Women with a Story to Tell 11

 I would guess that, while you may have heard a song about Dinah, you have never heard a sermon about Dinah. There is a story in the Bible about Dinah. ‘About her’ is correct, because nowhere in the story are we told what Dinah wants or what Dinah thinks. Perhaps that is our first lesson for the day. The Bible is set in a variety of ancient cultures, and none of them are careful enough to ask what women think.

 The previous story about Rebekah is unique, then, in that Rebekah’s brother and father do ask her to come forward and make her choice. “This man wants to take you on a long journey to marry our Uncle Abraham’s son. What do you think about it?” (paraphrase, Genesis 24: 50-57). 

 Unfortunately, that was not the case with Dinah. Here is her story, in brief. Jacob came from Aram and settled in Canaan (the Promised Land) with his wives, Leah and Rachel, and his children. He met the chief of the area, Hamor, bought a piece of land, and began a new life. Jacob, aka Israel, had 12 sons. But he also had one daughter, Dinah born to the handmaid Leah. 

 As everyone was getting familiar with this new land, Dinah also went out to meet the women who were more her age. The only people who are named as being in the Jacob’s camp were her brothers and some old men and old women. While visiting the young women, Dinah caught the eye of Shechem, the chief’s son. 

 Here is how the writer of Genesis put it.

“Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her. His heart was drawn to Dinah, daughter of Jacob; he loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. And Shechem said to his father Hamor, “Get me this girl as my wife.”

 This paragraph speaks volumes, but not enough for us to know what’s really going on. Both Jewish and Christian scholars have produced various interpretations, and often contradictory ones. I am not as smart as them, but I will show you what is there in the text and what is missing.

 First, notice the contrast between the second and third sentence. The second sentence, in English translation, sounds like an assault: “he took her and raped her.” Remember, as we understand it, rape is not about love or sex; rape is about power and violence. 

 The third sentence portrays a different view of Shechem: “His heart was drawn to Dinah…; he loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her.”  That does not sound like the emotions or behavior that we usually associate with rape. On the other hand, even in our own society we have only recently reached the understanding that ‘No’ means ‘No!’ 

 There is a hint here that something is amiss. The phrase “he talked tenderly to her” could also mean that he was trying to calm her down and convince her that he loved her. If that is true, then this was not consensual sex. 

 Now, to the actual words. The word for ‘took’ in its various forms appears 965 times in the Old Testament. It is used with many meanings in many contexts. The first is, “the LORD took the man and put him in the garden of Eden” (Genesis 2: 15), followed by the LORD put him to sleep and “took one of his ribs” (Genesis 2: 21). The first association with an evil act was when Eve “took the fruit (Genesis 3: 6). Later, “Lamech took two wives” (Genesis 4: 19). Lamech was the first to do so, and it looks like a power move. Lamech was a proud and vengeful man. 

 Perhaps the most common use of the verb is when it is said of a man that he ‘took’ a wife. In fact, acceptable translations of the word range from ‘to take’, then ‘to seize’, and finally, ‘to marry’. Makes you wonder about early marriage practices, doesn’t it? Perhaps we also should wonder about our own wedding language, “Who gives this woman to this man in holy matrimony?” and “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” The ‘give’ and ‘take’ language reflects that, at least in the past, this was a man’s world, and women were currency in an exchange economy.   

 The word ‘rape’ in this translation is a fusion of two verbs in Hebrew. Our translation does not show it clearly, but there are actually four verbs in this sentence: ‘he saw her’, ‘he took her’, ‘he lay with her’, and ‘he violated her’. In our NRSV translation, the last two are combined to give us “he raped her.” 

 The third verb means ‘to lie down’ or ‘to sleep’. Of course, today, we still use these as slang for having sex: ‘He laid her’ or ‘she slept with him’. 

 The last verb shows up in different translations as ‘he disgraced her’, ‘he humiliated her’, ‘he defiled her’, ‘he violated her’, and ‘he forced himself on her’. Notice that most of these imply her shame in society and do not speak to her internal feelings. 

 It’s complicated, isn’t it? First, it seems like rape. Then, we learn that the word that is translated as ‘love’ here is used elsewhere to describe our feelings toward God and also God’s feelings toward us. Finally, ‘he spoke tenderly’ or ‘from the heart’ to her. 

 How will this conflict be resolved? Has anybody asked Dinah yet what she thinks or feels?