Genesis 34
The Rape Crisis Center gives
these facts: Every 2 1⁄2 minutes, someone in America is sexually assaulted. In
Texas alone, 1 in 5 women, and 1 in 20 men are victims
of sexual assault, resulting in more than 2 million sexual
assault survivors. Is this a new
problem with society? Genesis 34
is all about Shechem, a young Hivite prince, the son of Hamor raping Dinah, the
daughter of Jacob and Leah. She
wanted to see the women of the new land and so she went out to meet them; Shechem
saw her and seized her and then he raped her and he fell head over hills in
love with her.
When Jacob heard that Dinah had been defiled, he was alone
and his sons were out with the livestock, so he held his emotions in
check. Verse seven gives this
account of the sons of Jacob when they heard what had happened to Dinah; “The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as
they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had
done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a
thing must not be done.” It
is important to remember that Jacob and his sons are few in number compared to
the Hivite, the Canaanites and the Perizzites who lived in the land.
Now Hamor, the dad of the rapist, comes up with a plan that
he believes Jacob and sons will accept; “But Hamor
spoke with them, saying, “The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter:
Please give her to him to be his wife.
Make marriage with us. Give
your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us, and the land
shall be open to you. Dwell and
trade in it and get property in it.”
And Shechem told Jacob to set the price for his daughter and
he would pay it, but Jacob’s sons had another plan.
They told Hamor that they could not be part of a people who
were not circumcised as they were, but if they and all the men were willing to
be circumcised they would agree to his terms. So Hamor and his son returned home and convinced the other
men how good this would be for them and that soon they would own all that was
Jacob’s.
Jacob’s sons waited until the third day after circumcision
to carry out their plan. Picking
up the story in verse 25, “On the third day, when
they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers,
took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all
the males. They killed Hamor and
his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and went
away.” The other sons
came after their brothers and finished off the town; they plundered the city,
because Shechem had defiled their sister.
It is clear that Jacob was not informed about what they
planned on doing and he was upset, believing that the Canaanites and the
Perizzites would come and destroy him and his people. How often we act just like Jacob, he, like us, forgot the promises
of God.
This is the reply to Jacob from his sons in verse 31, “But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a
prostitute?” I wonder
if we had men, brothers, and dads who stood up for their sisters, as these
brothers did, would one in five women in Texas be victims of rape? I do not think we should kill out an
entire town for the act of one person, but we do need men to be protectors of
women, not treat them as sex objects.
And the sad note is, that sometimes it is the dads or brothers who take sexual
advantage of the sister or daughter.
From the Back Porch,
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