And Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land.
Though freed from foreign troubles, Jacob met with a great domestic calamity in the fall of his only recorded daughter. According to Josephus, she had been attending a festival; but it is highly probable that she had been often and freely mixing in the society of the place, and that being a simple, inexperienced, and vain young woman, had been flattered by the attentions of the ruler's son. There must have been time and opportunities of acquaintance to produce the strong attachment that Shechem had for her. Dinah must have arrived at maturity, which young girls reach in the East much earlier than in our colder latitudes. She was somewhat, though very little, older than Joseph; and since he was six years old (Genesis 30:24) on his father's departure from Mesopotamia, was seventeen when sold by his brethren, so that Jacob's family must have been eleven years resident in Canaan. But Dinah's violation had taken place probably a year before (Genesis 35:1-29), and consequently she may have been sixteen-certainly not older. Jackson endeavours to prove ('Chronological Antiquities') that she was exactly fifteen.
Verse 3. Spake kindly unto the damsel - literally, spoke to the heart of the girl, or comforted her (cf. Isa. 40:42) with the promise of a happy marriage, as a reparation for the wrong.