Jacob at Shechem: Dinah and Shechem, Gen 33-34

A. Jacob at Shechem, Gen. 33:18–20; 34:1–31.

33:18-20 Jacob arrives at Shechem

Gen 33:18   Jacob arrived safely at the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, on his way from Paddan-aram; and he camped before the city. 19 And from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, he bought for one hundred pieces of money the plot of land on which he had pitched his tent.  20 There he erected an altar and called it El-elohe-israel.

The statement "Jacob arrived safely" reminds us that God has kept his promise ("I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land"). It was a promise made initially in Bethel before Jacob left for Laban's land (28:15, see p.  ? ), and repeated in the dream to Jacob before he left Laban's land to return to Canaan (31:3, 13). God kept his promises to Jacob. He kept him safe from the angry pursuing father-in-law Laban, and he kept him safe from Esau who could have still kept a grudge for what Jacob had done to him before leaving for Mesopotamia to get a wife. In the last chapter, God tested Jacob's determination to protect the little family that would some day become the nation of Israel, the womb of the messiah, and the hope for the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. Now he is home "safely", but the tests are not over. In this chapter we see that they come in the form of foolish and violent behavior by Jacob's own children to incite the Canaanites to anger. 

Up until now Abraham and Isaac have lived temporarily in the vicinity of several towns in Canaan, but chiefly in the south (around Beersheba, Hebron, and Gerar); see map here locllnk. 

Abraham had purchased a field in Hebron with a cave to bury his wife and for himself to be buried (Gen 23, see p.  ? ). Isaac may not have purchased land in the south, but he secured the right to farm lands in the area and cultivated grain (26:12-16, p.  ? ), something Abraham had never done. But this chapter is the first place where it is mentioned that Jacob purchased land. What he buys from the lords of Shechem is a plot of land outside the city limits of Shechem, where he could pitch his bedouin tents and carry on his livelihood as a livestock breeder. 

Shechem was the first city in Canaan where Abraham stopped when he arrived from Harran (12:6). That verse mentions his camping place as "the oak of Moreh" (אֵלֹ֣ון מֹורֶ֑ה). It also identifies the inhabitants of that area as "Canaanites," which as we saw earlier with Hethites is the more general designation of the peoples of Palestine, of which Hethites, Hivites and Horites are sub-groupings. In 34:2 we learn that the prince/ruler of the area around Shechem was Hamor the Hivite, who had a son with the same name as his city. Later on, when Joseph died in Egypt, his remains were brought to Shechem and buried there in land that Jacob bought from Hamor, the father of Shechem (Josh 24:32).  After the successful conquest of the land by Joshua, one of the cities designated to be a city of refuge to which a person accused of murder might flee the avenging relatives of the deceased until he could get a fair trial was Shechem, which was situated in the tribal allotment of Manasseh (Josh 20:7; 21:21).  Shechem was also where, at the end of Joshua's life, he gathered the nation's leaders to renew their covenant with God (Josh 24:25). Thereafter Shechem became a very important national center. Solomon's son, Rehoboam, went to Shechem to receive the allegiance of the northern tribes to his new kingship in Jerusalem. And after they refused to recognize him and chose Jeroboam as there own king, Shechem became Jeroboam's royal residence. In his famous speech in Acts 7, Stephen confuses Jacob's burial in a field Abraham had purchased from Ephron the Hethite with Joseph's burial in a field Jacob had purchased from Hamor the Hivite (Acts 7:16).

The relationship of semi-transient groups like Jacob and his family with the inhabitants of the ancient Middle Eastern towns was symbiotic. The groups like Jacob's provided certain products of value to the townsfolk, and vice versa. Usually there was a kind of agreement between the two groups, at least oral if not actually written. We later learn in this chapter, that intermarriage between such different social groups was not usual (34:8-10), but in this case might have appeared advantageous to the citizens (or at least the leaders) of Shechem (34:21-23). 

Inside the town would have been a temple or at least a shrine with an altar for worship of Canaanite gods. Jacob, living outside the town proper in his camp, erected an altar for the worship of Yahweh, the God of Abraham and Isaac. He gave a name to this altar, El-Elohe-Israel, which meant "the God of gods of Israel". The element El in this name is the Semitic word for "god." But it also served as the name of the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, like Greek Zeus or Roman Jupiter.  Since Jacob worshiped Yahweh, it is unlikely that El here is a name, but rather the word "god". And since no people of Israel existed yet, the name Israel in this altar name refers to Jacob himself. You remember that God had re-named "Israel" after the night of wrestling. The phrase "God of gods" shows that Jacob recognizes that his god is the true God, superior to all other beings called "gods". Moses himself uses the phrase "God of gods and Lord of lords" to describe Yahweh in Deut 10:17. And the similar expressions "king of kings" and "lord of lords" are used of the exalted Christ in Revelation 17:14 and 19:16. 

34:1-7 Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, rapes Dinah

This extended episode of rape and revenge seems to turn on a series of inversions that throw key elements of the covenant into a dark shadow. Fertility, marriage, circumcision, the promise that Abraham's progeny will be a blessing to the nations-these key elements of the divine plan are distorted and abused. (Reno, 253). 

The juxtaposition of chapter 34 with the previous one creates an impression of rapid chronological sequence, although the text gives no time indication. However, it is clear that Jacob must have spent several years in the neighborhood of Shechem prior to what is described in chapter 34; otherwise, Dinah and her two brothers would have been far too young to have played the roles assigned to them here.

In a rare instance where I do not fully agree with Nahum Sarna, he claims that this incident joins others in the patriarchal narratives to illustrate the sexual degeneracy of the Canaanites. In my estimation there are more examples of sexual sins attributed to Israelites in these narratives than to Canaanites. The chief of the latter is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. But the twin cases of Sarah and Rebekah being endangered in a pagan city were not due to the locals, who thought they were unmarried, but to their husbands, who claimed that were! And Judah's paying for sex with a prostitute in Gen 38 results in his impregnating his own daughter-in-law! 

Dinah is identified, not as the daughter of Jacob, but precisely of Leah (v. 1). This is to help the reader understand that the ringleaders of the revenge squad, Simeon and Levi, were her full brothers, sons of Leah (29:33-34; p.  ? ). This doesn't excuse their behavior, but helps us to see why they instead of Dinah's many half-brothers were the instigators. In a polygamous marriage, a daughter's male protectors were not their father, but their full brothers.

Dinah's behavior, we shall see, looks like what all too often happens to girls today, who think it would be fun to be sexually flirtatious, only to find that it can easily lead to their being raped. The boys' actions in raping are certainly not justified by this, but the girls' behavior that exposed them to this risk shows foolishness and irresponsibility. Sarna comments on the situation in Dinah's time.

“Girls of marriageable age would not normally leave a rural encampment to go unchaperoned into an alien city. The text casts a critical eye upon Dinah's unconventional behavior through use of the verbal stem יצא y-ṣ-ʿ ‘to go out’. Like its Akkadian and Aramaic equivalents, [in post-biblical Hebrew] the verb can connote coquettish or promiscuous conduct” (Sarna).

The ancient Hebrew manuscript of the Samaritans witnesses to a form of the Hebrew text in this verse that tells us Dinah didn't go to "see" the women of the city, but to "show herself among" them. She wanted to be seen along with the other Canaanite girls. This was her "coming-out party." This in turn explains why in the next verse (34:2) we read that Shechem "saw" her. The Hebrew expression "daughters of the land" doesn't refer to children or teenagers. "Daughters" simply means "female inhabitants" of the land. And the use of the expression "the daughters of the Canaanites" in 24:3, 37 to denote women unsuitable for marriage to Abraham's male descendants lends an atmosphere of disapproval to this statement about Dinah's behavior. We are not told if she went without parental approval.

While Dinah was still a virgin, her behavior suggested otherwise. The text says that Shechem—seeing her alone walking the streets like a prostitute—propositioned her and, when she resisted, had sex with her by force. When he discovered she was a virgin and therefore not a prostitute or loose woman, he decided that he loved her and wanted her to be his wife. This was a strange reaction, especially if contrasted with the behavior of David's son Amnon, who raped his half-sister and then rejected her suggestion that they ask their father to allow them to marry (2 Sam 13), but not at all impossible.

The initial reaction of Jacob's sons, upon hearing of the rape while they were out in the fields, was violent. The first verb that described their reaction ("were indignant")  also occurs in Gen 6:6, where it describes God's reaction to universal human sin, and leads immediately to his decision to destroy everyone but Noah's family. The brothers used two terms to describe what Shechem had done: (1) he had "defiled" their sister, a verb that has serious moral overtones: the corruption of the moral fabric of the land, and (2) his deed was an "outrage" (nĕvalah), a term that combines the notion of foolishness and godlessness.

ANE Rape Laws. 

The laws on rape are similar in all of the ANE cultures. In the case of the rape of an unmarried woman who is not yet engaged to be married, the laws of Moses stipulate that the rapist must pay a fine and must marry the woman and never divorce her (Deut 22:28), if she will have him. In ANE laws outside the Bible the treatment is similar but not identical. The Assyrian laws add retaliation against the rapist’s wife if he is already married (AL A55). The Sumerian laws 7–8 (ANET, 525–26) add mitigating factors: if the girl was in the street with her parents’ knowledge, the rapist may or may not marry the girl. 

In the case of rape of a betrothed or married woman, the laws of Moses set the penalty as death for the rapist and the woman went free if one could presume that she struggled and was coerced. If the rape occurred in a remote spot, such as the fields or the mountains, the wife or engaged woman was presumed to have cried out and is thus innocent of wrongdoing. If the attack took place in the town where she could easily have been overheard crying for help and yet was not, the woman was presumed guilty (Deut 22:23–38; cf. CH 130; LE 26; HL 197; AL A12, 16). The Assyrian laws (AL A23) add a further mitigation: in the case of the entrapped wife who was raped in town but who did not cry out when released, her paramour and procuress suffer the death penalty but the laws leave her punishment up to her husband.

Dinah falls in the legal category of a young woman who was not already engaged/betrothed to be married; so the proper penalty for Shechem (if this had been in the days of the Mosaic law) would have been that he be required to marry her, if she would have him. And if not, Shechem should have paid her a handsome monetary compensation for suffering the loss of her virginity (Deut 22:28).  

Despite her foolish and irresponsible behavior, Dinah was obviously the victim, not her brothers or father. But Simeon and Levi are more concerned with how this makes them look, rather than how Dinah might feel. The brothers complaint is that Shechem has "defiled" (the Piel of טָמֵא) Dinah, meaning probably that by taking her virginity he has reduced her chances of a subsequent marriage. This was what in the payment of the fine prescribed in Deut 22:28 was intended to cover. It would be added to her dowry. The brothers further justify to Jacob their massacre of the entire city, saying, "Should he have treated our sister like a harlot (זוֹנָ֕ה)?" (Gen 34:31). But by walking in the streets of the foreign city Shechem unaccompanied this is just how Dinah looked to all who saw her. And when Shechem discovered she was a virgin, he did not treat her as a harlot, but sought her hand in marriage. So the brothers' logic is wrong on all counts. And by assuming that the whole city of Shechem was complicit and must be massacred, they go beyond any reasonable law of evidence and rule of civil behavior. What they did was not only wrong according to God's law but even by the rules governing any civilized state. 

Had she wished, Dinah would have married into wealth. The domain of Hamor and his sons was vast, a thousand square miles, extending from Jerusalem in the south to Megiddo in the north, all of the central highlands of what became the Land of Israel. Hamor and his son were not just rulers of a single city. Rulers of Canaanite cities were usually called melek "king," while Hamor's title is nāsîʾ, usually translated "prince," but actually meaning "ruler or a large region comprising several cities and rural lands of nomadic tribes" (Gen 17:20; 23:6; Exod 16:22; 34:31; Num 1:44). This vaster domain, embracing large stretches of purely rural terrain, meant the ruler needed the cooperation of tribal leaders in order to govern. We see that need displayed in this story, since Hamor calls a town meeting and has to present cogent arguments to get the approval of the chieftains for his plan to intermarry with Jacob's family. 

In verse 2-3 Moses uses two triads of verbs to express respectively Shechem's raping Dinah and his subsequent attachment to her: first he "took … lay … forced" her, and after discovering she was no prostitute he "was drawn to … loved … spoke tenderly to" her. Unlike David's son Amnon, who raped his half sister Tamar, and then refused to marry her (2 Sam 13), Shechem wanted to marry Dinah afterwards. Whether she would want to marry him after he forced her to have sex, thinking she was a prostitute or loose woman, is quite another matter. Much depends on what his tender words to her were. Were they an abject apology and explanation that he mistook her? But this is a moot point, because we aren't told that her brothers even gave her a voice in the decision. She is used by both sides.

Why did Shechem want Dinah as a wife instead of just as a one-night-stand? Contrary to some commentators, I see no motive on Shechem's part for wanting to marry Dinah except his discovery that she was no prostitute and that he loved her. His father Hamor, admittedly, saw vast economic advantages to widening the single union to include multiple intermarriages which would merge Jacob's family with his own and those of other leaders of his realm. The difference between Shechem's primary interest and his father's can be clearly seen in the two men's speeches to Jacob and his sons in vv. 8-12. (In the movie Sabrina, you will recall the different attitudes of the character played by Harrison Ford and his younger brother, the latter of whom falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the owner of a company making a piece of technology that Harrison Ford's character needed. It became a marriage and a merger of two immensely wealthy and powerful families.)

34:8-12 Speeches of Hamor and Shechem

It isn't apparent from the English translation of v. 8, but the word "your" in "your daughter" is plural:  Hamor calls Dinah the daughter of both Jacob and his eleven sons, and he asks all of them to give her to his son in marriage. Apparently, he recognizes from the body language of the brothers that they demand to be parties to the settlement, and that their father Jacob is somewhat passive (on passivity see p.  ? ). Hamor's proposal of intermarriage and mutual trade and profit was extended to the brothers as well as to Jacob. In verse 11 the son Shechem also addresses the whole group, brothers as well as father. He promises bridal payments of two types and as high an amount as is desired. 

34:13-17 The brothers' response

The brothers respond for the silent Jacob. In v. 17 they seem to usurp Jacob' s role by referring to Dinah as "our daughter" (בִּתֵּ֖נוּ). They have no interest in the offers of either man. Their secret decision was to hold the entire city responsible and to exact revenge by slaughtering the whole population after using deception to render the male protectors less able to protect themselves and their families by requiring them to be circumcised. They planned to use the sacred symbol of God's covenant with Abraham (Gen 17:1-14, see p.  ? ) as a sordid means of humiliating and massacring the citizens of Shechem. But the brothers didn't divulge their plan to their father. They were going to launch a surprise attack. So they pretended to agree to the marriage on condition that all the males of the city join their family by being circumcised. They explained the necessity of the whole city undergoing circumcision because this marriage would be just be the start of wholesale intermarriage. Their words "We will live among you and become one people" threatens the promises of God to make only the descendants of Abraham—and those who joined them in faith, worship and obedience to Yahweh—into one great nation. Although circumcision was practiced by other Near Eastern peoples, including the Egyptians, the exact physical mode of the procedure sometimes differed, and the time of life at which it was administered (puberty or infancy). But the most important difference lay not in such physical and temporal issues, but in the intent. The circumcision God commanded Abraham to do was a sign (Hebrew ʾôt) of his covenant with Abraham's family. Only those who shared Abraham's faith in the one true God and believed in his promise were to be allowed to take on this physical sign of the covenant. It was to separate or distinguish God's covenant people from outsiders. Simeon and Levi (albeit deceitfully) proposed that they become one people with the Canaanite group at Shechem, reversing the intention of the covenant of circumcision. That Moses intended his readers to connect this episode with the earlier story of the giving of the Abrahamic covenant is shown by his word-play in verses 15, 22 and 23, where he uses an unusual verb ʾût for the Shechemites' consent or agreeing to the terms, a verb which sounds and looks almost identical to the noun ʾôt 'sign' used of the circumcision commanded of Abraham. This is why this episode was included here, not just because one daughter of Jacob got into trouble or one pagan city experienced the deceit and wrath of Jacob's sons. By showing how Jacob's sons had perverted the very meaning of the Abrahamic covenant, it shows a reason for God's taking the family into Egypt, where a circumcision unrelated to God's covenant was universally practiced, and where they would be disciplined by slavery for 400 years until God ended it through Moses. 

34:18-24 The Decision of the Shechemites

The motives of the Shechemites were not pure either. They saw this alliance and intermarriage with Jacob as a way to become rich at his expense (v. 23). As readers we also realize that because of God's promise of the land to Abraham's seed, none of Jacob's family should intermarry with the local Canaanites, who currently possess that land. The desire of the Shechemites to be "one people" with Jacob's family also reminds us of God's words about the builders of the tower of Babel: "And Yahweh said, 'Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them" (Gen 11:6, p.  ? ). 

34:25-29 The bloody revenge on Shechem. [34:25-29]

The ruse worked, and the sons of Jacob, led by Simeon and Levi, massacred the inhabitants of the city, an atrocity committed not in war but in peacetime on an unsuspecting city. This was an action so dishonorable as to make Jacob's family hated and despised by all the peoples of the area. Jacob himself was horrified at what his sons had done. He probably feared revenge by surrounding cities who were in treaty relationships with Shechem.

If God had ordered Dinah's brothers to do this, it might be defended on the principle of the responsibility of the whole populace of the city to punish Shechem for his deed; and therefore since they failed, they themselves shared in his responsibility for the crime against Dinah. They were "accessories after the fact." For a similar situation later in Israel's history, see the punishment of the tribe of Benjamin by the other tribes because it refused to punish its city of Gibeah for the rape and murder of a Levite's concubine (Judg 19-20). such a scenario might be legally and perhaps morally defensible.

But God had not ordered Simeon and Levi and their brothers to do this, and in his last blessings on his sons Jacob himself condemned these two sons (Gen 49:5-7, p.  ? ). Furthermore, in later Mosaic law (Exod 22:16-17 [MT 22:15-16]; Deut 22:28-29), rape was not punished by death, but by either forcing the man to marry the woman if she would have him, without the possibility of ever divorcing her, or if she didn't want him, requiring him to pay a heavy fine to her for his act. 

Several interpreters I have read (e.g., Reno) foreclose the options, assuming that unless Simeon and Levi acted as they did, the only alternative would be to accept Hamor and Shechem's proposal and intermarry. But this is clearly not so. Hamor and Shechem's proposals of marriage could have been politely and resolutely refused. If necessary, Jacob could also have demanded a penalty payment be given to his daughter, as the later law of Moses required, and as most ANE societies would have recognized as due. 

Everyone in the scene described in Gen 34 has done something wrong: What Dinah did by going unguarded into Shechem, looking for some Canaanite fun, was wrong; what Shechem did in taking her by force was wrong; what Jacob's sons did to take massive bloody revenge was wrong; and Jacob's being silent and not restraining his sons before their act was wrong. 

There was no need for all this bloodshed. There will be a proper time and place for the conquest of the land and the killing of all forces opposing Israel. It will come in God's time, after Israel escaped from national slavery in Egypt and needed a homeland, and under the leadership of Joshua, the man of God's choice. But this premature act, not commanded by God, demonstrated once more the truth of James' words: "the wrath of man doesn't produce the justice of God" (James 1:20). Human retribution, unguided by God's word and will, always ends up with all parties as losers. 

For now Jacob must be on good terms with the local inhabitants of Canaan, as his father Isaac and grandfather Abraham were. For Jacob as "peacemaker" see his earlier efforts with Laban (31:43-55) and Esau (32:1-21; 33:1-17); p.  ? . The obvious parallel and application to us is that Christians must firmly speak the testimony of Scripture and hold out the gospel unashamedly. We must not be ashamed of being different from the world. But we are to live peaceably with everyone, fulfilling Jesus' ideal "blessed are the peacemakers" (Mt 5:9). 

When Abraham first entered the land and stopped at Shechem, he lived under the Oak of Moreh (Gen 12:6), which means "oak of the Guide (or Oracle-giver)" Jacob and his sons should have chosen to live under the guidance of Yahweh, their Guide. 

34:30-31

Jacob now has even more reasons to be fearful. At first when he fled from Laban, he feared his father-in-law. When he returned to Canaan, he fear the revenge of Esau. Now he must fear reprisal by the allies of the men of Shechem.