The Rape of Dinah

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Dinah is probably around 13 years old. (Her eldest brother, Reuben, is probably around 20, which means Simeon and Levi—the brothers who lead the attack against the Shechemites—are in their late teens.)

Where was Jacob? Where were her brothers? Why was this girl left to wander into a strange city? Why isn’t the innocent protected?

The truth is that Jacob should never have settled anywhere near the city of Shechem to begin with, but rather returned to Bethel, as he had previously promised the Lord he would do. (See Genesis 28:20-22 and 31:13).

But after the violation occurs, how do you make it right?

Doing nothing is tacitly accepting it. But doing what the sons of Israel actually do cannot be right either, as not only do they kill all the men of the city, but they carry off all the women and children as property as well.

Already, the new Way of righteousness towards which the Lord is leading the children of Israel is under threat.

An awful story.

As usual, Leon Kass sums it up well:

“Jacob, who had settled in the wrong place and who was now grown comfortable among the Canaanites, compounds the error by allowing his one daughter to wander off towards the ways of Shechem. This mistake sets in motion the entire ugly chain of events: once Dinah ‘goes out,’ everything that follows takes on a tragic inevitability. The failure to protect the purity of innocent Dinah (whose name means ‘judgment’) brings on her unjust defilement (the rape), in a horribly parody of the proper union of man and woman. There follows grim parodies of (1) a marriage proposal (asking for the hand of a woman already seized and violated); (2) proper fatherhood and rulership (fathers serving rather than ruling the passions of their sons; a ruler leading his city into ruin for the sake of satisfying his son’s erotic wishes); and (3) the practice of just retribution by means that appear to be anything but just (the brothers’ slaughter and spoiling of the entire city), involving (4) what appears to be a parody of the sacred rite of circumcision. The entire order of justice falls apart from the neglect of the purity and dignity of woman.” [my emphasis]

 

Today’s Scripture

Genesis 34:1-31