Study Desk

Though you have felt through all my goods, what have you found of all your household goods? Place it here before my relatives and your relatives, that they may decide between us two.

Then Laban answered and said to Jacob, "The daughters are my daughters, and the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine. But what can I do this day to these daughters of mine or to their children whom they have borne?

And Jacob said to his relatives, "Gather stones." So they took stones and made a heap, and they ate there by the heap.

Then Jacob offered a sacrifice on the mountain and called his relatives to eat a meal; and they ate the meal and spent the night on the mountain.

Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.

Then the servant-women came near with their children, and they bowed down.

Leah likewise came near with her children, and they bowed down; and afterward Joseph came near with Rachel, and they bowed down.

But he said to him, "My lord knows that the children are weak and that the flocks and herds which are nursing are a care to me. And if they are driven hard one day, all the flocks will die.

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.

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 them, "We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a reproach to us.

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."

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.

Jacob's sons came upon the slain and plundered the city because they had defiled their sister.

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.

Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, "You have brought trouble on me 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 together against me and strike me, and I will be destroyed, I and my household."

So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods which they had and the rings which were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the oak which was near Shechem.

Then they journeyed on, and there was a terror from God upon the cities which were around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.