Genesis 34--The Defiling of Dinah

CONTENT WARNING:  While from the Bible, this story may not be appropriate for all viewers as it's going to have to deal with some "adult" content.  Again, this is historical narrative and just describing events that happened and the Bible doesn't try to sugar-coat or whitewash history.  With that said, let's get to today's text.

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READ:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+34&version=ESV
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.34
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The Defiling of Dinah
34 Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. 2 And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her. 3 And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. 4 So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this girl for my wife.”

5 Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter Dinah. But his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob held his peace until they came. 6 And Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him. 7 The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done.

8 But Hamor spoke with them, saying, “The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife. 9 Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. 10 You shall dwell with us, and the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it, and get property in it.” 11 Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and whatever you say to me I will give. 12 Ask me for as great a bride-price and gift as you will, and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman to be my wife.”

13 The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah. 14 They said to them, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us. 15 Only on this condition will we agree with you—that you will become as we are by every male among you being circumcised. 16 Then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become one people. 17 But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter, and we will be gone.”

18 Their words pleased Hamor and Hamor's son Shechem. 19 And the young man did not delay to do the thing, because he delighted in Jacob's daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his father's house. 20 So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of their city and spoke to the men of their city, saying, 21 “These men are at peace with us; let them dwell in the land and trade in it, for behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives, and let us give them our daughters. 22 Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us to become one people—when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised. 23 Will not their livestock, their property and all their beasts be ours? Only let us agree with them, and they will dwell with us.” 24 And all who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city.

25 On the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males. 26 They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem's house and went away. 27 The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city, because they had defiled their sister. 28 They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys, and whatever was in the city and in the field. 29 All their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered.

​30 Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.” 31 But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?”

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Let's get straight to it.  You may recall that I told you several blogs ago that it was interesting that Dinah was listed among the descendants of Jacob, because usually only male children were listed in genealogies and anytime that you saw a woman's name in a genealogy in the Bible you should pay attention because it means they are going to be an important figure later on in the narrative?  This is the event that I was referring to.  This event in the life of Dinah undoubtedly changed her, but also changed things for her brothers and half-brothers

The Canaanite clans, this time we see the Hivites, have become more and more wicked and this man Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, took Dinah by force and raped her.  He acted like he loved her but it was a sick, perverted twisted love that was only based on what pleasure he could have with abusing her.  This is not the first time we've seen sexual sin in the Bible, especially among the Canaanite clans.

So what would the reaction of her father, Jacob, be when he heard about this?  He waited for the entire family to get together after his sons came back from attending to their herds that day, and Jacob tried to meet with the offender's father to speak father to father, but the sons of Israel got angry that their sister had been violated and the victim of such an egregious sin.  It is probably fair to say that they were full of righteous indignation, but while the anger they felt might have been righteous, what they were about to do next probably was not.

Hamor thinks he's doing the "right thing," by insisting that Shechem marry Dinah and professes his son's love for her, but Jacob and his sons know that God has commanded them to not marry among the Canaanites because they are wicked and will corrupt the people of God and the Canaanites are marked for destruction.  They are not to form peace treaties or alliances with the Canaanites or marry or be given in marriage to them.

The father says to "name your price" as if they could put a price on the life and virginity of their sister.  She had lost something priceless that day and this just showed that the Canaanites had degraded women so much that they were a commodity to be sold and traded.  They were not trying to make restitution here and made no admission of guilt, so the brothers came up with a deceitful plan, and I can only guess that they learned this from their father whose name meant "deceiver."   The named their price that all the males of the Hivites would have to be circumcised before any of the Israelite woman could marry with them, but this was simply a trick to make all of the men be in pain and unable to defend themselves when they would attack them.

We see the hearts of these Canaanites revealed as the words they spoke to each other at the city gate are recorded here.  While they claimed to want peace, they only wanted to take everything that belonged to the people of Israel and make it their own--their daughters, land, and livestock.  Be careful about making "peace" with the enemy because he desires to have you and devour you and take all of the blessings that God has given you.  These sons of Israel knew that that were being asked to "make a deal with the devil" here.

After all the males of the city were circumcised, Simeon and Levi, two of Dinah's older full brothers, went into the city and killed Hamor and Shechem and took back Dinah out of their house and the city and they killed and plundered the city and took everything of value including their flocks and herds and their women and children.  This almost seems like a preview of the Conquest of Canaan in the time of Joshua.

Jacob was angry with his sons in that they had dealt treacherously with the Hivites and ruined the family's reputation among the people, but it may show something of Jacob's heart here that he was too concerned about his public image and forgot that he was not supposed to be the friend of the Canaanites, and he had done little to protect the integrity of his daughter and left that to his sons.  While this passage is in no way prescriptive on how we should treat rapists and those who are complicit with rape, it is a look into the hearts of these men and what kind of greed led the Hivites to try to acquire women like they did wealth and take anything they wanted, even by making fake peace treaties, and how the Simeon and Levi would be filled with righteous anger at such sin in their land and not stand for it--this is not the first time that we will see this kind of action from these men or their descendants as their intolerance for sin was something they passed down to throughout many generations and was part of their legacy.

We see that Jacob forgets here that God is his "Shield and Defender" as He had called God earlier, because Jacob fears that the Canaanites will form an alliance against him and his small household, but he forgets that God needs to army to conquer His enemies, and even if He did choose to send His army of heavenly warriors (which Jacob had seen earlier at Bethel), they would far outnumber the forces of the Canaanites.  "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

Simeon and Levi respond just ask one question to their father, "Should he be allowed to treat our sister like a prostitute?"  The story ends there but this one question shows the difference between Jacob and his sons (at least these two sons).  Jacob seems to be concerned about doing what he can to keep his family alive, while Simeon and Levi have hearts that seek to keep them pure from the wickedness of the Canaanites and for justice to be done, even if it means I'm not sure that either side was 100% right here as we should not sacrifice morality for peace with the enemies of God, yet we also should give room to God to take vengeance and not sacrifice our own integrity to be deceitful in taking vengeance against others that have wronged us or our families.  Also, likely hundreds were made to pay for the crimes of one man.  This would later happen under God's direction because God would be able to see that all the Canaanites were guilty and that it had become such a part of their culture that they would not recover and they would only corrupt the Israelites if Israel tried to coexist with them.  That's God's determination to make, not ours, and only in rare cases has God ever ordered one nation to destroy another.  I do not stand as a judge over Simeon and Levi, but do say that they probably learned the wrong kinds of lessons from their father as they appeared to depend on themselves and deceit to solve their issues instead of turning to God in prayer for instruction.  That is what makes this situation different from what we will read about later in Joshua, and even then, the people of God will have an issue with not completely destroying the Canaanites and accidentally making peace treaties with the Gibeonites who learned to be just as deceptive, if not more deceptive, than Jacob and his sons.