Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.
Her vain curiosity, which exposed her. She went out, perhaps unknown to her father, but by the connivance of her mother, to see the daughters of the land (Ge 34:1); probably it was at a ball, or on some public day. Being an only daughter, she thought herself solitary at home, having none of her own age and sex to converse with; and therefore she must needs go abroad to divert herself, to keep off melancholy, and to accomplish herself by conversation better than she could in her father's tents.
Note, It is a very good thing for children to love home; it is parents' wisdom to make it easy to them, and children's duty then to be easy in it. Her pretence was to see the daughters of the land, to see how they dressed, and how they danced, and what was fashionable among them. She went to see, yet that was not all, she went to be seen too; she went to see the daughters of the land, but, it may be, with some thoughts of the sons of the land too. I doubt she went to get an acquaintance with those Canaanites, and to learn their way.
Note, The pride and vanity of young people betray them into many snares.
2 And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the
country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.
The loss of her honour by this means (Ge 34:2): Shechem, the prince of the country, but a slave to his own lusts, took her, and lay with her, it should seem, not so much by force as by surprise.
Note, Great men think they may do anything; and what more mischievous than untaught and ungoverned youth? See what came of Dinah's gadding: young women must learn to be chaste, keepers at home; these properties are put together, Tit 2:5, for those that are not keepers at home expose their chastity. Dinah went abroad to look about her; but, if she had looked about her as she ought, she would not have fallen into this snare.
