Dinah and Shechem (Nablus)

Powerful book
The Bible is a very powerful and dynamic book with strong impact on the entire human race. It is not a peaceful and objective philosophical, religious study of matters of faith but pure fire just seeking for fuel to put into flames. (However, you can find also in the Web many comments on Genesis 34 that are considerably calmer then my text.)

So powerful that it was forbidden in the might Soviet Union.

The Land of Israel is a promise to the people of God but it is also a great challenge and even judgement vomiting evil doers out of it as the history of the Jewish people so dramatically demonstrates.

Jerusalem, the city of the Great King, the heart of Zionism from which the name of the national movement of modern day Jews is derived  is an epitome of all this.

God of Israel we encounter in the Bible is not something to be taken lightly or as self-evident. He is not a little idol sitting in the pocket of the Rabbis of Israel obeying their will. Nor is He something we Christians can control or boss around. But we all, Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, can pray for His grace.


Shechem
The story of the sons of Jacob at Shechem is a good example of the dynamic and challenging nature of the holy Scriptures rather far from the quiet ponds of religious meditation and goodwill to all people we so often associate with true religion. The ancient massacre in Shechem is true religion in action and recorded in the sacred history - the deeds of the people of God of Israel, the only real God there is.

The events at Shechem told in Genesis take place long before the arrival of the Philistines from the Aegean region to the coast of Gaza. The story is set to the range of ancient Hebron called el-Khalil Friend (of God in Arabic. Archaeologists call this Middle and Late Bronze Age - third millennium before the birth of Jesus Christ. Despite of its great age the narrative in Genesis is curiously relevant today.

Shechem is located between Mt Garizzim and Mt Ebal that are holy to the Jews and to the Samaritans.  The city was renamed Neapolis by the Greeks and Arab ear transformed that to Nablus (cf. Tripoli(s), Tarabulus al-Gharb). Today it is among the largest Palestinian cities in the West Bank with a population of 126.000.

The story is not so much about conquering the promised land - these events came later after the Egyptian bondage - but rather about how to treat the people who happen to be living in the area promised by God to Abraham and his seed.


Rape and marriage proposal by a non-Israeli dignitary

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.”
Gen 34:1-4 NIV

Then Shechem’s father Hamor went out to talk with Jacob. Meanwhile, Jacob’s sons had come in from the fields as soon as they heard what had happened. They were shocked and furious, because Shechem had done an outrageous thing in Israel by sleeping with Jacob’s daughter—a thing that should not be done.
Gen 34:6-7 NIV

As you may know, a case of an Israeli Arab man allegedly raping an Israeli Jewish woman was in the front page news in Israel and the world during 2010.

An Arab man convicted in Israel of rape because he pretended he was a Jew when he had consensual sex with a Jewish woman has called the verdict racist. Sabbar Kashur, 30, was found guilty of "rape by deception" by the Israeli court and sentenced to 18 months in jail.
 (BBC news)

Thus, the sentiments we see in the Biblical story are very relevant today, as well. Technology and politics and society has changed but we human beings are the same.


Peace proposal to the sojourners in the Land

But Hamor said to them, “My son Shechem has his heart set on your daughter. Please give her to him as his wife. Intermarry with us; give us your daughters and take our daughters for yourselves.
You can settle among us; the land is open to you. Live in it, trade in it, and acquire property in it.”
Gen 34:8-10 NIV

Doesn't this sound so modern and relevant, two people living in a region and trying to figure out the relations between them. Definitely in Israeli settlements such tones and voices are highly relevant underpinnings today, almost five thousand years later.

I find this political, social, racial and religious relevance of the holy Bible truly amazing.


Justified deceit in the name of religious habits

Because their sister Dinah had been defiled, Jacob’s sons replied deceitfully as they spoke to Shechem and his father Hamor.
Gen 34:13 NIV

Raping a woman has been and continues to be a way to get her in marriage. Social values and the shame the woman brings to the family - never mind that she was innocent and the man forced himself on her despite of her screams - are very powerful motives in today's Near East and especially in the Arab Islamic culture.

In this situation the Biblical narrative simply tells that because of the evil deed the sons of Jacob behaved deceitfully. There is neither condemnation nor approval of such behaviour in the name of religion towards a trusting man. This is very human but also important to keep in mind as we are talking here about a sacred book at the heart of Judaism and Christianity. These stories do serve also as models of behaviour and guidance in similar situations.

It may be correct to say that such deceitful behaviour is considered "wise" by the people living in the Near East today - a smart way to act in a difficult and threatening situation. After all, Hamor is the son of the powerful ruler of the Shechem area. There must be thousand and one stories that illuminate similar wisdom in hard places in Oriental traditions and literature. Westerners with their ethics find this often rather baffling - a deceit is a deceit, is it not?

In this way, the deceitful snake in the Garden of Eden was most cunning (arum) among God's creatures and fooled even Eve.

והנחשׁ היה ערום מכל חית השׂדה

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’? ”
Gen 3:1 NIV

Peace agreement depending on circumcision 

Adult circumcision in ancient Egypt
image Catholica

They said to them, “We can’t do such a thing; we can’t give our sister to a man who is not circumcised. That would be a disgrace to us. We will enter into an agreement with you on one condition only: that you become like us by circumcising all your males.

Then we will give you our daughters and take your daughters for ourselves.
We’ll settle among you and become one people with you.
But if you will not agree to be circumcised, we’ll take our sister and go.”
Gen 34:14-17 NIV

Circumcision is here a significant sign of covenant for the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Hivvites are here invited to join the Abrahamic covenant in a very simple but powerful way. "We will settle among you and become one people with you" on this fundamentally religious foundation (to use modern terminology).

In today's Near East the meaning of circumcision is less pronounced as it is a tradition also among the Moslem population. The tradition may be more related to health and other issues and has no religious significance for the Muslim.


Agreement accepted - but with some rather material motives!

So Hamor and his son Shechem went to the gate of their city to speak to the men of their city.  “These men are friendly toward us,” they said. “Let them live in our land and trade in it; the land has plenty of room for them.

We can marry their daughters and they can marry ours. But the men will agree to live with us as one people only on the condition that our males be circumcised, as they themselves are. Won’t their livestock, their property and all their other animals become ours?
So let us agree to their terms, and they will settle among us. ”
Gen 34:21-23 NIV

Material gain when people of Jacob living their nomadic lifestyle settle among the city dwellers, intermarry and bring their livestock near.


The massacre of Shechem

Three days later, while all of them were still in pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and attacked the unsuspecting city, killing every male. They put Hamor and his son Shechem to the sword and took Dinah from Shechem’s house and left.

The sons of Jacob came upon the dead bodies and looted the city where their sister had been defiled. They seized their flocks and herds and donkeys and everything else of theirs in the city and out in the fields. They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses.
Gen 34:25-29 NIV

Here "Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi" indicates the tribes that massacred the male citizens of Shechem and the rest of the tribes participated in the looting.

In my opinion the storyteller underlines that the killing and looting was related to the defiling of Dinah and that this makes it somehow acceptable. This notion is very true to modern Near Eastern cultures, as well. Anything goes between families and even tribes when a woman has been raped.

Note that this story has no ethnic cleansing a la Kosovo and is not related to the conquest of the Promised Land that took place hundreds of years later. It belongs to the Patriarchal era and reflects the values and manners current in the Bronze Age Near East.


Reaction of Jacob the Patriarch of the Tribes of Israel

Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.”
But they replied, “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute? ”
Gen 34:30-31 NIV

Patriarch Jacob - who himself was cunning and cheated his old father Isaac to get the blessing instead of Esau - takes the massacre of Shechem seriously but the concern is not "crimes against humanity" type ethics or the (later) Ten Commandments "thou shall not murder (rzh)".

Rather, father Jacob is concerned with the security of his own tribe sojourning among the now more hostile local inhabitants, Canaanites and Perizzites.

However, on his death bed father Jacob gave the two violent brothers a rather questionable "blessing"

Simeon and Levi are brothers—
    their swords are weapons of violence.
Let me not enter their council,
    let me not join their assembly,
for they have killed men in their anger
    and hamstrung oxen as they pleased.
Cursed be their anger, so fierce,
    and their fury, so cruel!
I will scatter them in Jacob
    and disperse them in Israel.

Gen 49:5-7 NIV

Anti-Semitic?
Well, the anti-Semites around the world can certainly use this very rough story to label the children of Abraham with all kinds of bad attributes and racial stamps.

But look who is talking.

I mean, what was so horrible in the (faked) Protocols of Zion - didn't the Nazis want exactly the same thing, to rule the world?

Or the massacre of the citizens and enslaving of the women and children of Shechem? How many stories we have in Islamic history even without looking at the conquest of Spain and the looting of France before Charlemagne stopped the horrible show?