Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

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.”
When Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled, his sons were in the fields with his livestock; so he did nothing about it until they came home.
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.
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.”
Then Shechem said to Dinah’s father and brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and I will give you whatever you ask. Make the price for the bride and the gift I am to bring as great as you like, and I’ll pay whatever you ask me. Only give me the young woman as my wife.”
Because their sister Dinah had been defiled, Jacob’s sons replied deceitfully as they spoke to Shechem and his father Hamor. 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.”
Their proposal seemed good to Hamor and his son Shechem. The young man, who was the most honored of all his father’s family, lost no time in doing what they said, because he was delighted with Jacob’s daughter. 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.”
All the men who went out of the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male in the city was circumcised.
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.
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?”

• Genesis 34:1-31

The Boilerplate

My wife started to write her thoughts down at one point in her life.  Some hints point to 2018 and 2019, after she had her open-heart surgery.  In spite of her trials and the atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) that required her to take blood thinners, this was before her major health decline.

Sometimes, she wrote a thought.  Other times, she wrote a Bible verse, and maybe her idea on that day.  Other times, it is a prayer, but I am going to take one entry at a time and try to write about it

Her comment

“Simeon and Kevi killed all the men – Shechem and his father too.  Shechem defiled Dinah.”

• My wife’s next comment in this notebook

The Discussion

My wife seemed to use this notebook as a repository for “why is this story in the Bible?  Why am I just coming to the realization that this story is in the Bible?”

Note: By this point, we as a family had read the Bible from cover to cover many times over, but in her personal Bible study, she was taking it slower to absorb everything.

Other than her comments, where I corrected the spelling, there is nothing more.

But this story is a hard lesson.  We come into the world, and we grow up in a world that is hostile to true Christianity to a certain extent.  And when bad stuff happens, how do you respond?

The story, in short, is that Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, is liked by Shechem.  His father runs the town of Shechem.  Shechem raped Dinah.  Shechem then tries to make it right by suggesting he marry her.  Simeon and Levi come up with a rule that everyone in the wedding party needed to be circumcised.  While they were in pain, Simeon and Levi kill every male in the town.  Then Jacob tells them that he will now be a stench among the locals due to what they had done.

Some pastors fail to touch this chapter of Genesis at all, combining this chapter with Genesis 38, the story of Judah and Tamar.  Combine these two chapters with the latter part of Judges and the book of Song of Songs, and you have got parts of the Bible that steady church goers, who never read their Bibles, have never heard about.  There might be tender ears who hear it.  You know, 30 something ears that pretend they “don’t know.”

Then I have heard that Genesis 34 has one reason for being in the Bible, to show why Simeon and Levi were disqualified to be the kingly line leading to Jesus.  That means that this chapter has to be combined with Genesis 35:22 to disqualify Reuben as the kingly line due to his sexual sin with his father’s concubine, Bilhah.

But I think God picked the tribe of Judah when Judah took charge before the second trip to Egypt to get food.  In spite of how the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat portrays all the brothers singing and dancing together, Judah alone says that he will go into prison or slavery to guarantee that Benjamin would come home to his father (Genesis 43:8-10).  Judah’s guarantee here and then God’s foreknowledge that David was a man after God’s own heart.  Since God shows mercy readily, I look at those two things instead of the revenge for Dinah and Reuben’s indiscretion.  If you looked at the story of David and Bathsheba, was David’s actions any less heinous?

But this story is a perfect example of how we, as Christians, do not belong here.  We try to do right, and then wrong is done to us.  If we do not respond to that wrong, we are pushovers.  Then, others get wind of it, and they take advantage of us.  But if we do respond, we are vilified because Christians should not respond that way.  Is that not a good synopsis of this chapter?  Israel (Jacob) was just trying to play nice with the neighbors.  And Jacob was trusting God.  But note that Satan knows who the true believers are.  He never stops attacking, especially if he knows that he can get under our skin.

We must trust in the Lord, but we must know that troubles will come.  And then, we trust in the Lord even more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory