Genesis 34:1-4
2009.May.15 09:00
Rape
Read Genesis 34:1-4 | Full Chapter
Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land. When Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he took her and lay with her by force.
(Genesis 34:1-2, NASB)
Life was good. Israel, nĂ© Jacob, has returned to Canaan, wealthy, having emerged unscathed from not one but two potentially deadly encounters, and having spent time talking with a messenger of Yahweh (possibly Yahweh himself). He and his family have arrived in Succoth. It’s not clear to me how soon this episode follows that arrival, but life for Israel and family takes a massive turn for the worse: Dinah, the only sister mentioned of the twelve tribal patriarchs, is raped by Shechem, a prince (of a tribe? city? larger group?).
Dinah is mentioned, almost as an aside, in Genesis 30, "Later, Leah had a daughter and named her Dinah" (Genesis 30:21, CEV) . From the position of presentation, Dinah is born shortly before Joseph, at this point the youngest (son, anyway). So, here’s a question: Is Dinah mentioned there solely to introduce her prior to this passage? Because daughters don’t get a lot of mention in Genesis. Since the stories present a geneology leading up to the twelve sons of Jacob, as at least nominal ancestors of the twelve tribes, and since geneologies are often traced through male ancestors in many societies, this is not surprising. But at least to my twenty-first century sensibilities, it is weird. That’s all on that; no point.
Back to the narrative. Dinah is going out to visit the women in her new, if possibly temporary, hometown. Unless there’s an element I’m missing, her action is very positive, trying to establish good relationships within her new community. One could argue that these are just the sort of “bad Canaanites” with whom the people of Israel will be warned against associating (at least to some extent), but I don’t see any reason to make that assumption.
As she’s making her rounds, Shechem sees Dinah, lusts for her, and follows that lust by raping her. So, I’m not at all going to feel sorry for him in what he has coming. It’s hard to really make a point about rape, at least not one requiring any real argument. It is simply one of the vilest things one human can do to another (I can see an argument here that this could be consensual, but I think that would be a difficult argument to support).
He was deeply attracted to Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, "Get me this young girl for a wife."
(Genesis 34:3-4, NASB)
Then something occurs to Shechem. He actually rather likes Dinah. I suppose he could have considered the rape part of some courtship ritual, but judging by her brothers’ response, I’m not willing to even give him that little bit of credit. He’s a selfish ass, and that’s finally coming back to haunt him. So, like David many centuries later, Shechem is going to try to “make it right”. Note, if you’re trying to make it right, you’ve already f—ed up. That’s not to say that one shouldn’t try to fix things, but rather that we must not deceive ourselves by supposing that by “fixing” it, we can pretend our original actions weren’t entirely inappropriate, sinful, etc.
So, anyway, Shechem asks his father to follow whatever the contemporary customs are in order to become afianced to Dinah. What Hamor must be thinking now is an interesting, if unanswerable, question. His position is certainly uneviable, approaching this newly arrived (or not) rich foreigner and negotiating (?) a marriage, not knowing their customs, and realizing that this man could know about Shechem’s raping his daughter and might just be royally pissed.
