"And the sons of Jacob had come up from the field when they heard. And the men were indignant, and very violently moved, because Shekem had wrought dishonour in Israel in lying with the daughter of Jacob; for so it was not right to have been done." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 34:7) preserves the brothers' reaction with a phrase that would echo through Jewish history: nevalah b'Yisrael — a disgrace done in Israel.
A phrase that outlasted the moment
This was the first time in the Torah that the phrase "in Israel" was used as a moral boundary. The brothers were saying something larger than it sounds. It is not just that their sister Dinah was violated. It is that a line had been crossed that defined the family — a kind of outrage that the people of Jacob cannot tolerate within themselves. To do this in Israel is to attack the identity of Israel.
The Targum's word nevalah is strong. It suggests not merely wrong but degrading, the kind of wrong that diminishes the victim's entire community. Later biblical texts would pick up the phrase (Judges 20:6, 2 Samuel 13:12) as a technical term for sexual crimes that wound the whole people.
"It was not right to have been done." The Targum does not give the sons a strategy yet — only an emotion: violent indignation. The strategy would come next, and it would be more violent still.
The takeaway: outrage is holy when it names a line that cannot be crossed, and Israel's sons named one here.