Rape and Vengeance: The Story of Dinah

Introduction

Genesis 34 is about the rape of a virgin, Dinah, and its consequences. The Biblical text is straightforward: Dinah goes out (alone) from her father’s house and is raped by the local prince, Shechem. Shechem’s lust turns to love and his desire for her is so great that he and his father (Hamor) meet with Dinah’s father (Jacob) to request Dinah as Shechem’s wife. Shechem and Hamor offer an agreement of mutual exchange of wives between the Shechemite men, and the Israelite men. In addition, they agree to the stipulation added by Dinah’s brothers (Simeon and Levi) that all the Shechemite men be circumcised in order to comply with Israelite laws. Simeon and Levi base this condition on a loss of personal honor and religious fervor. This is in contrast to Abraham’s and Isaac’s pandering of their wives in Genesis chapters 12 and 20. After agreeing to the pact, Simeon and Levi wait until the third day after the circumcisions (when the Shechemite men are incapacitated): they seized Dinah from Shechem’s house; they pillaged the town; they killed all the males; they carried off all the wives and children; and they left with their spoils.

This text is undeniably disturbing. Dinah is the only female descendant mentioned in the Genesis account of Jacob and his twelve sons (Gen. 30:21). The announcement of Dinah’s birth stands out because it lacks an explanation of her name, in contrast to the etiologies for all of her twelve brothers. Dinah is raped by Shechem (son of the prince of the Shechemites, a neighboring tribe). Simeon and Levi make a false pact with the Shechemites in the name of religion. Jacob’s response is self-serving rather than reproachful. Rather than condemning his sons’ actions because of moral issues, he is concerned that I shall be destroyed, I and my house (Gen. 34:30).¹ As Ron Clark discusses, a surface view of the text leaves a reader with questions, judgments, and/or accusations concerning the characters and the dilemma of right and wrong. There is no indication as to how Jacob relates to the larger moral issue that innocent people are punished for the crimes of a few. It should be noted that Jacob does censure Simeon and Levi for acts of violence and cruelty while on his deathbed: Simeon and Levi are a pair; Their weapons are tools of lawlessness. Let not my person be included in their council, Let not my being be counted in their assembly. For when angry they slay men, And when pleased they maim oxen. Cursed be their anger so fierce, And their wrath so relentless. I will divide them in Jacob, Scatter them in Israel (Gen. 49:5–7). Perhaps the most troubling, the actions of the patriarch and his sons receive no words of reproof from Jacob, the biblical narrator, or God.

This article focuses on the two major acts of violence in Genesis 34: rape and vengeance within the context of biblical and other contemporaneous Ancient Near Eastern texts.

Rape

Ancient Near Eastern rape laws deal primarily with the status of the victim, and her lack of consent. The laws distinguish between a woman who is unattached, inchoately married (bride-money has already been paid for her by another man), and married. According to Middle Assyrian Laws A 55,² when an unattached girl is raped, her father has two options: he may demand that the rapist marry her without the right of divorce and with payment of a set bride money; or demand the bride money without the marriage. If the rapist is married, the rapist’s wife is to be given to the father of the rape victim for sexual abuse.

In the case of an inchoately married woman, her status intensifies the offense, and the rapist may be put to death.³ Middle Assyrian Laws A 124 bases “lack of consent” on two “facts”: first, the woman was outside on legitimate business; and second, her testimony that she resisted the rapist’s attentions.⁴ Hittite Laws 197 includes a mechanical test: if the act took place in the city, consent is presumed; if in the country, it is not, and the offense is rape.⁵

Deuteronomy discusses the laws pertaining to rape and some of these laws are similar to the contemporaneous Ancient Near East laws cited above. Rape of an inchoately married girl is punishable with death (Deut. 22:25), relying on the same context (city or country) for presumed consent as Hittite Laws.⁶ Deuteronomy provides a rationale: in the city the girl’s cries for help will be heard and consent is therefore presumed if she does not cry out (Deut. 22:24–27). The punishment for rape of an unattached girl is forcible marriage with no divorce, and payment of a set bride money, as in Middle Assyrian Laws A 55 (Deut. 22:28–29).

In Genesis 34, the rape of Dinah is regarded by the offender’s family (Shechem and Hamor) as deserving the penalties consistent with Deuteronomy 22:28-29 (the payment of a bride price, in this case the foreskin of all the adult Shechemite males) and these penalties are agreed upon by the victim’s family (Jacob, Simeon and Levi). Simeon’s and Levi’s subsequent actions seem to nullify any sense of honor and respect for the law since their revenge is the stated biblical revenge laws (discussed below).

Was There a Rape?

Many biblical translations sub-title this story “The Rape of Dinah.” In the context of the Ancient Near East, the fact that the sexual act took place without her family’s consent to marriage means that Dinah was raped, thus tainted, whether or not she consented (Genesis 34 does not stipulate any consent or objection). This debasement was not only physical but financial and status related as well. Dinah’s status was lowered from that of a virgin in her father’s house who was able to fetch a virgin’s bride-price and be of maximal use to her family’s negotiations for alliances through marriage with other kinship groups, to that of a non-virgin in a stranger’s house, no longer of use to her kin for financial or political purposes.

Scholars have written about Genesis 34 using a variety of approaches such as historical, anthropological, and source critical methodologies. Many of these studies have marginalized the rape committed by Shechem and the arguably even more violent acts of atrocities conducted by Simeon and Levi. For example, Gerhard von Rad writes that Genesis 34 reflects a “prehistoric conflict in early Israelite tribal history . . . to the time when Israelite tribes were not yet settled in Palestine but on their way thither in search of new pasture.” In other words, the sole purpose of the narrative is to memorialize the departure of the tribes of Simeon and Levi from the territory around Shechem.⁷ On the other hand, some feminist literary Bible scholars have produced a significant amount of “protest literature” against the Biblical text, the society that produced the text, and the culture that continues to use such a text for spiritual guidance.⁸

According to the midrashic literature,⁹ “While Jacob and his sons were sitting in the house of learning, occupied with the study of the Torah [!], Dinah went abroad to see the dancing and singing women, whom Shechem had hired to dance and play in the streets in order to entice her forth. Had she remained at home, nothing would have happened to her. But she was a woman, and all women like to show themselves in the street.”

Other scholars write that the Bible does not indicate clearly that Dinah was raped. Rather, they argue, the story suggests “mutual” love, which after it is consummated, pushes the couple to make their relationship legitimate. For example, Jean-Daniel Macchi states that the problem for the brothers is not violence against Dinah, but the rendering impure of their family. Thus, for Macchi, the story represents an “intra-textual debate about marriages with those who are not part of Israel”.¹⁰ Terence E. Fretheim observes: “Shechem proceeds to act in a way atypical of rapists: He clings to Dinah . . . loves her . . . and speaks to her heart . . . The latter phrase may cause Dinah’s positive response”.¹¹ Even more supportive of Shechem is Ita Sheres: “If one is to find male compassion in the story, one has to turn to Shechem, ‘the stranger’, who after the rape falls in love with Dinah and realizes that he must ‘console the girl’ before proceeding with official, ritualized courtship . . . In fact, it can be easily argued that Shechem’s attitude is not only the most human but also the most credible: how else could he have expected to live with Dinah, whom he had raped, as his wife?”.¹² Von Rad seems to concur in this view: “The figure of Shechem is made more human for the reader” than the brothers who “purify the honor of their violated sister at the cost of a morally ambiguous deed”.¹³

Dinah “went out to ‘see’ the daughters of the land” (Gen. 34:1), an innocent action on her part. The narrator then reports that Shechem “sees” Dinah. Having seen Dinah, Shechem then took her, laid [no preposition] her, and abused her (Gen. 34:2), a particularly damaging characterization. In biblical Hebrew, the normal grammatical construct shakhav ’im (“lay with”) is used to convey cohabitation, a mutually agreed upon act. However, shakhav, or shakhav ’et (“lay” used with a direct object rather than a preposition) is used when the act is forced, a rape. Similarly, in the Amnon and Tamar narrative, Amnon first tries to seduce his half-sister, Tamar, and says: Come, lay with me, my sister (II Sam. 13:11). When she refuses, the narrator reports Amnon’s actions: he abused her and laid [no preposition] her [direct object] (II Sam. 13:14). In this regard, Genesis 34 is different than David and Bathsheba, where the narrator makes it clear, both textually and grammatically, that Bathsheba was not raped: David sent messengers and he took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her . . . (II Sam. 11:4).

Although in the Bible males do “lay with” females in the context of “legitimate” sexual relations (Uriah’s reference to spending the night with his wife in II Samuel 11:11 and the conception of Solomon in II Samuel 12:24 are two examples), the vast majority of the uses of the verb shakhav refers to rape (as in this case), incest, for example Lot and his daughters (Gen. 19:32, 34, 35), promiscuity such as the activities of Eli’s sons (I Sam. 2:22), seduction in the attempts of Potiphar’s wife to seduce Joseph (Gen. 39:10, 12, 14), adultery and the punishment of David that others will “lay with” his wives (II Sam. 12:11), and forbidden relationships, such as an unclean woman, father’s wife and daughter-in-law, aunt, and homosexuality (Lev. 20:11-19).

The three verbs in Genesis 34:2, “take”, “lay”, “abuse”, negate any possibility of seduction or mutual consent, and imprint the act of violence. In effect, the narrator says that Shechem viewed Dinah as an object. She is not “lain with”, but rather “laid.”

In an immediate sequel, the narrator describes Shechem’s “change of heart”. In contrast to the Amnon and Tamar narrative where the sequence of events is love, rape, and then hate (II Sam. 13:11), Shechem first rapes and then “falls in love” with his victim. The three verbs of force, so powerful in the Hebrew text, change to three equally strong verbs of endearment: His soul (nefesh) “clung” to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman, and he spoke to the heart of the young woman (Gen. 34:3), a particularly significant phrase since it appears rarely in the Hebrew Bible, and occurs only when a situation is wrong, difficult, or when danger is in the air (see Gen. 50:21; Judg. 19:3; I Sam. 1:13; II Sam. 19:8; Isa. 40:8; Hos. 2:16; Ruth 2:13; II Chron. 30:22; 32:6) and when the phrase appears, someone speaks to the “heart” of the fearful character to resolve a frightening situation in a larger context of fear, anxiety, sin, or offense. Thus, Shechem’s “sincerity” and “love” seem to be emphasized by the use of this expression. Shechem “speaking to the heart” depicts his attempt to change Dinah’s negative reaction to him and convince her to accept him.

In describing the rape, the narrator says that Shechem “took” Dinah. Matching the action to the word, Shechem asks his father to take me this child for a wife (Gen. 34:4). “Taking” by force, a reprehensible act, now refers to “taking” in marriage. The “young woman” referred to by the narrator in verse 3 has become the object of Shechem’s “love,” and Shechem calls her a yaldah (“girl” or “child”) when speaking to his father, a term that suggests her vulnerability. “Take,” which indicated violent action in the narrator’s report of the rape, now recurs in a respectable social sense, the action initiated by the father of the groom in arranging a “proper” marriage for his son. But did Shechem really change? When addressing Dinah’s brothers, Shechem does not refer to Dinah as yaldah (“girl”), his previous reference to her, but as na’arah, the term for a nubile young woman. This is coupled by the narrator’s reference to him as the na’ar (boy) in verse 19, the masculine counterpart of the term he used for Dinah in verse 12. Genesis 34 does not indicate Shechem’s age. As John Colenso suggested, “the basic narrative seems to have described a peaceful intermarriage between the Israelites and Shechemites, on condition of the latter being circumcised”.¹⁴ Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob, is the Jewish girl; her groom is named after the city of Shechem and represents the non-Jewish inhabitants of the land. Despite Shechem’s seeming “gentlemanness,” he kept Dinah captive while negotiating with the brothers.

Vengeance

Scholars have studied both the similarities and differences in several Ancient Near East vengeance laws including the Laws of Hammurabi, the Laws of Ur-Nammu, the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar, the Laws of Eshnunna, Middle Assyrian Laws, and Biblical law. Most agree that the biblical laws can be understood in the context of other Ancient Near Eastern laws.¹⁵ Unlike biblical law, Ancient Near Eastern legal texts allow for vicarious punishment, i.e., the punishment of one or more of the culprit’s relatives instead of the culprit himself.¹⁶

Blood vengeance, as described in Ancient Near Eastern texts, is a form of “justice” in which the family or clan of the deceased has the legal authority to punish the assailant. This likely originated in pre-state societies in which clans needed to maintain a balance of power in which injury to one family is compensated by a comparable injury to the offending group.

Even when Israelite/Judahite society was ruled by a king (or, in the Persian period, by a governor and a high priest), the leaders needed to accommodate the clans who still felt that they had the right to take revenge on whoever killed their relative. Biblical laws represent a compromise between the “idealized” Israelite society, with judgments made by an objective third-party, and “clannish justice”, in which the blood avenger would hunt down the killer and take revenge.

Vengeance in the Bible is usually defined as inflicting punishment on another person in response to an offense or injury, or the withholding of benefits and kindness from another person for the same reason. The Bible distinguishes between vengeance that is “proper” and that which is not. For example, For He will avenge the blood of His servants, wreak vengeance on His foes (Deut. 32:43); I will bring a sword against you to wreak vengeance for the covenant (Lev. 26:25); and O Lord God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth (Ps. 94:1). Similarly, vengeance is appropriate when it is directed in a legally just war against the enemies of the entire people of Israel, who are at the same time considered enemies of God: To execute vengeance upon the nations and punishments upon the peoples (Ps. 149:7). This situation is not applicable to the actions of Simeon and Levi, and vengeance that is “sinful”. Vengeance is “proper” only in the restricted sense of dispensing justice for a legally punishable crime or sin, meted out in the prescribed manner. The one who inflicts the punishment is acting as an instrument of the court of law (or in rare cases, of God’s revealed will), but never merely to satisfy personal animosity. This is particularly relevant when examining the actions of Simeon and Levi.

In all other instances where one has been wronged, vengeance in all its forms is forbidden. The ideal, according to the Talmud, are those “who are insulted but do not retaliate with insult, who hear themselves put to shame and reply not” (TB Yoma 22b–23a). “He who forbears to retaliate will find forbearance [from God] for all his failings” (TB Shab. 88b; TB Rosh Hashana 17a). Simeon and Levi did not fit any of the criteria described above. As a result, their vengeance is “sinful,” yet Genesis 34 has no words of reproof from Jacob, the narrator, or God.

Conclusion

Genesis 34 is a most disturbing story for a few reasons. First, Dinah went out from her father’s house and was raped by the local prince, Shechem. Second, although the punishment for rape of an unattached girl is forcible marriage with no divorce and payment of set bride money, neither of which were available to Dinah. And third, Shechem agreed to the stipulation added by Dinah’s brothers that all the Shechemite men be circumcised in order to comply with Israelite laws. After agreeing to the pact, Simeon and Levi waited until the third day after the circumcisions, seized Dinah from Shechem’s house, pillaged the town, killed all the males, carried off all the wives and children, and left with their spoils. Simeon and Levi based this condition on a loss of personal honor and religious fervor. The slaughter of the Shechemites was falsely perpetrated in the name of Simeon’s and Levi’s religion and against the precepts of the religion relating to vengeance.

Works Cited

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