The Rape Of Dinah

By John Stallings


A young ministerial student was given the assignment of reading the genealogies from the first chapter of Matthew & making an oral report to his class.

He stood in front of the class of young ministers & read the seventeen verses from the first chapter of Matthew & closed the Bible saying,-- “That’s a reading of the genealogies, but there’s no message there,” --& started to sit down.

His professor said, “Young man, you are mistaken, there’s a treasure trove of messages in those genealogies, it’s your business to find them.”

We could almost say the same thing the young minister said of Genesis 34, because it’s an awful chapter in the Bible as well as in human history. But as horrendous as the thirty-one verses penned by Moses are, they pack powerful messages on several important subjects.

We know that the Bible wasn’t written in chapters, they were added later for ease of use. In this entire section or 34th chapter, God’s name is absent. It’s the only chapter outside of Esther that God’s name isn’t mentioned. However in Esther we can easily see the fingerprints of God, but in this chapter we don’t see His name or His influence.

For the first time in twenty years, Jacob is finally at peace. He’s been tied up in strife with his parents, his wives, his father-in-law & his brother but now it seems as if he’s found some rest.

He has finally reconciled with his brother Esau after the fight with an angel. Jacob gives up his pilgrimage at last, settles down, raises his colors & sinks a well.

BUT PEACE CAN HAVE ITS OWN SET OF PROBLEMS.

Jacob settles his family in Shalem in the region of Shechem, an area lying between Mt. Elba & Mt. Gerizim, about 41 miles north of Jerusalem. They camp within sight of the city of Shechem & purchase a piece of land. Jacob pitches his tent & then sets up an alter which he names “El Elohe Israel”—which means “God, the God of Israel, or “mighty is the God of Israel.”

The reality is, Jacob shouldn’t be settling down in Shechem, he should have gone on to Bethel. God will remind him of that in 35:1.

Instead of taking his children back to Bethel, the place of his spiritual awakening & acquaint them with his God, he took them to Shechem, red-neck territory, to introduce them to the business world.

Jacob’s kids were now teenagers & living so close to the city it was only natural for them to want to walk into town when they’d finish their chores. Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter [the narrative points out she was a daughter he had with Leah, not his favorite wife] who is between 15 & 17 years of age would often visit her friends in town.

There’s always a price to pay when God’s children & covenant people start mingling with the world.—Come ye out from among them & be ye separate --is the command of God.

That doesn’t mean we isolate ourselves from people, just that we don’t form alliances with the ungodly.

More & more as Dinah would venture into the city she began to catch the eye of a man named Shechem, the son of Hamor, leader of the town.

One day Shechem’s lustful eye caused him to follow his lust & he grabbed Dinah off the street, raped her & took her to his house to hold her hostage. Then, & this is weird, -- he “fell in love the girl.” The reason I put that in quotes is because this man took Dinah by force & wants to keep her by force. Then he says he loves her. Give me a break! While to be fair, this isn’t a rape & run case, —to call it love to me is sick!

He then spoke to his father Hamor about making overtures to Jacob to get Dinah as his wife. He sounds a little like a cave man, “Me want woman.” Or maybe he was a Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde personality.

Word travels fast & it’s sad to see papa Jacob’s reaction. ---

When Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled [raped] -- his sons were in the fields; so he kept quiet about it until they came home. 34:5

This kills me because Jacob kept quiet, meaning he didn’t rush to find & help Dinah or to confront the young man or his father; he waited until his sons came home.--he just doesn’t react to the news & even send word to his sons about what happened.

A major earmark of this family is Jacob’s favoritism. I’m sure if it had been Rachel’s daughter he’d have reacted differently; remember how passionate he was about the troubles Joseph & Benjamin went through?

WHERE IS DINAH’S VOICE? A  SILENT SCREAM!

Let me interject something right here; you’ll notice that never in this story is the voice of Dinah heard. I’m not second- guessing Moses here for not giving her a voice, because he’s writing the Bible, what I am saying is there’s a thing in our society sociologists call “the silent scream.” It refers to the inner cry of the victimized female who never reports the crime of rape against her for fear she’ll be accused of provoking the attack.

Let’s not be too hard on Dinah just because we have so few details about her. If we go back & read the complete narrative we can see others saying what they want & offering to pay any price to get it but we never hear what Dinah wants. It offends me greatly that she had no choice or voice; if she did it’s never mentioned.

According to a recent National Violence against Women survey, one in six women in America report experiencing rape or sexual assault. According to the Justice Department, 20-25% of college women report they have experienced complete or attempted sexual assault. Again, it’s difficult to get accurate numbers on rape because many women hesitate to report it for fear of being accused of provoking it.

Rape is a crime & a sin that has affected the lives of multitudes of women. If you’re reading this & you’ve been raped, you’ve been sinned against horribly & on behalf of good, godly, & decent men I express my anger & grief at what’s happened to you. There are many others who’ve experienced it & by the help of God’s Holy Spirit   you can overcome this violation.

JACOB—A PASSIVE PARENT

It would be an understatement to say Jacob wasn’t a very strong spiritual leader in the home. There is no mention of him instructing his children in the Lord. Since Jacob was a man of blatant favoritism, & Leah wasn’t his favorite wife, Dinah probably wasn’t given much attention or watched closely enough. Because of that she explored other avenues for attention & affection.

I’m pointing out the obvious here but it’s a parent’s duty to keep watch over their children & its obvious Dinah was falling through the cracks as many modern day latch-key kids are doing. If parents don’t take time with their children, the children almost certainly will take their time later.

It doesn’t appear to me that Jacob ever communicated with his sons except to tell them where to graze the sheep. It’s so important to tell our children we love them, to tell them how important they are to us & to God.

SELECTIVE OUTRAGE

Jacob was a man of “selective outrage.” He could get worked up when one of his sons had problems but he wasn’t emotionally available to Dinah & what happened to his only daughter seemed to affect him less than a fly crawling on his beard.

When folk have selective outrage, they carefully select what they get upset over, based not on principle but on personal agenda’s & preferences.

Jesus gave us a perfect illustration of selective outrage when he told of the man who could see the speck in another person’s eye but didn’t notice the poll hanging out of his own eye. Jesus goes on to say this is a prefect example of a hypocrite.-Matt.7:1-5

Paul gave us another example of selective outrage when he castigated the people who judge others, saying-- they do exactly what they are criticizing in others, they just can’t or won’t see it.--Romans 2:1

This is what makes the Liberal point of view so hard to follow & catalogue. How can you be for Abortion & against the death penalty? A Liberal will look at both issues & be upset by the killing of a cold blooded murderer, but not moved at all by going into the womb to kill an innocent baby. This then is selective outrage.

Jacob kept quiet about Dinah until the boys came in & let them handle it. Edmond Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” A soon as the brothers heard what happened to their sister they went ballistic. Shechem’s dad Hamor had come out to Jacob’s tent to seek terms for marriage between Shechem & Dinah asking Jacob to name his price for the girl.

Nether Shechem or Hamor offer an apology for Dinah’s rape; their idea was, “Hey, let’s all just get married & be one big happy family.” [And you thought I was kidding when I called this red-neck country.] For Jacob’s daughter to marry among these people would have been disastrous. Remember when Abraham was looking for a bride for Isaac, he didn’t take one from where they were living. Also remember how Jacob was sent away to find a wife.

Remember, Jacob’s name had been changed to Israel not that long ago so Shechem not only sinned against Dinah he’d sinned against a patriarch, a family & a fledgling nation.

JACOB’S SONS WILL NOW PLAY “THE RELIGION CARD.”

Jacob’s boys felt they were justified in taking action because of the violation against Dinah. They are going to take circumcision, an outward sign of an inward submission to God, & use it as a ploy to further their dastardly plans. I don’t know which was worse, Jacob’s silence or his son’s schemes. The boys are going to practice deceit, but then deceit has always been a problem in this patriarchal family right from the start.

The sons spoke up & said, “We can’t do business with men who’re not circumcised.” Then they ask that to keep the peace, all the men of the town be circumcised. So Hamor & Shechem, leaders of the family, convince all the other men to be circumcised.

The driving force behind the men of Shechem being willing to do this was financial gain because each of the groups were using each other to make money. In truth this is why Jacob stopped here in the first place. To these men circumcision was a small price to pay for the financial gain they thought they’d get. So the young men of Shechem let no grass grow under their feet & proceeded immediately with the cutting.

JACOB'S SONS GO ON A GENOCIDAL SPREE 

Three days after the circumcision, the worst day after such a procedure when all the men of Shechem are sore & weak, two of Dinah’s full brothers Simeon & Levi attack the town secretly, go door to door killing all the men & retrieving their sister. They loot the houses & take the women & children off as slaves. The rape of Dinah was disgraceful but what these boys did in committing wholesale murder is savagely & inhumanly excessive.

When people take vengeance into their own hands to settle even legitimate issues, the devil sees to it that they cross the line & the punishment won’t fit the crime. There’ll be no equity, only exponential revenge. Two wrongs don’t make a right nor does might make right. I’ve seen people try to be “Holy Ghost Juniors” by taking things into their own hands that should be turned over to God & in so doing they make a mess that will need a lifetime to heal.

What would you do if someone came to your house & tried to get between you & your child you were in the process of disciplining? If I don’t miss my guess the person interfering would get the punishment you meant for your child. Never try to punish one of God’s kids, leave that to Him & He’ll do it right. If you take the job into your hands you’ll get the spanking yourself, & it might be as much as seven-times worse for you. –Genesis 4:15

FORGIVENESS—GOD’S PLAN TO SETTLE DISPUTES

If Jacob’s sons could have brought themselves to forgive Shechem, they could have avoided hell on earth. They were worse off now than they were after the rape of Dinah. A little forgiveness goes a long way in healing hurts. Hatred has no place in our lives even when people do despicable things to us. Allowing hatred & resentment to motivate you is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.

Only now after this carnage does Jacob speak. He gives Simeon & Levi an earful because they have brought trouble on him a made him a stench to the Canaanites & Perizites, thus threatening the safety of the family. Jacob says, “We are few in number & if they join forces against me & attack me, my household will be destroyed.”

Of course the boys are bitter & ask, -“Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?”

All Jacob can think of is his own reputation. His ego has been hurt & now he thinks of his lowered status in the community.

Never mind the fact that his daughter has been raped, his sons abused the rite of circumcision, or that every male citizen of Shechem has been slaughtered, or that the city itself has been plundered, or that its women & children had been taken captive, or that Jacob’s sons had degraded & dehumanized themselves by committing acts of unspeakable wickedness. His concerns are tactical & strategic, rather than ethical.

COMPROMISE IS A GREAT LESSON OF THIS TRAGIC STORY.

The saddest aspect of this story is that just when a father is needed most, Jacob is silent. He twiddles his thumbs about his daughter’s rape while his sons do as bad or worse to the man or men responsible. Jacob, who wanted nothing more than to retire & have some peace, loses his daughter to rape & loses the respect of his sons who now despise him. None of this would have happened if Jacob hadn’t loved the world & instead taken his household directly to Bethel.

If we could talk to Jacob today about his experiences as a father, the interview might go something like this;

“Jacob, what did you do when your daughter was raped?”

“Well. Nothing but I heard about it & it upset me.”

“I see. What about your son’s slaughter of the men of Shechem?” “Did you do anything then?”

“Oh well. I thought the sooner we could forget about that the better.”

“Jacob, what about when your oldest son Reuben slept with one of your concubines? What did you do about that?”

“Well, nothing, I knew it happened though… & I couldn’t believe he didn’t know better. But the embarrassment of a confrontation would have really been unpleasant.”

“Jacob, what did you do when you saw the hatred & jealousy that your ten sons had for Joseph? Didn’t you realize your favoritism sowed the seeds of division in your home?”

“I guess I didn’t realize it would be such a problem, I mean, boys will be boys.”

Jacob has been silent about Dinah’s rape & most young Israeli girls would just as soon forget Shechem & let it shrivel into histories dust-ben. The good news is that though Jacob is silent about Dinah’s rape, God is not.

Two thousand years after Dinah’s tragedy, when it would seem God & everyone else has forgotten it, one-third of all God is came & paid a visit to Shechem. [John 4] When He arrived its spiritual condition was much the same as when Jacob left it; dominated by compromise, intermarriage & distorted worship.

There in the place where Jacob had sold out & dug his well, Jesus sits down at that self-same well & encounters a woman. She is a grown-up Dinah: outcast, lonely & we can surmise tormented by the sexual abuse of more than one man. She lives in her own world isolated by silence.

But here is the new Jacob who isn’t silent to one living in shame.
This lady of Shechem is given a voice. As they converse, the conversation turns from the water in Jacob’s well to living water & from the failed men she had lived with to the hope of the Messiah. She runs into the town with the wonderful news;

“Come see a man who told me all the things that I have done; is this the Messiah?”[John 4:29]

The memory of the rape & desecration of Dinah at Shechem is finally transformed & set right.

Biblical & even secular Scholars & Historians through the centuries have agreed that when Jesus sat down to talk to this woman, things changed for women everywhere. This one conversation between Jesus & the woman at the well of Samaria transformed the status of women, making them equals with men, if not totally liberated, when they for centuries had endured a status on the level with beasts of burden.

We can even use this story as a paradigm for our own healing. We can go back to our darkest hours of pain & allow Jesus to visit with us there & bring healing.

We can hear His voice in that terrible place & see the dark wells of pain turned into springs of living water & hearts once weighed down with shame & sorrow can soar again like the birds into the heavens.

We see in the story Moses tells us of Jacob & Dinah the tragedy of compromise. When we compromise God will discipline us & allow us to experience the consequences of our actions.

Moses doesn’t approve of the bloody actions that are taken in this story, but is showing us that God is sovereign & is able to take the worst of circumstances & accomplish His purposes.

Do you believe that?

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Blessings,

John