The men and boys lay dead — fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, nephews, friends.
Slaughtered.
All.
Women died too when their hearts failed them or they were struck down when they had tried to save a son, a husband or father during the rampage of the sons of Ya’akov.
No one should have died. That had not been part of the bargain. But, as is often the case with a bargain, someone breaks it.
In this case two brothers broke the bargain and brought shame and trouble upon their family for all time.
It was a wonder that Ya’akov’s own heart had not failed him as well, for he had never sanctioned — and never did, even to his last breath — the infamous acts of Shim’on and Levi, his second and third sons.
His family would never be the same again, not even after the blood of so many had congealed and baked back into the soil to be blown as thousands of years of whispers upon the winds.
In the end, it was Yehuda who stopped the senseless slaughter, but not without first suffering a wound to his right hand….
