Genesis 34:1-19 - The Rape of Dinah - Part 2

34:1- This is the first time we are introduced to any of Jacob’s female children, which if he had at least 12 boys then surely he had a bunch of daughters too, statistically. Here we meet “Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob.” Dinah goes “out to see the daughters of the land.” There are several inferences that can be made by this statement alone. First is that Dinah was going to meet the pagan girls of an adjacent city and participate in one of their idolatrous festivals, and this is justified by some different interpretations of the original Hebrew words used in this first verse. Second, it has been said that there is no way that Dinah as a young probably teenage girl would have been allowed to go out of the family encampment, and definitely not alone, meaning that her going to see other young women in the area was the ultimate act of rebellion, therefore what did she expect to happen. This is the ancient equivalent of “what was she wearing?”

The third inference is just something that I thought about, but it’s that why didn’t Dinah just hang out with the girls her own age in the camp? This might support the “she wanted to rebel and participate in forbidden activities” concept, but it also feeds into something else that comes up later, and that is that maybe there weren’t many other girls her age around in the camp. This could mean that with all those boys running around, how were they supposed to get wives if it was so heavily predominately male. It could be that all the other females were their sisters, therefore off limits for marriage, it could be that there just weren’t that many. This will come up later in the chapter as to why I think it’s possible the male/female ratio was off in Jacob’s camp.

It's important to note here that Jacob was well known in the land and would have probably be himself considered a chieftain of his people, and we know from earlier that he was very wealthy. This means that Dinah, by being his daughter, would have been prestigious, royalty almost, and very important. This means that it’s assumed that she would have been considered under the protection of Jacob and all those dudes who were in her camp, her brothers, etc. We know that Rebekah was the most beautiful woman many men had ever seen, and Rachel was a stunning beauty renowned in the region, we don’t hear anything about Leah, but I think we can assume that genetically, it’s possible that Dinah would have been as physically stunning as her other female relatives.

34:2-4 - All this is to beg the question, if Shechem knew who she was when they crossed paths, or did he just see a beautiful woman, decide that he wanted to have sex with her, and because women were considered property, took what he wanted because he was the “prince of the country” and could do what he wanted? Either way, that’s exactly what he did, “he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.” There is a back and forth between analysts who say that the defilement meant that she was no longer a virgin, but the word connotes consent, therefore she agreed to have sex with him and sinned and brought all this pain on herself.

I don’t think I can state emphatically enough that this is so stupid, not just because the word “defiled” doesn’t mean “wicked consent” but the idea that a 15 year old girl would somehow get away from her parents supervision just to willingly have sex for the first time with some guy that she didn’t know is just ridiculous. And women were property, they couldn’t consent, so that settles it right there, and it says she was going to see other young women, not go see this guy. There’s no mention of this being a regular thing where they started a relationship and she went to be with him. In fact, verse 2 specifically states that it wasn’t until AFTER he “defiled her” that “his soul clave unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel.”

Surely Jacob can attest to the power a beautiful woman can have over a man, even if she is not complacent in that dynamic, because he fell in love with Rachel because she was so beautiful. And again, if a woman is property, then it would really only matter how beautiful she is to determine how much value she had. I mean, honestly, our society today is probably the most progressive toward women’s equality in all of human history, and it is STILL almost impossible to get anything other than our physical beauty looked at. My best friend said it best, “I could cure cancer and I wouldn’t let them take my picture.”

All this is to say that if he just wanted to have sex with her, why would he fall in love with her afterward, and my guess is that she must have been absolutely beautiful and he wanted her as a trophy wife. He tells his father, the king of main chieftain, this saying, “get me this damsel to wife.” At this point he must have known who she was, because if she was no one important and under his father’s rule, he probably could have just taken her.

34:5 - Somehow Jacob finds out what happened and he “held his peace” until his sons came home, which I don’t know if that means that he didn’t react until then or waited so that they could all make a plan together. All I know is that he doesn’t say anything, and that doesn’t change in the record we have, so in my mind, he was like “yeah, whatever” and I was just starting to like Jacob, that’s gone now. There is an excellent write up that speaks to Jacob’s silence much better than I ever could from the article I talked about yesterday, saying, “what gets me in Dinah’s story is her father’s silence. Jacob, the man in her life tasked with her protection and provision, seemed uncaring at best. His reaction to his daughter’s rape shows him complicit in her trauma and a coconspirator in her demise.

Not only do we not have a record of him ripping his clothes in mourning, shouting to the rooftops with anger, cursing his daughter’s tormentor, or falling to his knees in grief, we have no record of him talking to his daughter about her most painful moment. Shockingly, just a few chapters later, Jacob’s reaction to his son Joseph’s rumored death is full of emotional expressions we should have seen in Dinah’s story too. What kind of godly parent abandons a young girl to process her trauma on her own? Apparently, the same kind of guy willing to sell her off to a possessive sexual predator infatuated with his daughter. Why did Jacob sell her out? He bought his land from Shechem’s powerful dad, Hamor. To confront the sin could have meant disrupting the existing power and possessions.” I hadn’t connected Jacob’s reaction to the news of Joseph’s death to his lack of reaction about Dinah’s rape, but yeah, that makes perfect sense.

34:6-19 - Shechem and Hamor “went out unto Jacob to commune with him. And the sons of Jacob came out of the field when they heard it: and the men were grieved, and they were very wroth, because he had wrought folly in Israel in lying with Jacob’s daughter; which thing ought not to be done.” Finally someone is upset about what happened, even if it is her brothers and not her dad. Again, it makes you wonder if they were angry because she had been hurt and traumatized or because they had been shamed and embarrassed. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

This is Hamor’s sales pitch to Jacob about why Dinah marrying Shechem was going to be a good thing, first he says that “the soul of my son Shechem longeth for your daughter,” indicating some emotional attachment, which maybe would have made Jacob think that Dinah would have been better cared for if she was loved, verses this just being a transaction. He continues that if they join their two children in marriage, Jacob’s tribe and Hamor’s tribe would have access to each other’s women in order to marry. It’s a really interesting statement that he makes here, it’s not “then we can marry amongst each other,” it’s “we can have your women and you can have our women,” truly a depressing commentary on women’s value here. Hamor continues that in addition to access to whatever women they want, Jacob will also have access to all the land he wants and trade with them however he wants “and get you possessions therein.”

Shechem chimes in here, addressing not only Jacob but also Dinah’s brothers saying that he loves her so much “ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall say unto me,” which the footnotes indicate to mean “name whatever high price you want and I’ll pay it, just let me marry her.” Apparently Jacob thinks that this is a great idea, or not but we don’t know because he doesn’t say anything, but her brothers are pissed, and especially Simeon and Levi who tell the men that they accept the proposition but only on the condition that “if ye will be as we be, that every male of you be circumcised; then will we give our daughters unto you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people.”

I wonder what Jacob was thinking when he heard his boys propose this. Maybe he was thinking “wow, the boys really are taking this religious thing seriously,” I don’t know, you know how men have historically held circumcision as so important, as demonstrated by the amount of times we had to discuss it in the New Testament. If they agree to circumcise all the males in their camp, then Shechem could marry Dinah, but if not, then we take our daughter, and we will be gone.” This sounded good enough to Shechem and Hamor, so they head back home to convince the men of their camp to agree to circumcision.