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And intermarry with us; give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves.
Genesis 34:9 · New American Standard Bible
Parallel translations
  • WEB Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves.
  • KJV And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us, and take our daughters unto you.
  • BSB Intermarry with us; give us your daughters, and take our daughters for yourselves.
  • NKJV And make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters to yourselves.
  • NLT In fact, let’s arrange other marriages, too. You give us your daughters for our sons, and we will give you our daughters for your sons.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Quick answer

Hamor urges full intermarriage between the two peoples, exchanging daughters in marriage.

Overview

The offer of mutual intermarriage would have merged Jacob's household with the Canaanites, blurring the covenant family God had set apart. Such assimilation directly threatened the promised seed through whom Christ would come. The proposal reveals the cultural pressure to abandon distinctness that God's people repeatedly faced.

Cross-references & the web

Cross-references · 6

  • Deut 7:3neither shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son.
  • Gen 19:14Lot went out, and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters, and said, “Get up! Get out of this place, for Yahweh will destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be joking.
  • Gen 6:2God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were beautiful, and they took any that they wanted for themselves as wives.
  • Gen 27:46Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these, of the daughters of the land, what good will my life do me?”
  • Gen 24:3I will make you swear by Yahweh, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live.
  • Gen 26:34–35When Esau was forty years old, he took as wife Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath, the daughter of Elon the Hittite.

Resources, by level

Commentaries & study tools

  • VideoBibleProject — Genesis videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical

    Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.

  • VideoWatch teaching on Genesis 34:9YouTube · Lay · Free

    Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.

  • CommentaryEnduring Word — verse-by-verseDavid Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical

    Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.

  • CommentaryClassic commentaries for this verseBibleHub (20+ works) · Pastoral · Free

    Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.

  • CommentaryMatthew Henry on GenesisMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical

    The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).

  • ReferenceInterlinear, lexicon & Strong'sBlue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free

    Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.

Christ at the center

From the first promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent (3:15), through Abraham's blessing to all nations and Judah's coming ruler, Genesis sows every seed that flowers in Christ — the true offspring, the better Adam, the ram caught for Isaac.

How Genesis 34:9 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Original language

Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.