One day, Jacob and Leah's daughter Dinah goes to visit come Canaanite women. On her way there, Shechem, son of the chief of the region, sees her and rapes her.
"But he found the girl so attractive that he fell in love with her and tried to win her affection." [Genesis 34:3] (Here's a hint for next time, if you want a girl to like her don't rape her... geez.)
When Dinah's brothers find out what happened, they are majorly pissed.
Hamor (Shechem's dad, the big chief of that tribe) says to Jacob, "My son Shechem has fallen in love with your daughter; please let him marry her. Let us make an agreement that there will be intermarriage between our people and yours." [Genesis 34:8-9]
Hamor continues by saying that he'll give Jacob and his sons anything if he lets this happen (gifts, etc.).
Leah's brothers tell Hamor, "We cannot let our sister marry a man who is not circumcised; that would be a disgrace for us. We can agree only on the condition that you become like us by circumcising all your males." [Genesis 34:14-5]
Somehow, these terms actually seem fair to Hamor and his son. They go back to their peeps and explain that these are good people (Jacob's peeps) that they should all intermarry with, but the only way that can happen is if all the males in town get circumcised.
Inexplicably, the entire town goes along with this and agree to be circumcised. Methinks Hamor has amazing powers of persuasion.
A few days later, "when the men were still sore from their circumcision" [Genesis 34:25] Simeon and Levi (Dinah's brothers) come to the city and kill all the men, including Hamor and Shechem. They rescue Dinah and bring her back home.
When Jacob finds out, he's pretty mad, thinking that everyone will hear about this and will attack them. But Simeon and Levi answer, "We cannot let our sister be treated like a common whore." [Genesis 34:31]
I have to say, this is by far my favorite story so far. Finally, someone doesn't get away with raping an innocent women. I have a feeling that this may be as "girl power" as Genesis gets.
who's to say it's even rape? dinah is never quoted as saying it one way or the other...but just because the title of the book said 'rape of dinah' doesn't mean that there wasn't more to the story. there's room for a consensual relationship, and unfairness on her brothers' part.
Posted by: Amanda | 12/01/2009 at 10:16 AM
In my bible it says, "When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, who was chief of that region, saw her, he took her and raped her." [Genesis 34:2] so that seems pretty clear to me.
However, it is true that different translations probably have this story down a little different. Of course, if you're going to get into semantics, then isn't every single story in the Bible subject to interpretation? From what I've seen in the Bible so far (Jacob's millions of wives, Lot telling the angry mob that they can take his two virgin daughters, Abraham's treatment of Sarah, etc.) men don't seem to treat their ladies particularly well, so I'm inclined to "believe" the "rape" story.
The real question here is, what makes you think this relationship is consensual? Is there something I'm missing? Why else would Dinah's brothers react the way they do?
Posted by: Jen | 12/01/2009 at 10:39 PM
What an awful story, it gives me shivers
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