It came to pass that Dinah, one of Jacob’s daughters by the ugly sister, decided to go exploring in the land. Shechem, who was the son of Hamor and the possessor of one of the more unfortunate names in the Bible, saw her and, seeing she was one fine piece of ass, boned her brains out. Evidently, she was a great lay, because he immediately fell in love with her and asked his father to arrange for her to marry him.

Unfortunately for Shechem, in those days sleeping with a woman and then asking to marry her later was frowned upon. So, when Hamor went to Jacob to ask for Dinah’s hand on behalf of his son, Jacob was not terribly pleased. Hamor, sensing that the whole “sex before marriage” thing was going to be a real sticking point in these negotiations, promised Jacob anything he wanted in exchange for an agreement by which their families would be able to swap women as it suited them. Jacob, sensing an opportunity, said that he would only agree to such an arrangement if all of the men in Hamor’s clan were circumcised. Strangely enough, this request did not go over too well. However, since Shechem was developing a serious case of blue balls, he eventually agreed to the mass circumcision just so he could get back into Dinah’s pants.

So all of the men in Hamor’s clan got circumcised. While they were all still in bed suffering from the pain of the procedure, Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi decided to go and take some revenge on Hamor, and proceeded to go into the city and kill all the men. They then went on to burn and loot the city and steal all the livestock of Hamor’s people. They also enslaved all the women.

For some reason, Jacob was somewhat taken aback by the fact that his sons had slaughtered every man in the village and taken every woman into slavery. In response to Jacob’s anger, his sons simply stated that if these people had not wanted to be slaughtered and/or enslaved, they shouldn’t have let one of their own treat their sister like a whore. Thus was the Biblical principal of “an entire fucking civilization for an eye” established.