Genesis 34

Jacob's decision to loiter around instead of returning to the home God promised him leads to a rather unsavory incident. A malefactor named Shechem rapes Jacob's daughter Dinah, and then has the temerity to ask Jacob and his sons to take her as his wife. What exactly did he think they were going to say? Sadly, it probably was the norm to treat women like objects, so I suspect Shechem expected Jacob and Co. to hand her over. As a prince (his father, Hamor, ruled that area), he was also probably used to getting his own way.

In a rather cruel yet morbidly humorous trick, Jacob's sons say that all of the males in Hamor's tribe must circumcise themselves if they want to intermarry with Jacob's clan. Utterly smitten with Dinah, Shechem agrees without a second thought. We all know the saying "adding insult to injury," but Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi, add death to injury by slaughtering all the men in Hamor's city--while "all of them were still in pain" (verse 25). Shechem, at least, probably deserved it.

Dinah is a non-entity in this story; all the guys do the work for her. I'm glad that society has progressed enough that we (for the most part) allow women to speak for themselves and stand on their own, though we still have some ways to go. But you know who else was also a non-entity in this story? You guessed it--Frank Stallone, I mean Jacob. In verse 5, when he hears what's been done to his daughter, he dallies around, waiting until his sons come home. If Dinah were my daughter, I'd be so apoplectic and appalled that I don't know how exactly I'd react, but I certainly wouldn't bide my time waiting for my sons to get home. His sons devise this whole plan while Jacob observes mutely; only after the fact in verse 30 does he scold his sons for making them "obnoxious" to the surrounding tribes. Well, Jacob, why didn't you speak up before your sons decided to butcher a whole city whose men were still clutching their nether regions?

I get that we're not getting every single detail of this story; Jacob indeed might have actually been concerned about his daughter (you know, the person who was actually raped). Perhaps his seeming detachment was a coping mechanism? I hope that I will never have to deal with anything like this, but if I do, I pray that I will react better than Jacob did. At the same time, while I respect that Dinah's brothers didn't sell her out, I also don't think they should have punished the whole city for one man's crime. Maybe they the whole city was wicked (like Sodom), but I certainly can't use that to justify any of my actions. And while the brothers had their vengeance, it seems that Dinah was left neglected when she really could have used some succor. It might be a little conceited for me to think that I'll be in a situation in which I am someone's ONLY source of comfort, support, and encouragement, but who knows? At any rate, that shouldn't stop me from offering those qualities anyway.