The Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg's vast gathering of rabbinic and midrashic traditions, here expands the brief and painful verse, "And Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land" (Genesis 34:1). The aggadah sets the scene at a moment of study. While Jacob and his sons were sitting in the house of learning, absorbed in the words of the Torah, Dinah went abroad into the city of Shechem to watch the dancing and singing women.
The tradition adds a detail of malice on the part of Shechem son of Hamor. He had deliberately hired these women to dance and play in the streets in order to draw Dinah out from her father's household, knowing she would be curious to see them. The rabbis observe with sorrow that had she remained at home, nothing would have befallen her. They frame her going out not as a grave sin but as the natural inclination of a young woman to be seen and to see, which left her exposed to a man who had set a snare.
When Shechem caught sight of her, he seized her by main force, young though she was, and violated her in a brutal and beastly fashion. The midrash thus reads the single biblical word "went out" as the hinge of the whole tragedy, and it uses the episode to warn how a moment of unguarded curiosity, exploited by a wicked man, could open the door to violence and to the bloody vengeance that the sons of Jacob would soon take upon the city.