Genesis 34

All right, friends, welcome back.
Thank you for being with us again
as we close out the week,
having made it through the Jacob and Esau reunion story.
We now move on in the story.
A tough chapter today,
we’ll try to get all the way through.
It’s a story told in a couple of different parts.
It has maybe three movements in it.
But one of the,
this is unfortunately somewhat true in Genesis.
When a story shifts to the focus,
to focus on a female,
it’s often not a real positive story.
And that is the case today.
We have a story of Jacob’s daughter, Dinah,
and she goes through a rough time.
This is a sensitive story,
a tender, I think,
story
in regard to some people’s experience,
but we will unpack this.
Unfortunately,
the Old Testament
is in its focus on,
almost its singular focus on the covenant story.
It doesn’t spend much time
with these psychological implications
and the painful realities of this story.
It really moves on to what it does
in the sense of the whole,
this connection to the broader story.
So it makes it seem a little callous.
I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.
I just think there are things the Bible focuses on
in the ways the story was told and other things it doesn’t.
And unfortunately, this will be a dozen.
So that may make sense as we go here.
Chapter 34,
Dinah, the daughter of Leah,
whom she bore to Jacob,
went out to visit the women of the region.
When Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite,
prince of the region, saw her,
he seized her,
and lay with her by force.
And his soul was drawn to Dinah,
the daughter of Jacob.
He loved the girl,
and he spoke tenderly to her.
So Shechem spoke to his father, Hamor, saying,
“Get that girl to be my wife.”
Now Jacob heard that Shechem had defiled his daughter Dinah,
but his sons were with his cattle in the field,
so Jacob held his peace until they came.
And Hamor, the father of Shechem,
went to Jacob to speak with him,
just as the sons came in from the field.
When they heard of it,
the men were indignant, and angry,
because they had committed such an outrage
in lying with Jacob’s daughter,
for such a thing ought not to be done.
But Hamor spoke with them,
and said, “The heart of my son Shechem longs for your daughter.
Give her to him in marriage.
Make marriages with us.
Give your daughters to us.
Take our daughters for yourselves.
You shall live with us,
and the land shall be open to you.
Live in it, trade in it, and get property in it.”
Shechem said to her father and brothers,
“Let me find favor with you,
and whatever you say to me, I will give.
Put the marriage present,
and gift as high as you like,
and I will give you whatever you ask of me.
Only give me this girl to be my wife.”
So there is another version of, well,
I shouldn’t say it that way.
There is a similar story of this,
to this story.
There is another one told of a rape,
and it is told a little bit rougher.
In this case,
the Bible simply says
He seized her and lay with her by force,
but clearly it’s understood
that everything about this is wrong.
The father knows it,
Jacob knows it,
the sons know it.
It is a case of obsession,
I guess, in that he wants to marry her.
In the other story,
that’s a different take.
But
here we have this moment where this man Shechem
has done this really reprehensible thing.
And again,
we would love if it honored and recognized
what that must have been like for Dinah,
but you’ll notice she’s not really mentioned by name again,
which is a way,
which is an unfortunate reality
in the way this story is told.
But here we go from the action,
the sort of sinfulness to trying to reconcile it.
And essentially,
one way you could look at this
is a father trying to
buy off the offended party.
And to make some sort of amends financially
for what his son has done.
Yeah, so there’s multiple layers
of overlapping discomfort in this story.
And especially in the cultural context from which we come,
it is particularly grievous for us to understand the idea
that this kind of relationship
would be attached to economics,
but it would not be strange for there to be dowries given
and exchanges of property in the midst of a marriage.
And the thing that makes this story particularly notable
here is verse eight, the top here,
make marriages with us,
give your daughters to us,
take our daughters for yourselves,
you live with us,
land will be open to you,
live and trade in it.
You can see in this a very economic kind of reality here.
Like we’re going to open ourselves up
to your family if you will open up your family to us
and there’ll be opportunity for you here.
And all of this is done really to cover over this thing
that everybody knows shouldn’t have happened,
but there’s a kind of trying to
forge an alliance in it.
And it’s
tough to not come to a text like this
with some moral eye, some moral judgment,
Clint. And the text itself doesn’t really seem to land there.
In no way approves of this kind of behavior,
but it also isn’t spending time decrying it either.
It’s focusing on the effect,
the ways that are coming
because of this thing that Shechem did.
And now we’re gonna see how that builds up into further problems.
It’s really interesting that
in a way,
this thing that has been done is so offensive
that rather than speak of it itself,
the rest of the text kind of takes the approach
of looking at it through the actions of the characters
as if there are a couple of streams
that flow out of this action.
One is Hamar trying to buy his way forward.
My son loves her,
let me pay for it.
I’ll give you whatever you want.
And then we’re going to in this next section
have a very different take from Dinah’s brothers
and then late in the story,
maybe a third take
from Jacob.
So we won’t necessarily read all of this,
but I’m gonna summarize verses 13 through
about 24 for you.
The narrative shifts to the brothers
and the brothers tell Shechem and Hamar,
you can’t partner with us because you’re not circumcised.
We can’t have your daughters,
but if you would all get circumcised,
then you would be acceptable to us.
Then we can intermix,
we can be your people.
For instance, let me read verse 16.
Then after you’re circumcised is the then,
then we will give our daughters to you
and we will take your daughters for ourselves
and we will live among you and become one people.
But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised,
then we will take our daughter and be gone.
And so Hamar and Shechem agree to this plan,
they see a way forward.
And the result is in verse 24,
“All who went out of the city gate,
heated Hamar and his son Shechem,
and every male was circumcised,
and all who went out of the gate
of his city.”
And what we learn as we continue to read
is that this is
a setup,
which is an interesting development
given the role that circumcision plays
in literally identifying God’s people.
Here,
it is essentially used
not only to identify,
but to in some ways hinder and hurt
those who are being judged by God’s people.
Yeah, so for any lack of sort of legal or moral judgment,
it’s clear that this has so offended these brothers,
it has so offended the family,
so much so that the text says
that this is not done in Israel.
That’s really interesting language
because that’s not the language of the family at this point.
There’s not a kind of nation conception
in the way that we have in later.
So the looking back of that to say like,
this is not something that is kosher, that I mean,
that is done.
This is not something that is acceptable among our people.
It sort of foreshadows what is gonna be done later
when the brothers make it clear
that they never had any intention
of allowing some kind of peaceful transition
or relationship with this family,
that they had considered this from the start
a red line crossed,
and they threw this sort of
tempting kind of invitation,
just do this thing and then you’ll be acceptable
and we’ll be able to make some negotiations.
Seems to Shechem and his father to be a way forward
when in actuality, it’s a
trap.
It’s a way that they can set up the revenge
that they’re gonna take.
Yeah, and I don’t know what this says about me.
Maybe I shouldn’t admit it,
but when I was a young person,
this was one of my absolute favorite stories.
I love this next part of the story,
not the part that we’ve seen,
but the part that’s coming.
So Dana’s two brothers,
and these are the full brothers,
so Leah’s boys,
Simeon and Levi.
So verse 25, and I will read this.
On the third day when they were still in pain,
two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi,
Dinah’s brothers,
took their swords and came against the city unaware,
and they killed all the males.
They killed Hamer and his son Shechem with the sword,
and they took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and went away.
And the other sons of Jacob came upon the slain
and they plundered the city
because their sister had been defiled.
They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys,
and whatever was in the city and the field,
all the wealth, all the little ones, all the wives,
all that was in the houses,
they captured and made their prey.
Stop there, Michael.
So a brutal response from the brothers.
We now learn that they’ve tricked the men
into being circumcised to incapacitate them,
and while they’re incapacitated or at least hindered,
they attack the city,
they kill all the males,
they take all the property,
they essentially conquer these people because of this sin.
Now, what’s interesting is we see things like this
in the Old Testament.
We see in the law a prescription
that anybody who does this kind of stuff
should be put to death.
We see in the conquest narratives
that cities that are judged to be immoral,
we saw this in Sodom and Gomorrah,
they are to be destroyed.
And so we have here stuff that is kind of attested to
in other parts of the Old Testament,
but here these two men take it upon themselves to do it
while they avenge their sister.
And it is a really uncomfortable kind of story.
It’s a justice story of sorts.
I’m not exactly sure how you classify this story, Michael.
It sounds like some of the conquest narrative,
it’s certainly out of character for Jacob and even Abraham
for the whole covenant story.
This really stands alone.
We see more like this after Joshua takes over,
and the people are conquering their enemies.
But I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this
in the story, and I would argue maybe we don’t see anything
like it in the rest of Genesis.
We’re gonna see in just a moment
the Jacob’s final take here at the end of the story
that this story does have a connection
to some of the problems that the Israelites are gonna have
in their future history with these peoples.
They have at times an uneasy truce,
and in fact, if you go all the way to the prophets,
you’re gonna see that the prophets criticize the people
of becoming intermixed with peoples,
sharing their gods,
taking their traditions,
and so later Israel finds some of these national mixing
to be really contentious in the problem.
Here in the Genesis story,
this is the story telling us
of the beginning of the nation, right?
We already see that these individuals can’t be trusted,
that there’s deception,
and that that deception
sometimes requires a substantial response.
I’m not trying to simply read this story as metaphor,
Clint, but I do think there’s a sense in which if you’re willing
to look at this story from a much broader view,
it does have some caution in it for future Israel.
Certainly it has something to say about the cost taken
when you deal with people who are outside of the family,
and this doesn’t shed these Shechem and his family
in a very good light, certainly.
Yeah, and again,
we made you a promise of sorts early on
that when we leave the arc of the story
and go into some personal thoughts or explanations,
we’ll try to identify that,
so that’s clearly what’s happening here,
but if we could concede that many of these stories
are probably told looking backwards, in other words,
if we concede that the people
who recorded these stories were likely down the road aways
and they were looking back on Israel with some fondness,
and they particularly celebrated the days
when Israel was strong and powerful
and destroyed their enemies,
there is a kind of
justification in this.
There is a kind of celebration of a people
who would destroy anyone who did the wrong thing
or who wronged them,
who always got on top of their enemies,
and in this case did so by trickery.
There is an aspect of that which would be celebrated
in these texts, and by these texts,
I mean really certainly the first five books
and maybe to some extent the Old Testament,
and so this is their response.
Now, here we have Jacob then,
and what you make of Jacob in this story
is very interesting, so let me read this.
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi,
“You have brought trouble on me
by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land,
the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
My numbers are few,
and if they gather themselves
against me to attack,
I shall be destroyed
both I and my household.
But they said,
‘Should our sister be treated like a whore
or be misused?'” And so Jacob,
yeah, I have to be careful here,
Jacob from one perspective seems to have gone back
to thinking primarily about himself.
Now, we don’t know,
you know,
Dinah is Leah’s daughter.
I know we’d have to take some guesses
at what he feels about this whole thing, but his mind,
at least in the way the story is told,
instantly goes to what might be the implications
and the problems for him in this,
and he doesn’t seem altogether,
he doesn’t seem to celebrate this.
He doesn’t seem to think this was a good response
by the brothers.
Clint, there’s another case where Jacob does not feel
like he has the upper hand as it relates to force.
I mean, he says, “My numbers are few.”
So we have what’s not really surprising to us now
at this point in the story,
someone who does not see forces away out of his problems.
I mean,
for him, it’s economic and it’s political, it uses trickery,
and here,
the very decisive action taken by his sons,
you know, it strikingly leads to these words.
I mean, look at this, it says,
if they gather themselves against who,
me,
and attack who,
me,
who will be destroyed?
I will, and my household.
And it’s interesting,
the brothers respond in verse 31,
should our sister,
right?
That’s a very different phrasing.
Instead of the singular,
it’s the plural.
And it’s just striking here,
Clint, that I’m not at all suggesting that Jacob is inherently
selfish in this regard,
but I am suggesting that fundamentally,
he does have a broader view
of what the implications of this might be,
that having some sense of order amongst these other people
is necessary for the longevity of the household.
That said,
he does seem to,
in that concern,
be overlooking
the,
if you wanna use the word justice,
that these brothers felt was necessary.
And again, we have an example of when Jacob seems
willing to walk the line,
if not cross it,
if it benefits his interests.
And maybe we could say the interests of his family,
you know, that’s more than just him personally.
But yeah, I’m not sure Clint,
a modern reader,
gets to the end of this section
and feels like it’s been resolved.
I’m not sure that there’s a sense that Dinah has anyway
been actually stood up for,
that the actions taken by the brothers were just,
that Jacob’s response is laudatory.
I mean, all
of it, I think, is unsatisfactory.
As you began this conversation,
the point is less upon resolving these conflicts,
which I think we would feel good about as the reader,
but rather pointing to the conflict and its implications
for the future of Israel.
Yeah,
there’s a sense in which, I think, Michael,
and check me here if this goes too far,
but there’s a sense in which I think this text
is uncomfortable with itself,
because not only is the subject matter disturbing,
but
Israel on the whole would celebrate a moment
in which an Israelite has been defiled,
and so they are avenged with disproportionate response.
I mean, there’s a sense in which the people
who will come later will celebrate this action
of these two brothers.
They acted decisively,
they acted shrewdly, they acted completely,
they eradicated the people
who had harmed their sister and then tried to pay for her.
There is a sense in which many people would go,
yeah, good work.
There is another sense in which Jacob carries
the covenant promise of the nation,
and the text sort of,
that promise rests with him.
And so I think the text is walking carefully here
not to necessarily tip the reader in one direction or other,
but let us kind of feel the tension, the balance beam
that is precariously balanced throughout this story.
Interestingly enough, not much happens with this story
that I know of.
I don’t think we circle back to this.
This is just kind of a standalone story.
It’s not clear what we are to take from it
in terms of interpretation.
Sometimes the lesson is very apparent.
In this one,
I think maybe far less.
It is interesting that the writer gives the brothers
the last word as if maybe that settles it.
But this is a hard,
I would be a little skeptical
of anybody who came out of this text thinking
they knew exactly what we learned from it.
Yeah,
I think my only tip, I think,
it’s often helpful with difficult text
to read the context that surrounds it.
The story often helps lead us.
And I’m struck here at verse 30,
the naming of the Canaanites and the parasites,
you’re gonna see Canaanites over and over and over again,
the text, and it’s striking to me
when we jump back in next Monday
and we turn to the next chapter 35,
you’re gonna discover
here
that Jacob’s immediately telling people
we need to put away false gods.
That seems to be not an accident.
This connection to these foreign people,
foreign nations,
false gods,
we need to stay true to the one true God.
I think this may be hard for us to conceive,
but there’s a kind of family
purity, a sticking with the traditions that we have,
the God who’s led us,
the one who gave us the promise.
Here,
they had a very, very,
very negative encounter on the right at every level with other people.
And I think fundamentally,
this is a cautionary tale.
And I agree with you,
Clint. I do think the text goes out of its way
to not answer these questions
because that’s what a cautionary tale is.
It’s one that says,
beware,
the water is troubled beyond here.
And I think to those who would have remembered this text
and would have written it,
I think it would have pointed them
towards the dangers that happen
when you don’t live within the promise
and the boundaries of the covenant family
and take that for what it’s worth.
Yeah, and speaking of family,
Michael, we’ve had this conversation before,
but keep in mind that times in Genesis,
people are representative of other things.
And so the sons here will each become a tribe
and the tribes are spoken of
throughout the rest of the Old Testament
with a kind of personality.
And it won’t surprise you later to run into Simeon and Levi
as the tribes of Simeon and Levi and find that
they’re rash and they’re prone to violence
and they lash out at their other tribes.
I mean, they have that.
And so part of this is not only the story
of the characters themselves,
but what the characters come to represent down the road.
Yeah, it’s a lot, Clint.
Tough Thursday.
Yeah, glad that you would be with us,
friends.
Hope you have a good weekend,
whatever it will hold.
And we will see you on Monday as we kick off chapter 35.
Thanks.