Okay, so since we last heard from Jacob, a lot of time
passed, and his kids are all grown up now. Dinah, Leah and Jacob’s daughter,
goes out into the world, gets seen by a prince named Shechem, and promptly
raped by him. Raped. The next few verses talk about Shechem’s feelings for
Dinah as love. “He loved the girl, and spoke tenderly to her” and he essentially
commands that she will be his wife (Gen 34:3). Jacob “held his peace” until his
sons come back from the field, and when they do, they are appropriately
outraged that their sister has been defiled “for such a thing ought not to be
done” (Gen 34:4, 7). The king (Hamor)
and prince keep trying to get Dinah and the other Israelite women to become
their wives, at whatever the price of the dowry. Jacob’s sons then decide to
have a little fun with them, saying that unless all the men are circumcised,
they will not be of one people, and they could never marry their women. And
what do Hamor and Shechem do? The get together all the men in the city, and
everyone gets circumcised… seems a little extreme, but okay. But while all the
newly snipped men are still recovering, Dinah’s brothers go kill everyone, and
Jacob’s other sons go and loot everything. Retribution. Then Jacob reprimands
his sons for their behavior, and we’re left with his sons questioning back “Should
our sister be treated like a whore?” (Gen 34:31).
I have serious mixed feelings about this. In part, this just
disgusts me. Dinah gets no voice of her
own. Absolutely none. She’s talked about more as an object than a person.
Granted, this is the Old Testament, written by stodgy old men in a time where
women were property, not people. But still!! Then if that’s not enough, the
fact that Shechem talks about his abounding love for Dinah after raping her
just about made me throw the book across the room. Rape is a power trip, not
love. Love has already been given some good precedents, like Jacob working forever
to earn the hand of Rebekah, and this feels like it’s undermining all of that.
Moving on from the actual rape and theoretical motivations
for it… Jacob and his sons’ reactions. I appreciate the justified anger of
Jacob’s sons. They are legitimately outraged, and completely justified in it. But Jacob gives no guidance here. He just stays quiet until after his sons have
incapacitated then murdered everyone. Now, I’m sure he wasn’t told the whole
plan, but he could have pre-empted the entire situation by ending it as head of
household before letting his sons meddle. And after it’s all over, he yells at
them, trying to guide after the fact, but it just confuses his morally loose
sons. It leaves them wondering how to let their sisters, wives, and daughters
be treated at all.
We live in a culture that teaches to not get raped, instead
of teaching not to rape. There are people in the world who honestly believe
that “legitimate rape” causes a woman’s body to shut down and therefore not
become pregnant because of it. While this stems from a debate about abortion,
the idea is out there, and the rapists get latent sympathy. We are self-aware
enough as a society, however, to know the attitude about rape, but instead of
helping to solve the problem, it perpetuates it. Every so often, you’ll hear a story about a
girl who cries rape, but she consented, regretted, and knew she could take
advantage of the system in place. I wish
I had some nugget of wisdom to add here about how we are continuing to grow and
evolve. About how at least women aren’t actually property anymore. About how
overzealous justice can still teach us something. But I don’t. The whole thing just makes me
sick to my stomach.
<3 Agnostic in the Pews
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