blogging Genesis 34.
Israel, aka Jacob, had 12 sons, but he only had
1 daughter. Her name was Dinah.
She was raped.
Israel had settled his
family on land he bought near the Canaanite city of Shechem (Genesis
33:19). At this point in history, the house of Israel wasn’t on a
campaign to dispossess the Canaanites, and God had not commanded them to
separate themselves from Canaanite communities. Israel (the man and the
family) were free to cultivate close business and personal relationships with
the Canaanites, which is why it was neither sinful, unwise, or unusual
for Dinah, Israel’s only daughter, to go visit Caananite girl-friends in the
city (Genesis 34:1)
"Now Dinah the
daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of
the land." (Genesis 34:1)
On one of those visits
to Shechem, Hamor noticed Dinah. Hamor was the richest young man in the
city that was named after his family. He was known as the “prince of the
country” and he wanted Dinah.
The Bible says he “saw
her, he took her and lay with her, and violated her” (Genesis 34:2,
NKJV).
The KJV says “he took
her, and lay with her, and defiled her.” The NASB translates “he
took her and lay with her by force.” The NIV says “he took
her and raped her.”
The Hebrew verb being
used is anah which means to afflict, to force into humility,
to abase, to impose one’s will upon. Hamor did to Dinah what Hamor wanted
to do and he did it WITHOUT DINAH’S CONSENT. He abducted and raped
her.
Genesis 34:7 calls what
Hamor did to Dinah “a disgraceful thing in Israel. . . , a thing which ought
not to be done.” In other words, it was NOT O.K.
After his crime, Hamor
tried to be charming. He tried to convince Dinah that she had wanted it,
too. He even asked his father to arrange marriage between them.
That was verses 3 and 4. Verse 7 says what Hamor did to Dinah was “a
disgraceful thing in Israel. . . , a thing which ought not to be done.”
It was still not O.K.
The Bible is essential
not comprehensive. Scripture doesn’t provide comprehensive details of all
or of any historical events in the Old Testmament and New Testament
timelines. I’m not on a tangent; follow me on this. Through
scripture, God retells the events, ideas, and details that are essential for
knowing God and living in right relationship with Him. Most historical
events don’t make it into the Biblical record. Those that do, like
Dinah’s rape, are case studies from which we can extrapolate lessons about God
and humanity which transcend culture, time, and geography.
So, the details missing
from the case of sexual assault in Dinah vs. Hamor are details which the Holy
Spirit has ruled are non-essential.
We don’t know what Dinah
was wearing when she visited her friends in Shechem because God’s saying it
doesn’t matter what she was wearing. We don’t know if Dinah had
been drinking. God’s saying that doesn’t matter. How’d she end up
alone with Hamor? Did she try to fight? Why didn’t she fight
harder? Why didn’t she yell for help or yell louder? There’s no way
to know or derive those answer from the information in the Bible because IT
DOESN’T MATTER.
What does matter
is: Hamor took Dinah and lay without her consent. He
raped her.
Christians claim
spiritual (not necessarily biological) descent from Abraham. “Know
then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham”
(Galatians 3:7). So Old Testament Israel is a metaphor for the
church. Dinah is the daughter of Israel, and she represents the daughters
of the church. Israel's response to Dinah speaks to the church's
response to women in our congregations, our spiritual daughters.
So how did Israel handle
Dinah’s sexual assault? Typically. Which is to say BADLY.
Misstep 1. Control
the damage instead of comfort the victim.
When Jacob/ Israel found
out, his first act was to limit access to information to prevent negative
publicity. “And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his
daughter. Now his sons were with his livestock in the field; so Jacob held his
peace until they came out” (Genesis 34:5).
Misstep 2.
Negotiation instead of investigation.
In verses 6-9, Hamor and
Shechem have the actual audacity to show up at Dinah’s home say, “Ask me ever so much dowry and gift, and I will give according
to what you say to me; but give me the young woman as a wife.” As his
wife in those times, Dinah wouldn’t be able to claim he’d dishonored her.
Israel participated in what
was the Bronze Age equivalent of offering a monetary settlement to the company
in exchange for the victim signing a nondisclosure agreement.
Misstep 3. Vaccum of injustice. Israel did not appropriately handle these
very serious allegations. He tried to silence the complaint before it
damaged his business relationships. Where there should have been
justice there was ----- nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum. God abhors
a vacuum of injustice.
You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, nor
take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of
the righteous. (Deuteronomy 16: 19)
He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of
them alike are an abomination to the Lord. (Proverbs 17: 15)
It’s easy to calculate a
response when the perpetrator is an addict, a vagrant, or a certified
sex-offender. But what about when the predator is a prince, and he’s
charming, and he speaks sweetly, and he’s from a good family, and we have
important business with them?
What happens to Dinah’s
allegations when they implicate someone we like?
A vacuum of
injustice will be filled with VENGEANCE. Organized, public, loud,
costly vengeance.
Misstep 4.
Division of the house. Dinah’s brothers pretended to go along with the old, rich
men’s plan for settlement and damage control.
“The sons of Jacob
answered Shechem and Hamor his father, and spoke deceitfully, because he had
defiled Dinah their sister. And they said to them, “. . . On this condition we
will consent to you: If you will become as we are, if every
male of you is circumcised” (Genesis 34: 13-16).
But the
militant young brothers in the (church) family had plans of their
own.
“Now it came to pass on
the third day, when they were in pain, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon
and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each took his sword and came boldly upon the city
and killed all the males. And they killed Hamor and Shechem . . . and took
Dinah from Shechem’s house, . . . and plundered the city” (Genesis 34:25-28).
Organized, public, loud,
costly vengeance.
Israel rebuked
them. The old head(s) of the family Israel argued that their
extreme, public actions would upset the dominant majority and make trouble for
their good, law-abiding community.
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have troubled me by
making me obnoxious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and
the Perizzites; and since I am few in number, they will gather
themselves together against me and kill me. I shall be destroyed, my household
and I.” (Genesis 34:30)
The young militant
brothers didn’t care (verse 31).
Israel's standing in
that community was ruined. The next chapters detail how they had to close
and move. The whole (church) family entered a season marked by
soul-searching, death/decline, and inconsolable grief (Genesis 35). The
relationship between the 2 generations in the house of Israel was damaged
beyond repair. The rest of Genesis is story after story of betrayal,
drama, mess, back-stabbing, selling-out, and moral hypocrisy that makes the
house so dysfunctional that all their old leader Israel ever talks about
for the rest of the book is dying.
Mess. Drama. Cross-generational infighting. Organizational dysfunction. Hypocrisy. Loss of moral center. An obsession with the death of the institution. Does any of this sound familiar to the church?
Mess. Drama. Cross-generational infighting. Organizational dysfunction. Hypocrisy. Loss of moral center. An obsession with the death of the institution. Does any of this sound familiar to the church?
This generation will no
longer accept the old missteps. They won’t settle for
silence just to keep peace. They demand
justice and if that is denied ---- they will fill the vacuum.
So will our spiritual
Israel learn from the missteps of the man Israel, or will we repeat them like
all our institutions have been doing for all the centuries since Dinah was
attacked?
We’ll find out.
And I don’t think it’ll be long before we do.
For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17)
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a writer, community
organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership
development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves
II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama; executive
director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of
rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
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