מן השדה כשמעם,”returned from the field after hearing (about Dinah’s rape).” They returned prematurely, in a hurry.

וכן לא יעשה, “and such a thing must not happen,” even to the daughter of common parents, much less one of a distinguished family such as ours.

במרמה, “with slyness;” the sons of Yaakov expected that only Sh’chem and his father Chamor would agree to this condition to circumcise themselves on account of their love for the girl (but they never expected that all the males of the city would do so). They reasoned that seeing that not all the males in that city would perform circumcision on themselves, they would be free to take their revenge on them. This is the mirmah that the Torah speaks about here. At any rate they were fully justified to attack the population of that city as we will explain shortly.

כי חרפה היא לנו, “for it is something shameful in our eyes.” Their argument was as follows: “if you do not circumcise yourselves as part of the bargain then one fine day you will declare all of us as baaley mum, cripples or deformed because we lack a foreskin.”

והוא נכבד מכל בית אביו, “and he was the most revered person of his father’s family.” He knew that they would not refuse his request.

רחבת ידים, “enough large places:” we find the word: יד used in this sense also in Deuteronomy. 23,13 ויד תהיה לך, “you shall have a small place there” and explained in this sense by Ibn Ezra.

כל יוצאי שער עירו, “here the Torah speaks about people leaving his city,” whereas in 23,10, it spoke about כל באי עירו, “all the people coming into the gate of the town.” In this instance no one was allowed to leave the city until after he had been circumcised. In chapter 23 above everybody came in order to pay their respects to Sarah on the occasion of her forthcoming burial.

ויהי ביום השלישי בהיותם כואבים, “It was on the third day when they are in pain:” they were all in pain and regretted having agreed to undergo circumcision: when Yaakov’s sons heard about this and they also heard that Chamor and Sh’chem had altered the conditions they had agreed to with them, i.e. that no one was allowed to leave the town before he had undergone circumcision, plus their having presented the whole agreement as due to enhancing the honour of the people of Sh’chem instead of in response to an ultimatum by the sons of Yaakov, plus the fact that they boasted that henceforth the herds and flocks of Yaakov’s family would (verse 23) be theirs, they decided to attack the city’s inhabitants. The reason they had waited until the third day was that it took the people of Sh’chem until that day to complete the process of circumcising all the men and boys. On that day those who had been circumcised on the first day were still suffering from pains and relatively weak. This is why the Torah writes: ויבואו על הער בטח, “they came into the city unopposed, without having to worry.” This is also how Onkelos translated it. A different exegesis: Shimon and Levi entered the town while the inhabitants were sitting, feeling themselves secure.

ויהרגו כל זכר, “they killed every male inhabitant; they were all guilty as gentiles are also commanded to appoint a judicial court in every town and when it became known that Sh’chem had raped Dinah and abducted her, refusing to release her, he should have been tried and convicted.”

ויקחו את דינה מבית שכם, “they took Dinah from the house of Sh’chem;” Rabbi Yudon claims that they had to drag her along on the floor, as she was unwilling to come along willingly. Rabbi Chunia claims that it is a known fact that a girl or woman who has had sexual relations with a gentile is difficult to separate from that gentile (Compare Bereshit Rabbah 80,11).

?הכזונה יעשה את אחותנו, ,“is he (Sh’chem) to be allowed to treat our sister as if she were a harlot?” Rashi explains the word את in this phrase as emphasising the singular mode as the word אחותנו, occurs several times in the Bible in the plural mode although not spelled in the plural mode with the letter י. [In Aramaic it would then have to be spelled אחותנא instead of אחתנא.