Dinah, screams from silence

The Bible is less a book about answers than a book that helps us ask the right questions. On rare occasions, it directly poses questions to its readers. It is our task to provide the answers.

One narrative ending with a question is the Book of Jonah. Jonah warns the city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, that if they do not repent, G-d will destroy them. The city, from king to peasant, immediately repents. Jonah, who had hoped that G-d would destroy Nineveh, sulks. In the book’s last verse, God responds, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

The book of Jonah asks about how the innocent, including animals, suffer for the sins of the guilty.  Questions continue, because one generation after Jonah, the Assyrian empire destroyed Jonah’s country of Israel. Thus, the book also asks: is a pre-emptive strike ever warranted?

Similarly, the story of Dinah in Genesis 34 poses multiple questions, and it is our task provide the answers.

The story begins when Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, seeks to visit the women of the land. Dinah never meets the women. "When Shechem… prince of the region, saw her… he lay with her by force.”  Questions begin:  Do we want Shechem imprisoned, and if so, for how long? Do we want him castrated, or executed? To bring the text into a modern context:  Do we want to punish the people who laughed with him when he shared the photos of Dinah on his phone or posted them to the Internet?

The Bible also asks what Dinah may be thinking. Is she praying, “My G-d, my G-d, why have you forsaken me?”

We next learn that Shechem’s soul (Hebrew nefesh, his life force) “cleaved to the Dinah… he loved the young woman and spoke to her heart.” He tells his father, “Get me this girl” to be my wife. 

When Jacob heard that his daughter had been “defiled” – “defiled” is his view of the incident — he waited until he could consult with his sons.  Should he attack, he endangers his family. Should he fail to act, he both shows himself vulnerable and fails to protect his daughter.

Shechem’s father then makes Jacob an offer: Let our children marry, he suggests. Our sons will marry your daughters; our daughters will marry your sons; we'll share the land and its resources. 

I can imagine Jacob thinking: “Let Dinah marry Shechem, and we’ll all have economic and political security.” Everybody will be happy, except perhaps for Dinah, who remains silent. Perhaps he thought, “It is better to sacrifice one daughter than to have the whole family destroyed.” Does Jacob act as a father should? Does he act as a community leader must? And where is Leah, Dinah’s mother? What were the other women, Israelite and Schechemite,  thinking?

Dinah’s brothers are furious at what happened. They make a calculated suggestion: "The only way we will accept your offer,” they tell the Shechemites, “is that every male among you be circumcised."  Circumcision is a sign of the covenant between God and the people Israel. The brothers debase this sign. “You raped our sister,” they are thinking; “we will cause you similar pain.”

The men of Shechem agree, for their king had told them that they would then possess all  of Jacob’s livestock and property. The Shechemite men circumcise themselves. Dinah’s brothers wait. One day, two days, and on the third day, when the men were “still in pain," Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi kill the men and retrieve their sister. Rape leads to a slaughter.  And Dinah, whose name means “judgment,” still remains silent.

Violence continues.  Dinah’s other brothers “plundered the city, because their sister had been defiled.” They took their flocks, their herds… “all their little ones and their wives….” What will happen to those little ones and wives?  Destruction, murder, enslavement, and rape do not resolve the original crime; they rather escalate the violence.

Jacob tells his sons: "You have brought trouble on me by making me hateful to the inhabitants of the land -- my numbers are few, and if they gather against me, I shall be destroyed.”

In the last line of Genesis 34, the brothers respond, “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” No word from God. Not even a mention of God in the chapter. And no word from Dinah.

Stories of rape and revenge repeat. In 2 Samuel 13, David’s daughter Tamar is raped by her brother, the crown prince Amnon. David refuses to act, and Tamar’s brother Absalom not only kills Amnon, he begins a civil war against this father. The Bible reminds us that rape happens, even in the best of families. It reminds us that people who commit rape are not just outsiders, such as Shechem, they are insiders, such as David’s son Amnon. More, the Bible shows that violence in response to rape leads to more violence, and to death.

What have we learned? Here are five thoughts.

First, we are not told what Dinah thinks, so we must give her voice. Would she rejoice in Shechem’s murder? In the murder of his friends? In the fate of the women and children? Or would she be revolted by the violence?  Did she want to marry Shechem? Does she want to give him a second chance? Will there have to be a third, and a fourth chance, as he continues to abuse, and then, after the anger subsides, to speak tenderly toward her?

Second, some early commentators suggested that Dinah is to blame for the rape -- had she not gone out to visit the women, they reason, none of this would have happened. The Bible does not blame the victim, and neither should we. 

Third, Shechem the rapist is also in the image of God. Until the pandemic, I taught classes at Riverbend Maximum Security Institute in Nashville. My students included men convicted of murder and rape, aggravated armed robbery and child abuse. In reading Genesis at Riverbend –Cain’s murder of Abel; Shechem’s rape of Dinah – my insider students insisted that they are more than their crimes. They are also men with families, with hopes, with guilt, with love. Jesus spoke of visiting people in prison – they too are part of our community. “Would you want to be known by the worst thing you’ve ever done?” one of my students asked. “I am not the man I was forty years ago when I was sentenced for rape,” said another.

Fourth, Genesis tells us that rape affects more than just the victim: it affects the victim's family and community, and it affects the rapist and the rapists’ family and community as well.  The men of Shechem are murdered, their wives and children seized. And Jacob’s family too will suffer, as they are forced to move: Rachel dies in childbirth on that journey. The trauma continues through the generations, to Tamar and Amnon, and onward

Fifth, the story asks us about God. In Genesis 34, God is not mentioned. But chapter divisions – which were added centuries later – can mislead.  G-d is invoked in the last line of chapter 33 and the first line of chapter 35.  Thus, silence does not mean absence.

The Bible tells us that violence begets more violence. It acknowledges the pain of the victims and the need for justice. It forces us to see what we would prefer to ignore, and then demands we, as a community, determine the best way forward.

by Amy-Jill Levine