Genesis 34:1 ¶
And Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to
see the daughters of the land. 2 And
when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he
took her, and lay with her, and defiled her. 3
And his soul clave unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the
damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel. 4
And Shechem spake unto his father Hamor, saying, Get me this damsel to
wife. 5 And Jacob heard that he had
defiled Dinah his daughter: now his sons were with his cattle in the field: and
Jacob held his peace until they were come.
What happens next
is not Dinah’s fault any more than your car being stolen from its parking space
because you left it unlocked is your fault. Sin is the fault of the person who
commits the sin. The offence has come through the thief. However, living carelessly
has its punishments. Here, we learn something about what Paul speaks of in
Titus 2:5, a woman being discrete and keeping at home. Dinah was rather unlike
her male ancestors who acted quite cautiously and were very worried about even
the possible intentions of those around them. She ventured out to see the
daughters of the land and was raped by Shechem, the son of that territory’s
ruler. Notice the phrasing, saw her, he
took her, and lay with her, and defiled her. There is no hint here of a
consensual act.
First, prince means a ruler and a judge. Notice
the synonyms joined by and in the
following verses.
Exodus 2:14 And
he said, Who made thee a prince and a
judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?
And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.
Acts 7:35 This
Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of
the angel which appeared to him in the bush.
The words king and prince denote ruler and final authority in judgment over a people,
a chieftain by today’s standards in more primitive cultures.
Proverbs 14:28
In the multitude of people is the king’s honour: but in the want of
people is the destruction of the prince.
Dinah, apparently
being without any strong protection, was obviously raped. Remember that Abraham
and Isaac both had fear that the ruler of the land in which they sought a place
to live temporarily would kill them so that ruler could easily take their wives.
God did not prevent this from happening as he did prevent the women’s
defilement in those former cases.
Apparently, the
ancient world in this area was a very dangerous place for women who did not
have the men of their family to protect them, as much of it is today, in the
Middle East and Africa. God will eventually give a law that protects women in
these circumstances but in their relation to the group, the Hebrews. But, when
we get to the Law given to Moses we must understand that those Laws are the
civil and religious ordinances for the Hebrew people separating them from the
people around them, and do not go far enough for the Christian as Christ and
Paul lay out the spirit of those Laws rather than the carnal letter which dealt
with the flesh itself. The Law given to Moses was more about the integrity and
character of the group than the character and integrity of the individual as
God was separating a people of a particular ethnicity unto Him rather than a
person who had no abiding nation on earth necessarily.
Shechem’s heart
was smitten by Dinah, though, and he felt tenderness toward her after his
violence rather than the contempt, for instance, that Amnon felt for Tamar in
2Samuel 13 after he raped her. He petitioned his father to ask for her in
marriage. Jacob knew what had happened but in his position of being a guest, a
stranger in their land, exercised restraint waiting for his sons to come in
from the field. His position was not good. The rape of Dinah will be felt as a
wrong committed against the family, the group, more importantly than against
Dinah, as an individual. This is clearly a different sort of attitude than the
Christian feels, as all sin is against God and against the person, and
government is established to punish those who do evil. In fact, if you read
Romans 13 it is one of the only justifications for human government.
Dinah may have had
the opportunity to visit the daughters of
the land. She may have even had the right to do so. But it was not a very
smart thing to do, not thinking through the situation without protection. She
is not to blame here for the crime as you own your sin. But she was not wise.
Still, God allowed this to happen to set in motion something revealing to us. I
remember in college when there was a campus rapist in operation many of the
young men trying to convince the young women that although they had the right
to go on their own across campus at night to the library it was not smart to do
so without an escort. This, of course, offended the modern feminist, whose
rights the rapist predator could not have cared about in the least.
It is a callous
error, though, of modern fundamentalism to insist that men cannot control
themselves and that if a man acts wrongly out of lust it is a woman’s fault. As
I said earlier, regardless of how you want to cut it, you own your own sin.
Don’t put it off on the employer who leaves money to tempt you, the girl who
passes by you wearing too revealing clothing, or the person who runs into a
store leaving the keys in his car. Take responsibility. Child molesters will
even blame a child for enticing them. This is a wicked thought pattern, of
course.
We will learn here
another principle of the Bible. One crime does not blot out another. God
allowed this to happen to reveal something, to show us the character and nature
of the patriarchs of the Hebrew people. In this, they are going to be shown as
very much like the people around them, from whom God is drawing them out. Paul
writes in Romans 15 that these things were written about for our learning. So,
learn.
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