John Chrysostom

God forbid, Jacob is saying, that I should share their evil intent or associate myself with their unjust doings. "Because in the heat of their passion they slew people"; their rage turned irrational.… After all, even if Shechem had sinned, there was no need to turn their thirst for blood against everyone. "And in their fury they cut down a bull"; there is reference here to the son of Hamor, calling him a bull because of his hot-blooded maturity.

Then, in a reference to their crimes Jacob applies a curse in the words "Cursed be their rage for its ferocity and their frenzy for its willfulness": this touches on the stratagem they employed in deceiving the inhabitants of Shechem and imposed on them by guile. Their rage was "ferocious," he says, headstrong, irrational. "Their frenzy is cursed for its willfulness." When the Shechemites came to believe they had won great favor with them, then it was that Simeon and Levi vented their baleful frenzy and deployed the tactics of a foe against them. Referring to their exploit as sins, he foretells as well the punishment for it that awaits them: "I will disperse them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel." They will be scattered in all directions so that this very thing will be obvious to everyone, namely, that they had persisted in committing this crime out of bravado.