And they said, Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?
Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot? The brothers were, by consuetudinary right, the guardians of the honour as well as the life of their sister (cf. 2 Samuel 13:22). And this ancient practice still obtains, as both Niebuhr and Burckhardt inform us, among the Arabs, in whose traditional code seduction is a capital crime, and the duty of inflicting the punishment is laid upon the brothers of the outraged girl. In this view, therefore, the conduct of Simeon and Levi was justifiable; but not content with avenging the crime upon the offender, they extended their vengeance to every person and everything belonging to him; nay, were guilty of the most infamous deceit, inasmuch as they covered beneath the cloak of religious scruples, a scheme of cold-blooded and atrocious cruelty.
But God, who brings good out of evil, rendered their fiendish passions subservient to the greater isolation of Israel's family; and hence, the onslaught on the Shechemites, though detestable in itself, was the means of preventing the consummation of an alliance, which, by intermingling the Israelites with the people of Canaan, must have, ere long, frustrated the purposes of divine grace in their selection.