The meeting of Jacob with his brother Esau after all those years apart is a bit of an anticlimax dramatically. If you were making a film of it I reckon most directors would play it more along the lines of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back. However there's none of that tension here and Esau goes straight for the hug and the kiss. It's a surprise though, as all we've ever seen Jacob do prior to this is to cheat his brother and he has every right to expect animosity at best and death threats at the worst.
We then get the terrible story of Dinah's rape by a guy from another tribe called Shechem. The text is rather dispassionate and makes it sound as if rape is an everyday occurrence (and maybe it was), but that falling in love with a rape victim isn't. The other thing that strikes me from this passage is that Dinah never gets to say anything and all the talking that goes on is between Jacob and his sons and the Hivite blokes.
You can't help but smile at the rather twisted revenge that Jacob's sons inflict on the Hivites as they con them into getting circumcised and then slaughter them all whilst they're convalescing. However this doesn't take away from the fact that they have just gone and killed a bunch of people. The ending of the passage is rather unsatisfactorily ambiguous about the morality of the whole thing. Jacob is clear in his condemnation of his sons actions (though it seems there are selfish reasons at play here), but the sons try and justify their actions by citing the protection of their sister's honour.
God turns up again at this point with instructions for Jacob to move on and settle somewhere else. There's a purge of idols at this point as Jacob seeks to put worship of the true God in order. God repeats his Abrahamic promise to Jacob here before tragedy strikes in the form of Jacob's favourite wife dying whilst giving birth to her second son.
The chapter ends matter-of-factly with a lost of Jacob's sons and the death of Issac
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