D’Var Torah: Va Yishlach— Dinah -- Rape, Revenge, or Something Else? December 16, 2016
In Genesis 32:4-36:43, the Sedrah or weekly Torah portion Va Yishlach, the patriarchal saga of the Jewish People continues. Jacob successfully survives several major challenges. After 20 years, Jacob peacefully reunites with his twin brother Esau (Gen. 33:1-15). He had originally fled Esau and gone to Haran (probably in the area of modern Syria), after stealing his father Isaac’s blessing from his older brother (Gen.27:1-45). Just before meeting Esau, he successfully wrestles with an angel at Jabbok’s Ford and receives a new name, “Israel,” or “champion of God.” According to the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate Biblical translations, ”Israel” means, “Thou didst prevail with God, and thou shalt prevail against men (Gen.32:29).”
After these triumphant episodes in Gen. 32-33, Jacob returns to a peaceful life in Canaan. However, Gen. 34 follows. This jarring chapter, as the Hertz Torah commentary aptly states, deals with dishonor, wild revenge, and indiscriminate slaughter.
Let’s start with the “conventional” account of Gen. 34, the story of Dinah. Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter by wife Leah, decides to leave her rural home unaccompanied to go visit “the daughters of the land,” probably in an urban part of the Kingdom of Schechem, the area of modern Nabulus. Schechem, a prince, the son of Chieftain Chamor, is physically attracted to Dinah. He takes her and lays with her by force. Flat out translation: he rapes her. Schechem loves maiden Dinah and speaks to her tenderly. He says to his father Chamor that he wants Dinah for his wife. Jacob and his sons are, naturally, very upset. Chamor comes to Jacob and speaks to him about arranging a marriage between Dinah and Schechem. Chamor asks not only that son Schechem and Dinah be married, but also, that their two clans intermarry and peacefully dwell with each other. Jacob agrees on the condition that all the men of Schechem become circumcised. Chamor and son Schechem get their men to agree. On the third day, after all the Schechem men are in pain, recovering from their circumcisions, Dinah’s brothers, Simeon and Levi, kill Schechem and Hamor and all the other unsuspecting men of Schechem. They take Dinah away from Schechem’s house. The rest of Jacob’s sons join in the fray by grabbing all the Schechemites’ cattle and wealth. They take the Schechemite wives and little children (Gen. 34:8-29). Jacob’s response? He tells sons Simeon and Levi that this action by his small people “won’t play well or look good” to neighboring Canaanite peoples. These groups might now “gang up” against them, destroying them all (See Gen. 34:30). Simeon and Levi could care less. The revenge of their sister’s rape was all that mattered (See Gen. 34:31). No such Canaanite attack on Jacob and his family occurs. This violent account concludes with Verse 31, and nothing more is directly said about the aftermath of the Schechem massacre. Dinah’s subsequent life is not discussed in any other Biblical accounts.
This story remains very disturbing on many accounts. First of all, I find it unusual, as do other commentators and writers, that no one hears from Dinah herself about the matter. She is treated like an object, her status to be settled only by men from both her family’s and Schechem’s clans. This account is told just from the viewpoint of three males, Simeon, Levi, and Jacob. As a woman, I find this galling. Did Dinah want to marry Schechem or was she forced to go through with this marriage? If she didn’t want to go through with the marriage, Simeon and Levi rightfully rescued her. If she really did love Schechem, what her brothers did was beyond horrible. And anyway, even if Dinah didn’t want to go through with the marriage, why massacre the rest of the Schechem men and take their families and possessions? They had nothing to do with this rape. Some commentators argued that all the Schechemites “deserved killing” and plunder because they themselves were “wicked,” aiders and abettors in what Prince Schechem himself did. Ridiculous! There is no evidence in the Biblical account that the men of Schechem egged on or assisted Prince Schechem. What Schechemite would dare challenge a prince? Schechem was not a democratic monarchy and protestors would have been killed for condemning the royal family. A few commentators argue that the Biblical heroes can do no wrong, and, therefore, praise the brothers’ vigilante actions.
The idea, however, that Biblical characters are perfect human beings is inconsistent with the overwhelming views of rabbinic commentators and the Bible itself. Jewish tradition displays the “Founding Jewish Fathers/Mothers” with all their warts. Only God is perfect. Sarah cruelly has Ishmael and his mother Hagar thrown out into the desert with little water and Abraham goes along with banishing his son and concubine. Isaac favors Esau as his firstborn, while wife Rebecca shows complete favoritism toward Jacob. She gets Jacob to trick his blind father into giving him the blessing. And Jacob, himself, is no “great shakes” as a father. He goes out of his way to favor his deceased wife Rachel’s sons, Joseph and Benjamin, causing extreme jealousy among the other brothers. Joseph is almost killed by his brothers’ hatred. Moses is shown as temperamental. He strikes a rock in the desert despite being told by God just to speak to it to get water. He is, therefore, barred from entering the Promised Land. King David adulterously falls in love with Bathsheba and has her husband killed in battle so he can marry her.
On Jacob’s deathbed, after he has had more time to think about what sons Simeon and Levi had done to “avenge” Dinah, Jacob condemns these two brothers . He states that “Their weapons are tools of lawlessness.” They were not to be involved in tribal assemblies where decisions were made. Jacob curses their anger for “slaying men” and their “relentless wrath.” Jacob says that these tribes “will be scattered and divided throughout Israel (See Gen. 49:5-7).” In Moses’ final blessing to the 12 Tribes, Simeon is not even mentioned (Deut. 33:6-29).
After thinking about this whole unusual chapter, I have reached some conclusions. We have to understand that the Bible was mainly written by males and was heavily influenced by the patriarchal world view of the whole Middle Eastern area. Rape then was often seen more as an affront to the family’s father than to the violated woman. The raped woman, even under Biblical law, was viewed as “damaged goods.” If she was not an engaged virgin at the time of her rape, the rapist has to pay the victim’s father 50 shekels, marry the victim, and not divorce her. The aggrieved father is, therefore, made “whole” and relieved of an unmarriageable “damaged” daughter (Deut. 22:28-29). At that time, such a view was “enlightened” thinking. In Talmudic times, between 200-400 C.E./A.D., in cases of seduction and rape, the girl as well as the father have the right to refuse the marriage. Several medieval and even modern Biblical commentators condemn Dinah for leaving her home, instead of staying quietly with her family. They go on to say that she dressed provocatively and acted in a coquettish and promiscuous manner-- the “she asked for it,” blaming the victim attitude. Fortunately, in my humble opinion, times evolve and continue to evolve. Judaism does not and has never interpreted the Bible literally. Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book explaining Judaism, “To Life,” aptly sums it up. He states that he can’t ask Jews to censor or “rewrite” Biblical passages offending women, gays, or other groups. The Bible was divinely inspired but written by men in their own historical setting. We must, however, interpret these verses in light of contemporary standards. We don’t treat women as we did in ancient times, and we certainly, in modern societies, don’t condemn gays to death as Lev. 20:13 does.
What did happen to Dinah? We’ll never really know, but that did not keep people from discussing her fate. The rabbis and many learned sages came up with various stories about her, what is called the “Midrash Aggadah” in Judaism. Alan Dershowitz, in his book, “The Genesis Of Justice,” mentions one “fantastic” Midrashic interpretation. That Midrash tries to make Joseph’s wife, Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest (Gen.41:46), the daughter of his sister Dinah who became pregnant when Schechem raped her. This Midrash has an angel carrying Dinah’s baby down to Egypt where Potiphar, Joseph’s master, adopts her because his wife was childless. Joseph later discovers Asenath’s Jewish lineage and marries her! This Midrash comes up with this story in order to say that Joseph married a Jewish woman in order to conform with later Jewish law. That law declares that Jewishness comes from the mother or via matrilineal descent. Another Midrash has Dinah’s brother Simeon promising to try to find a husband for her. Dinah, however, refuses to leave Schechem, fearing that in her “damaged” state, no one would marry her (Gen. Rabbah). Another Midrash has Dinah later marrying Job, the wise and decent man who suffered multiple calamaties imposed upon him as a “test by God (Gen. Rabbah, Bava Batra 15b).”
Some commentators believed Dinah had a son, not a daughter via Schechem. In Gen. 46:8-27, the Torah lists 70 families who went down to Egypt together. In Gen. 46:10 Simeon’s children include “Saul, the son of the Canaanite woman.” The famous medieval French Jewish commentator Rashi maintained that Dinah is the “Canaanite woman”, and that her son Saul received a portion of the land of Israel under Joshua. Saul’s name is repeated as one of Simeon’s sons by a “Canaanite woman” in Ex. 6:15. Midrashic legend also has Simeon burying Dinah in Canaan after her death. In Anita Diamant’s best-selling 1997 novel, “The Red Tent,” Dinah gives her own fictionalized first-person account of what happened to her. In this book, Dinah genuinely loves the prince of Schechem, now called “Shalem,” meaning “whole” or “peaceful.” She had gone to Schechem as a midwife to deliver the son of the king’s concubine. There, she has consensual sex with Shalem. She is horrified by her brothers Simeon and Levi killing Shalem and the rest of the men who had agreed to be circumcised. She flees to Egypt with her mother-in-law and has a son, Re-mose. He is brought up against Dinah’s wishes as her mother-in-law’s son. Dinah later meets a carpenter and marries him. She becomes a midwife again and is later re-united with Joseph. Again, Diamant’s account is another fantastic legend, but it gives a voice to a forgotten woman.
Jacob and his sons had many encounters with the various Canaanite tribes . Why does the Torah put in the Dinah story? Probably to explain what later happened geo-politically to the tribes of Simeon and Levi. Levi became a landless tribe and the tribe of Simeon dwindled away merging with Judah and intermarrying with the Canaanites (Plaut, “The Torah, A Modern Commentary). The Dinah account was also used to demonstrate that the leadership of the Jewish people could not be entrusted to violent Simeon and Levi after massacring the Schechemites. The leadership of the Jewish People, therefore, passed to Judah. Judah had saved Joseph from being killed (Gen. 37:26) and eloquently pleaded with him in Egypt to spare Benjamin’s life (Gen. 44:18-34).
Most scholars believe the Bible was made up of many textual strands. Stories were written at different times by many authors who held different viewpoints. In Gen. 33:18-20, just before the Dinah chapter, Jacob peacefully purchased land from the children of Chamor in Schechem. Maybe Jacob bought this land and annexed the rest of Schechem later with no rape, revenge, or violence involved.
Most likely, there was antagonism between Jacob and the Schechemites that went on for a while. One does not call the Chief of Schechem “Chamor,” the Hebrew word for “donkey,” if one had a good relationship with him and his clan. Whether this rape of Dinah, however, occurred and Simeon and Levi massacred the inhabitants, as recounted, cannot be proven.
Jewish tradition teaches, as the Prophet Ezekiel later said in the Babylonian Exile, that the sins of the fathers are not passed on to the children. Each person is judged on his/her own record. Though the Tribe of Simeon disappears from history, the Tribe of Levi, although landless, becomes the priestly tribe that ministers in the First and Second Temples. Moses and his brother Aaron are Levites. Moses blesses the tribe of Levi as a “holy one (Deut. 33:8).” In the Golden Calf account, the Levites kill the people who had worshipped that image (Ex. 32:28). The Levites now use violence in a just, not a senseless cause. How one reads the Dinah story is a matter of individual interpretation. Interpretation is what has made studying the entire Bible so interesting and challenging throughout the ages. I hope I have explained a few of the interpretations that can be drawn just from this one chapter.
Shabbat Shalom