Genesis 34:15

In this will we consent. Their rejection of Hamor’s proposal was right, to be sure, but their procedure was just as certainly wrong. In plotting murder under the protecting cloak of religious scruples, Jacob’s sons were guilty of hypocrisy and cruelty. Their hypocrisy consisted in professing to accept the proposition of Hamor when they had no intention of doing so, on condition that the Shechemites accept the seal of God’s holy covenant. They knew that if the Shechemites should submit to circumcision it would be a mere form on their part. Their proposal was, finally, conceived in a spirit of cruel revenge.

In later years submission to the rite of circumcision by a non-Jew was considered as indicating acceptance of the Jewish faith and as bringing its recipient under the bond of the covenant, that is, it legally made over a Gentile into a Jew (see Acts 15:5; Gal. 6:12). If acceptance of the sign of the covenant on the part of the Shechemites had meant conversion to the true God, then all objections to intermarriage would of course have disappeared.