Gen 34:10, Thus you shall live with us, and the land shall be open before you; live and trade in it, and acquire property in it." 
	We are now brought to a reading that puts forth a vital aspect of our lives on this earth as the Children of God. It is held within this simple, yet utterly deceptive statement from Hamor to Jacob. At first reading, there is a sense of frustration with the entire course of the recorded events. One does not immediately relate to the developmental relationships that are put forth. This chapter begins with the rape of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob; details the distasteful deception and revenge of her brothers; and then ends with the lament of Jacob with regard to the actions of his sons and the causal trouble for his family with the people surrounding him. 
	The dastardly and utterly destructive retribution of Dinah’s brothers upon Shecham and the people of his city show the manner in which man reacts in accordance to his own ideas and designs and understanding of what should be done when he or his family is wronged in some measure. There is the overreaction with which the hatred and the sense of wounded pride betray the corrupt intentions of the innermost being of humanity. This is one effect of looking at this account in terms of our earthly attitudes and sense of justification for the actions of our yearnings and desires. 
The brothers not only used deception to gain an advantage over the one who raped their sister, but they forwarded the consequence to include all the men and women and children of that city to satisfy their bloodlust and their craving for riches. Verses 26-29, And they killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah from Shechem's house, and went forth. Jacob's sons came upon the slain and looted 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 looted all their wealth and all their little ones and their wives, even all that was in the houses. They justified their actions with the concept that they were bringing retribution on those who had defiled Dinah. 
This is something that we are very adept at doing in our sinful nature. We can find all manner of justifying our actions as we go forth toward the goal of making ourselves richer, or more comfortable, or famous, or as we seek to take from others that which we feel we deserve, or when we feel that we have been insulted or defamed or defrauded in some manner. We use even the name of God in our desire to utterly wreck havoc upon those whom we see as our detractors or enemies or rivals. This sense of human justification makes us feel that we are doing the right thing as we defend our honor and fight for the right, as we define right. 
Jacob saw through the words of his sons in their actions and pointed out the fact that the consequences of what they had done would forge a conflict that would follow the family throughout the Old Testament and even to this present day. Verse 30, 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 attack me and I shall be destroyed, I and my household." 
As we will read in the next chapter, God then caused Jacob and his family to leave and to move to Bethel, removing them from the site of that massacre and from the anger of the neighboring inhabitants of that area. Even to this modern day, the effect of the slaughter of that city marks the course of the history of the Jews in the Middle East. They are surrounded by those nations whose hatred and anger toward Israel can be traced back to the manner in which the sons of Jacob deceived and annihilated Shecham and his people. 
	Yet, there is also something else at hand in the whole account of these events. While it was the hand of the sons of Jacob, the brothers of Dinah, putting forth their vile plan of retribution upon the rapist of their sister, there is an underlying principle of God at work which supersedes the vile atrocity at hand. This is something that is very easy to pass over unless we ask the question as to why God would include such a horrific account in this Book of the Bible? 
	Despite the human intentions of greed and retribution visited upon Shecham’s people, there is a divine protection that was in place upon the family of Jacob through the promise of God’s blessing. We are in no wise stating that the brothers were correct in what they did. The sin of that action has been visited upon generation after generation of the Children of Israel as a direct result in mistrust and hatred and anger at all their apparent self-serving and disobedient interactions with the people of the land. 
	However, despite the intentions and actions of the brothers to carry out their self-justified goals, God’s plan and purpose was still accomplished. Just as with their father’s deceitful means of gaining the blessing of Isaac, God’s design was still forwarded, despite the human interference and selfish intent. This is something that has been true from the very beginning of man’s history on earth. As much as man tries to take control of his own life, God still rules and overrules to accomplish all that is His heart in the totality of His creation. 
	In this case, there is the fact that the Chosen People of God were to remain separated from the other peoples of the earth. There is to be a lineage that is truly separated unto God, not entangled with all the idols of this world. His people were to be utterly dedicated to Him and to His provision and to His testimony, set apart from all those worldly philosophies and beliefs that so pervaded and blinded the minds of the rest of the nations.
	This was evident even in the heart of the patriarch, Abraham, as he wanted Isaac’s wife, not to be of the land of Canaan, but of the land of his country, his people. Gen 24:2-4, And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he owned, "Please place your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, but you shall go to my country and to my relatives, and take a wife for my son Isaac." 
	In his heart, Abraham knew that what would please God with regard to the wife of Isaac, was a woman from his own people so as not to intermarry and have his family become entwined with all the idols and practices of the people surrounding him. He wanted Isaac’s family to be wholly under the hand of the One, True, Living, and Gracious Lord God Almighty in order that it would become that blessing to all the other nations of the earth. 
	This whole-hearted separation unto God was carried forward in the lineage of blessing from Isaac to Jacob. Even Esau played a vital part in this continuation of the separation from the foreign wives of the land, only it was in the example of being intermarried with the women of the land. Gen 26:34+35, And when Esau was forty years old he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they brought grief to Isaac and Rebekah. 
	Because these wives brought such grief to Isaac and Rebekkah, Isaac was readily receptive to the idea that Jacob should not marry a similar woman. When Rebekkah made her plea for Isaac to send Jacob away to get a wife from her family, Isaac was so disposed and so commanded Jacob, as we read in Gen 27:46-28:4. Please turn to Gen 27:46-28:4. And Rebekah said to Isaac, "I am tired of living because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?" So Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, and said to him, "You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and from there take to yourself a wife from the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. And may God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants with you; that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham." 
	Please note that, along with the instruction to seek a wife from the daughters of Laban, is the reiteration of the blessing of God upon Jacob. In being faithful to separate himself from the entangling alliances with the people of the surrounding land, there would be the blessing of the goodness of the Lord upon Jacob. He would become a company of peoples to inhabit the land of God’s promise to Abraham. This was instilled into the heart of this lineage from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob.
	As well, look at how Esau responded to the manner in which Isaac was so insistent for Jacob to not marry the women of the Canaanites. Gen 28:6-9, Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram, to take to himself a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he charged him, saying, "You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan," and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Paddan-aram. So Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan displeased his father Isaac; and Esau went to Ishmael, and married, besides the wives that he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth. 
	In his anger with Jacob, and in his resentment to his parents, Esau deliberately turned his back upon the providential blessing that was instilled in the heritage of his birth. He purposely married another woman of the surrounding people in spite and in malice toward his parents. He married not for the matter of love or even of convenience, but in order that he could inflict some measure of retribution upon his family. 
	I fully admit that the following is speculation, but it is speculation based on the principles of God manifested in lives. As we have discussed, when next we read about Esau, some twenty years later, he was forgiving of Jacob and he was glad to see him. As we recently considered, there had been a tremendous change in the heart of this man who, in anger and in animosity toward the beliefs of his parents, deliberately chose to marry such women. My heart tells me that as they brought grief to Isaac and to Rebekkah, they probably brought great grief and anxiety and frustration and trial to Esau to so soften his heart to forgive his brother. Whatever the result, Esau chose to set aside the spiritual blessing that came with separation unto God.
	We will spend more time with this next week, Lord willing. However, I do want to end with a passage that should get all of our attention. It is the principle of separating ourselves from the things of this world which is at the core of this chapter in Genesis. When we do choose to allow ourselves to be caught up in the daily elements and details of this world, with all its false gods and idols of worship, we will become as the Israelites described in Judg 3:5-7. They opened their hearts to incorporate themselves into the society of the surrounding peoples and soon found themselves as described in this passage. Judg 3:5-7, And the sons of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and they took their daughters for themselves as wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgot the Lord their God, and served the Baals and the Asheroth. 
	They forgot the Lord their God. Throughout the Old Testament, as we will find, whenever the Children of Israel incorporated themselves into the realm of the nations of the world, they soon forgot the One Who made them distinct and a testimony and a light to the nations. They rather chose to include all the gods and the worship practices and the elemental ideologies of the pagan realm. They even found themselves practicing the most horrible of sacrificial defilement, putting their own children through the fire to gods of wood and stone. 
	This is why the statement of Hamor to Jacob is invested with a very sinister and vile purpose, as we will see, Lord willing. Despite the selfish intent of the brothers of Dinah, there did remain a separation from the people of that land that protected and kept the Children of Israel from becoming just another family of the nations of the earth. God’s interest in His Chosen Ones continued forward, despite the schemes of the inhabitants of this realm to derail the work of God in His people. What they envisioned as their eventual ability to envelop and manipulate Jacob and his family became their very destruction. So be it.
Thus you shall live with us, and the land shall be open before you; live and trade in it, and acquire property in it." Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 3:3-8. But Thou, O Lord, art a shield about me, My glory, and the One who lifts my head. I was crying to the Lord with my voice, And He answered me from His holy mountain. Selah. I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people Who have set themselves against me round about. Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God! For Thou hast smitten all my enemies on the cheek; Thou hast shattered the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord; Thy blessing be upon Thy people! Selah. Amen.