The Covenant as a Weapon Text: Genesis 34:13-17
Introduction: A Father's Failure and a Son's Fury
We come now to one of the bloodiest and most troubling episodes in the life of the patriarchs. It is a story of lust, rape, deceit, and mass murder. It is a tangled mess of righteous indignation and unrighteous vengeance, of covenantal principle and blasphemous practice. And at the center of it, we find a gaping hole where strong, godly, patriarchal leadership ought to be. Jacob, the man who wrestled with God and was renamed Israel, is strangely passive. His daughter has been defiled, his house has been dishonored, and he holds his peace. But nature abhors a vacuum, and so does a covenant household. When a father fails to lead, to protect, to govern, his sons will often rise up to fill that vacuum. And because they are young, full of unseasoned zeal and wounded pride, they frequently do so in a carnal, destructive, and sinful way.
The crime that sets this whole bloody business in motion is the rape of Dinah. Shechem, a prince of the land, saw her, took her, and violated her. This was not just a personal sin; it was a public crime against the honor of Jacob's house. It was an act of war. The peace, the amity, between the people of the land and the people of the covenant was shattered by this act. And so, when Jacob's sons return from the field and hear the news, they are filled with grief and a hot, burning anger. Their sister has been treated like a prostitute, and the honor of their family, and by extension the honor of their God, has been dragged through the mud. Their anger is not, in its initial spark, misplaced. There is such a thing as righteous anger. But righteous anger is like manna; it does not keep overnight. It must be submitted immediately to the wisdom and law of God, or it will curdle into the poison of personal vengeance.
As Hamor and Shechem come to negotiate, we see the sons of Jacob devise a plot. It is a plot that is both militarily shrewd and diabolically wicked. They will use the very sign of God's covenant, the mark of circumcision, as a tool of war. They will feign a desire for peace and unity in order to set their enemies up for a slaughter. This is what happens when men, even covenant men, take the law into their own hands. They may begin by defending God's honor, but they end by profaning His name.
The Text
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. Only on this condition will we consent to you: if you will become like us, in that every male among you be circumcised, then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters for ourselves, and 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.”
(Genesis 34:13-17 LSB)
A Deceitful Answer (v. 13)
The negotiation begins, but it is rotten from the start.
"But Jacob’s sons answered Shechem and his father Hamor with deceit, and thus they spoke, because he had defiled Dinah their sister." (Genesis 34:13)
The text is plain. They answered "with deceit." The motive is also stated plainly: "because he had defiled Dinah their sister." The first thing we must do is analyze this deceit. The ninth commandment forbids bearing false witness against our neighbor. The key is the relationship. We are not to lie to one another within the covenant community, because that introduces a state of civil war where there ought to be peace. But what happens when the peace is already broken? What happens when an enemy has already declared war on your house through a violent criminal act?
Shechem's rape of Dinah was not a private misunderstanding. It was a public act of aggression. In that moment, he ceased to be a "neighbor" in the sense of one with whom you are at peace. He became an enemy. And in a state of just war, deception is a legitimate weapon. When the Israelite spies went into Jericho, Rahab hid them and lied about their whereabouts to the authorities, and she is commended for her faith. David feigned madness to escape from a Philistine king. The Bible does not condemn these as violations of the ninth commandment, because the context is warfare, not peacetime testimony.
So, from a purely tactical standpoint, the sons' decision to use deceit against an enemy who had grievously wronged them is understandable within a wartime ethic. He had destroyed the amity, and so they were not bound by peacetime rules of discourse. However, and this is the crucial point, the lawfulness of a tactic does not make the war, or the manner of waging it, righteous. You can use a legitimate tactic for an illegitimate end. Their goal was not justice; it was wholesale, disproportionate slaughter. Their motive was not the glory of God, but the satisfaction of their own wounded pride and vengeful rage.
A Principled Pretext (v. 14)
The sons of Jacob couch their deceit in the language of covenant theology. They hide their sword behind a Bible verse.
"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.'" (Genesis 34:14 LSB)
Now, is the principle they state a true one? Absolutely. The people of God are not to give their daughters in marriage to the heathen. They are to be a separate and holy people. To give a daughter of the covenant to an uncircumcised pagan would indeed be a reproach, a disgrace. It would be a violation of the principle of separation that God was establishing with His people. They were not wrong about the theology here.
This is what makes their sin so insidious. The most effective lies are always wrapped in a layer of truth. They are using a righteous principle as a pretext for a wicked plan. They are not actually concerned with the spiritual state of the Shechemites. They have no evangelistic impulse. They are not offering the covenant in good faith. They are leveraging a non-negotiable biblical principle to manipulate their enemies. They sound pious. They sound like they are concerned for their sister's honor and their family's religious purity. But their hearts are full of murder. This is a profound warning to us all. It is possible to have all your theological ducks in a row and still be a son of Belial. It is possible to quote Scripture to justify a heart full of malice. The Pharisees did it to Jesus, and Jacob's sons do it here.
The Profane Proposal (v. 15-16)
Here we come to the rotten core of their plan. They take the holy sign of God's covenant and turn it into a military tactic.
"Only on this condition will we consent to you: if you will become like us, in that every male among you be circumcised, then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters for ourselves, and we will live with you and become one people." (Genesis 34:15-16 LSB)
This is blasphemous. Circumcision was the sign God gave to Abraham as a seal of the righteousness that is by faith. It was the physical mark that separated the covenant people from the rest of the world. It pointed to the need for a cutting away of the flesh, a circumcision of the heart. It was a holy sign, dripping with theological meaning.
And what do Simeon and Levi do with it? They weaponize it. They turn a sacrament into a stratagem. They are not asking the Shechemites to embrace Yahweh, to repent of their sins, and to enter into covenant fellowship. They are demanding that they undergo a painful surgical procedure that will render them weak and vulnerable for three days, at which point they intend to murder them all. They are demanding that the Shechemites take the name of the Lord upon their bodies, not for salvation, but for slaughter.
This is a sin of the highest order. It is a profanation of the holy. It is taking the Lord's name, and the signs of His name, in vain. Even if we grant that deception is lawful in war, this particular deception is not. You cannot use the holy things of God as tools for your personal, carnal vengeance. You cannot turn the communion table into a booby trap. You cannot use baptism as a distraction for an ambush. This is what the sons of Jacob do here. They defile the sign of the covenant in order to avenge the defiling of their sister. They answer one great evil with an even greater one, and in doing so, they make the name of their God a stench among the inhabitants of the land.
The Deceptive Ultimatum (v. 17)
They close the trap with a final, false choice.
"But if you will not listen to us to be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and go." (Genesis 34:17 LSB)
This is the final turn of the screw. They present two options: assimilation through circumcision, or separation. But both options are a lie. They have no intention of assimilating, and they have no intention of simply taking their sister and leaving. Their only intention is blood. This ultimatum is designed to make their profane demand seem reasonable. It gives the Shechemites the illusion of choice, while guiding them toward the one path that leads to their destruction.
The Shechemites, blinded by their own lust and greed, walk right into it. Shechem wants the girl, and his father Hamor sees the potential for economic gain. They accept the deal for carnal reasons, just as it was offered for carnal reasons. A corrupt proposal is accepted by corrupt men, and the stage is set for a massacre.
Conclusion: Vengeance, Profanity, and the Cross
So what are we to make of this? We see a righteous principle (covenant separation) used as a cover for a wicked plan. We see a legitimate wartime tactic (deception) used to perpetrate an unjust slaughter. And most grievously, we see a holy sacrament (circumcision) profaned and used as a weapon of war. The anger of Simeon and Levi was hot, but it was not holy. It was personal, proud, and disproportionate. On his deathbed, Jacob rightly curses their anger: "Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce; and their wrath, for it is cruel" (Genesis 49:7).
This story stands as a stark warning. The failure of a father to lead creates a vacuum that will be filled by the rash and sinful passions of his sons. Jacob should have been the one to demand justice, to negotiate a righteous settlement, or, if necessary, to lead his house in a just war. But he was silent, and his sons' fury ran wild.
More than that, it is a warning about the danger of using holy things for unholy ends. We are New Covenant people. Our signs are baptism and the Lord's Supper. We must guard them from profanation. We must never treat them as mere tokens or leverage them for our own ends. They are signs of the blood of Jesus Christ, and they must be handled with fear and reverence.
Ultimately, this passage shows us our desperate need for a true and better elder brother. Jesus saw the honor of His Father's house defiled. He saw His bride, the church, ravaged by sin. And He was filled with a holy zeal. But He did not take up the sword in personal vengeance. He did not devise a deceitful plot. Instead, He took the curse upon Himself. The sword of God's justice fell on Him. He was the one who was "cut off," the ultimate circumcision, so that we, the guilty, could be brought into God's family. His anger at sin was pure, and His solution was the cross. He absorbed the vengeance so that we could receive grace. And He calls us to leave all vengeance to Him, for He will repay, and to live as a holy people who honor His name and the signs of His covenant, not as weapons, but as tokens of His astonishing mercy.