shechem, Hamor's son. So the young man did not delay to do the thing because he was delighted with Jacob's daughter. Now he was more honored than all the household of his father." They were delighted to hear this. That's what it says. They're about to go through with it too. Yeah. And both of them respond, Hamor and Shechem both respond. Yeah. But again, this is God's providence on display, because this does not make sense to us that they would give in like that. The providence of God, then you might say, well, what's about to happen? Is that the providence of God, too? We're about to read about? It has to be. because God's providence is sovereign. So let's go on. So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of their city, spoke to the men of their city, saying, these men are peaceful with us. Therefore, let them live in the land and trade in it. For behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters for our wives and give our daughters to them. If you just stopped right there, they'd probably all be, all right. Only on this condition. with the main consent to us to live with us is to become one people that every male among us be circumcised as they are circumcised. Then he drops the other foot on. Right? I mean, hey, it's good. We can marry their daughters. We don't have to, you know. Apparently Hebrew women were quite attractive, too. And we're just going to do this one little thing, which isn't such a little thing to do. They come to the city gate. We talked about this a couple of times in the past. We talked about it a lot when we walked through the slideshow of Israel. I might do that again sometime pretty soon, too, if anybody wants to walk through that again on a Sunday night. But anyway, they present the proposal. So the city gate, what happened at the city gates of these ancient cities? County commission meeting, trade, bartering. Are we going to allow this to happen? Are we going to allow that to happen? Probably a county commission meeting on steroids. Everything happened then and there. The important people were there, all that kind of stuff was going on. So that's where they go to, that's where they make this address. Verse 24 is interesting. And all who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and to his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city. You might think, well, why is that so interesting to you? Usually, when we read about the city gate meetings in scripture, and there's several of them, we've looked at a couple of them in Genesis already, right? Usually, it doesn't say those who go out the city gates, it says those who go in the city gates. So I read a commentator kind of speak on that, and he said what he's probably talking about is all the men, the military men, the fighting men, which those are the ones that are gonna be circumcised, those are the ones that would go out of the city gates to protect it and defend it. Not just the political muckety-mucks in the town, But the men that would go out and do it, and we know those are the ones that would be most affected by this, too. So all those who go out of the city. I find that interesting. It kind of jumped out at me, and I dug around a little bit and found people saying that. I don't think you read 23. Did I not? You are right, I did not read 23. Well, let's read verse 23 then. We're not properly doing a verse by verse if we don't read that verse. Will not their livestock and what they acquire and all their cattle be ours? Only let us consent to them and they will live with us. You're right, brother. I shouldn't have left that verse out at all. What's he saying? There's the deceit on Hamor's part, right? And Shechem's part. We told them this, but really what we're doing is we're opening the door for us to take their stuff. We just, that might be a little bit more enticement for the circumcision. Most men I know are pretty hardheaded though, and I don't, I mean, that's another selling point, at least, to them doing this. We're gonna take their stuff. And we're gonna get her, and we'll take their daughters, too. Yeah, I'm glad you called me out on that, brother, because that is an important verse. The in and out of the city gate, when Abraham went to buy that burial plot for Sarah back in Genesis 23, it talks about those who go in the city gate. Anyway, so these men trust the words of Hamor and Shechem. They might be a little greed popping up now, too, that we're gonna get to marry some of these ladies over here. We're gonna get, we're gonna take from their choice stuff, livestock, cattle, et cetera, et cetera. And every male was circumcised, verse 24 says, all who went out of the gate of his city. So they all did it. Look at verse 25. Now it happened on the third day when they were in pain that two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, each took his sword and came upon the unsuspecting city and killed every male. And they killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the edge of the sword and took Dinah from Shechem's house and went away. On the third day after this had happened, they're in pain, hurting, tending to the wounds. Probably pretty inebriated for sure. took their swords there's in the Hebrew there's a little bit of a play on words there too of the fact that Shechem took Dinah and the boys took their swords it's kind of in the Hebrew literature poetic style sometimes there's there's a play on that took the swords into the unsuspecting city what does that tell us They thought, they had no reason to doubt that Jacob wouldn't, and the boys wouldn't honor this, even though they're just being deceitful. Now, they didn't know Jacob very well, because he's pretty deceitful too, but they would honor all this. So they're just letting the healing take place and we'll carry on about our lives. These two boys go in there and kill all these men, all these males. They took and they went out. Catch that again. Again, this is kind of the Hebrew way of writing. The very end of verse 26. Took Dinah from Shechem's house and went away. Kind of similar to the very start of this chapter when she went out. She went out from the protection of her family, from her brothers and her father. And in this verse, they bring her back, or they're bringing her back to the protection under them. And they killed all these men because of how she was disgraced. There's some commentators that go real deep into this about the, when we set out on our own, away from the protection, and what can befall us, and then being brought back into the fold, I'm not going to go all that deep into that part here. There's truth in that, of course. It's these two guys. So now let's go on. Verse 27. Jacob's sons came upon the slain and plundered the city because they defiled their sister. So this would be the other brothers. This is all the other ones in addition to Simeon and Levi. They took their flocks, and their herds, and their donkeys, and that which was in the city, and that which was in the field, and they captured and plundered all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives, even all that was in the houses. I don't mean they killed the little ones and the wives. They took them. They plundered them. So you know it's the other brothers because they didn't need to come upon it. They were the ones that actually did it. It was the other brothers that came upon what had happened, understood what it had. They may have even, the brothers may have even told them, here's what we're going to do. The other thing here is that this is a sweeping pillaging. This isn't just, this is because it says the house and the field. So they went everywhere, covered every square inch of that place, taken from them. Another place that same language is used in Numbers 31.9, the sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods, they plundered. Plundered it all. Now, this final statement though, does everybody have a plural for houses at the end of verse 29? Does anybody have a, and all that was in the house? Everybody's got plural there? This is a little bit interesting, because that word's a little different than what's used in other places. And I found a couple of different places that talk about, maybe it'd be talking about particular buildings, particular places like pagan centers of worship, temples, if you will, that specifically are named as places they didn't even, they left, they went and plundered them too, which we know, you know, the ancient cultures, that's where there'd have been some pretty Expensive items there perhaps made of gold or jewel encrusted that kind of thing in these temples these these pagan temples that kind of The Hebrew term by it it can be talked about a monumental place like a temple or a palace We we know that the Canaanites at Shechem had a pagan temple history tells us that and the Book of Judges tells us that Book of Judges 9 for So they gave him 70 pieces of silver from the house of Baal Barith, with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless fellows, and they followed him. That's speaking of the Canaanites, and they had this temple set up to this Baal Barith. They actually excavated Shechem, and they found artifacts from 1650-ish BC, that time period. that had those kind of temples there. Anyway. It's also tribal culture. Very much. The most comparable to street gangs here. Their shared guilt. They felt justified in taking on the whole So everybody associated with the thing, check them, the household, check them. And it looks like they did a pretty good job. Yeah, Ro makes a good point there. I don't know if everybody heard what he was talking about there, but kind of the tribal aspect of the culture of the day. And actually, the Arab world is still like that. Other places in the world it is, too. But the Arab world is still very much like that. The tribal aspect of kind of imputed We think about imputed righteousness that we have from Christ, dying on the cross, his righteousness imputed to us, placed upon us, we didn't earn. There's also an imputed guilt associated, especially in a tribal setting of one person in the tribe is guilty of this, the whole tribe is guilty. There's some of that that goes into play in that kind of. That's another point, Diane, that the children and women, sometimes they're left, sometimes they're killed. Sometimes, even all the livestock, every living thing is killed. Sometimes God commands them to do that. This isn't God commanding them to do this, though. So, yeah, that's another good point. One of my favorite John MacArthur sermons ever is called Hacking Agag to Pieces. If you wanna go do a study and find a sermon to listen to, check that one out. I mean, it's, King was told to kill every single thing to the point that Dian said, and he kept a prize, Agag, the king. And Samuel comes in, chops him up into little pieces. That's what God had commanded to be done. But I would encourage you to listen to that book. But he also, the analogy, and I don't wanna get too far off the beaten path, but I'm a little bit earlier than normal, so I gotta make sure that doesn't happen. One of the applications that MacArthur makes there is our hidden secret sins in our life, that we hold on to this. God, we give all this to you, but we hold on to this. He said, you've gotta cut that up into pieces, too. Anyway, it's a great sermon. It's been a long time since I listened to it. I'm gonna need to go back and listen to it again myself. Verse 30 and 31. Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi. So now Jacob pops his head back up from, you know, whatever little cubbyhole he's hiding in. Said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble on me by making me odious. Anybody else got odious in their Bibles? Stink, that's what odious means. By making me odious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites, and my men being few in number, they will gather against me and strike me and I'll be destroyed, I and my household. But they said, should he treat our sister as a harlot? Guys, how many times have we seen an example? Now, I'm not saying Jacob should have justified it or endorsed it or whatever, and I'm not saying the boys are completely justified in what they did, but how many times in Scripture have we seen one of the patriarchs specifically be shown to do something that's kind of disgraceful, and the other one be the ones that held up as doing something that seemed right, at least in the moment? Several times we've seen that happen to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Now, again, does the passivity of Jacob in this whole thing bother anybody? I mean, and his own self-preservation, even though God has promised him. Who else, who does he not get after here? Who does he not chide? They get to the point of what Roy made about the money and his own hide here. We don't have anything in there since he said anything about the ones who went in there and plundered everything after they killed them all. And he doesn't even really call out their actions per se, except in the way that it would affect him. Right? He doesn't say, y'all should not have went and killed all these guys. Y'all shouldn't have done this. His main concern is, this thing that you've done is gonna cause me harm and pain. No, it doesn't. But there's a hint, maybe more than a hint, that we're gonna touch on in Genesis 49, when Jacob is laying out the blessings for his sons at the end of his life, and what he says about these two. We're gonna touch on that. Well, we'll do it right now. When he does this blessing, it's found in Isaiah 49, the next to the last, I mean, not Isaiah, I'm sorry, Genesis 49. The next to the last chapter in the book of the beginnings, He assembles his sons together. Jacob summons his sons and says, gather together that I may tell you what will befall you in the last days. Assemble together and hear, O sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel, your father. Reuben, you're my firstborn, my might and the beginning of my vigor, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in strength. Uncontrolled as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father's bed, then you defiled it. He went up to my couch. Verse five through seven. Simeon and Levi are brothers. Their swords are implements of violence. Let my soul not enter into their council. Let not my glory be united with their assembly, because in their anger they killed men, and in their self-will they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is strong, and their wrath, for it is cruel. I will divide them amongst Jacob and scatter them in Israel. This is pulling all the way back from this event. And to make matters worse, what does it mean when he says, y'all hamstrung the oxen? They didn't even have the decency to kill the ox. They made it a beast of burden that could not do what it was created to do anymore. It was a worthless animal at that point. We have that last verse, it seems. almost like an editorial comment, but they said, should we, should he treat our sister as a harlot? They're defending what they did. They're not denying it. And they're saying they did it for the honor of their sister. Notice that that question just hangs there. There's no response. There probably was, but we don't have it. It's kind of, it hangs there for us. Cause when we start chapter 35, then God said to Jacob, arise, go up to Bethel. between those white spaces we don't have. Now, Jacob's concerned about his acceptance, about how he'd be treated, didn't want to offend anybody, some little bit of false compromise there perhaps. But these last couple of verses kind of ring in my ears of, he lumps Jacob and Simeon together, I mean, I'm sorry, Simeon and Levi together in 49, when his blessings are poured out. Something about that just kind of was ringing in my head. So I did a little more research on that, verse 30 specifically. And do a little digging. It says they'll be scattered in the promised land without permanent inheritance rights. That's what verse seven told us. You're gonna be scattered. From whom did the tribe of Levi? Who comes from the tribe of Levi? Priests, that's the priestly tribe. What do they not possess? Lands. They possess no lands. What about Simeon? What happened with Simeon? The Simeon tribe, the line. In Deuteronomy 33, when Moses is blessing the tribes, that's the only tribe that he does not bless. Deuteronomy 33, if you wanna go look that up later. Simeon is given only a select number of cities, but they're in Judas territory and over time because of that They're just kind of washed out Levi's also scattered throughout Israel It look like it Levi is also spread out But there's a blessing with the way they're spread out because they're to be the priestly tribe. They're to serve as the priest in these areas. Now we know a lot of them didn't do as they were supposed to do. What line did Moses come from? He was a leader. He'll be the one that mediates the old covenant. Levites will be his priest. John Calvin writes that God's incredible goodness unexpectedly shone forth when that which was the punishment of Levi became changed into the reward of the priesthood. Any other thoughts? Plundered and The rest of them, but we didn't tell us, I don't know if all of them or part of them, the rest of the brothers. Yeah, there's 11 boys at this point. Nope. Nope, but there were 11 of them. Is this the first instance of God? Yeah. Yeah, first I remember we've been walking straight through so I can't remember popping up. Yeah, yeah. Thought. Do not understand. You do. But what happened this evening?