(10) Ye shall dwell with us.--Hamor proposes that Jacob's family shall abandon their nomad life, and settle among the Hivites. and trade with them, and get possessions, not merely of cattle and movable goods, but of immovable property. He wished the two clans to coalesce into one community.
34:1-19 Young persons, especially females, are never so safe and well off as under the care of pious parents. Their own ignorance, and the flattery and artifices of designing, wicked people, who are ever laying snares for them, expose them to great danger. They are their own enemies if they desire to go abroad, especially alone, among strangers to true religion. Those parents are very wrong who do not hinder their children from needlessly exposing themselves to danger. Indulged children, like Dinah, often become a grief and shame to their families. 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 get acquaintance with the Canaanites, and to learn their ways. See what came of Dinah's gadding. The beginning of sin is as the letting forth of water. How great a matter does a little fire kindle! We should carefully avoid all occasions of sin and approaches to it.
And ye shall dwell with us,..... Peaceably and quietly, not as sojourners only, but as inhabitants:
and the land shall be before you; to choose what part of it they pleased to dwell in, and which they should have in their own power and possession:
dwell and trade you therein; in any sort of traffic and commerce the land would admit of, and they should best choose:
and get you possessions therein; buy houses and land, and enjoy them, they and their posterity; these are the arguments used by Hamor to gain the consent of Jacob and his family that his son might marry Dinah; and the proposals are honourable and generous.
and the land shall be before you; to choose what part of it they pleased to dwell in, and which they should have in their own power and possession:
dwell and trade you therein; in any sort of traffic and commerce the land would admit of, and they should best choose:
and get you possessions therein; buy houses and land, and enjoy them, they and their posterity; these are the arguments used by Hamor to gain the consent of Jacob and his family that his son might marry Dinah; and the proposals are honourable and generous.