Genesis 34: 30: "Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, 'You have troubled me by making me obnoxious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and since I am few in number, they will gather themselves together against me and kill me. I shall be destroyed, my household and I.'" Here is the backstory: Dinah is Jacob's daughter from Leah; a Canaanite prince named Shechem rapes Dinah; her brothers are angry and devise a plot to pay him back; the brothers tell Shechem and his father that if their people will be circumcized like the Israelites then they can live together in peace and intermarry; while they are pain from the surgery, the brothers enter the city and kill all the males. The passage today is Jacob's response. While taking matters into your own hands and executing vengeance may seem like the right thing to do, it isn't. Ezekiel 25:17 says, "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay." If everyone turned on Jacob and destroyed his family, God's promise to Abraham would have been placed in jeopardy. The lesson today is never try to get even when you are wronged. I know from personal experience that God will do a far better job exacting revenge than you ever could.
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