Despite the brothers negative association with Shechem, a region where they had killed the male inhabitants of an entire city, they put their trust in Hashem, who caused the pagan residents of the area to fear them. Perhaps they remonstrated to themselves that their actions were not a disgrace. They acted in a manner which they felt was appropriate.
Rashi notes that Shechem was a makom muchan l’puraniyos, a place prepared for adversity: there, the tribes acted sinfully; there, the people of Shechem violated Dinah; there, the malchus Bais David, kingdom of David Hamelech, was divided. Rashi’s order of events seem to be out of sequence. Dinah’s violation occurred before the incident with Yosef. Yet, Rashi gives Yosef’s incident precedence.
The Torah records Yaakov Avinu dispatching Yosef to Shechem as if it were important for him to go there. Why? Horav Yosef Nechemiah Kornitzer, zl, explains that Yaakov was quite aware of his sons’ animus toward Yosef. Thus, he felt that Yosef’s arrival in Shechem might be fraught with danger. On the other hand, he conjectured, the brothers had special feelings concerning Shechem. After all, it was the place where they had been willing to sacrifice their lives on behalf of Dinah, their sister. Yaakov felt that this was a place in which great familial love was demonstrated, where the love of one sibling for another was manifest in a willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice. This is what Yaakov Avinu intimated to Yosef, “Your brothers are in Shechem. It is a place where they showed extreme love for a sibling. Surely, their love will overcome whatever negative feelings they have toward you.”
Undoubtedly, Yaakov suffered greatly as a result of Dinah’s defilement. His only consolation was that his sons were willing to sacrifice their lives for her. Thus, he no longer viewed the Dinah incident as adverse. Whatever negative feelings he had were mitigated by the love his sons had demonstrated. Once they erred in Shechem and sold Yosef, however, he saw that the love had been short-lived. Therefore, the Dinah incident reverted back to one of adversity. While, indeed, it occurred before the brothers’ debacle in Shechem, it was their current unconscionable collapse which returned it to the fore.
