Simeon and Levi waited for the festival. That was the key to their plan. While the men of Shechem feasted and drank, the two brothers slipped past the sleeping guards, entered the city, and killed every single male—including the king and his son. Then they took their sister back.
The massacre began with a violation. Jacob had settled near Shechem, a Canaanite city, and during a local festival his only daughter Dinah went to see the women's finery. Shechem, the prince and son of King Hamor, saw her there and raped her. Then, astonishingly, he fell in love and begged his father to arrange a marriage. Hamor approached Jacob with the proposal. Jacob was trapped—he could not easily refuse a king, but giving his daughter to a foreign prince violated everything he believed. He stalled, asking for time to consult his sons.
Most of the brothers had no idea what to do. But Simeon and Levi—Dinah's full brothers through Leah—already knew. They chose the night of the Shechemite festival, when the city would be drunk and unguarded. The slaughter was total. Josephus reports they spared only the women. Jacob was horrified by the scale of what his sons had done.
Then God spoke to Jacob—not to condemn the killing, but to command purification. Jacob was told to cleanse his household, fulfill the vows he had made at Bethel years ago, and offer sacrifice. While purifying his camp, Jacob discovered that Rachel had stolen her father Laban's household idols—something he never knew. He buried them under an oak tree in Shechem and moved on.
The journey cost him Rachel. Near Ephrath, she died giving birth to her second son. With her last breath, Jacob named the boy Benjamin—a name born from sorrow. Rachel alone among Jacob's family was buried on the road, not in the ancestral tomb at Hebron. Jacob continued south to Hebron, where he found his father Isaac still alive. They lived together briefly before Isaac died at one hundred and eighty-five years old, and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him beside Rebekah in the family sepulcher.