Gen. xxxiv. 31. And they said, Should he deal with our sister
as with an harlot ?
THE life of man is continually exposed to trouble; and not unfrequently waves follow waves with little intermission. It was thus in Jacob's case, who, from the time that he fled from the face of Esau, met with a continued series of difficulties and distresses. Having terminated his hard service under Laban, and miraculously escaped the vindictive assaults both of Laban and of Esau, he seemed to have obtained a respite. But his peace was of very short duration ; for his own children, to whom he looked for comfort in his declining years, became to him a source of the most poignant sorrows. It appears indeed, from various circumstances- in this short history, that he did not maintain sufficient authority over his own house. Had he taken the direction of matters into his own hands, instead of waiting to consult his young, inexperienced, and headstrong sons, he had prevented those horrible crimes which they perpetrated without fear, and vindicated without remorse.
In considering the petulant answer which they made to his reproofs, we shall be led to notice,
I. The provocation they had received —
We apprehend that Leah herself was in part ac- cessary to the evils that befell her daughter —
[Dinah, like other young people, wished to see, and be seen ; and on some festive occasion went to visit the daughters of the land of Canaan. She would probably have been dis- pleased, if her mother had imposed restraints upon her. But it was her parent's duty to consult, not so much her incli- nation, as her safety : and it was highly blameable in Leah to suffer her daughter, scarcely fifteen years of age, to go into scenes of gaiety and dissipation unprotected and unwatched.
Perhaps by this calamity Leah herself was punished for the prostitution of herself (for what else can it be called ?) in com- pliance with her father's wishes. Personating her sister Rachel,