UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
December 1, 2017
By Kent P. Hickey
“This story is going to be hard,” I tell my sophomore Scripture class as we start Genesis 34.
Dinah is raped by Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite. After the rape, Shechem tells Hamor to “get me this girl for a wife.” So, Hamor meets with Dinah’s father, Jacob, and the two tribal chieftains quickly realize that an opportunity is at hand for a mutually beneficial political alliance. A bargain is struck. Dinah is to marry Shechem.
Jacob’s sons — “speaking with guile because their sister had been defiled” — agree to the arrangement under the condition that all the males in Hamor’s tribe get circumcised. Hamor complies and, after their circumcisions, he and all of his men go to their tents to recover. It’s at this moment of vulnerability that Jacob’s sons swoop in, kill them all, and loot the town. Jacob angrily confronts his sons, to which they reply, “Should our sister have been treated like a harlot?”
The morality of these men’s actions (especially the killing in tents) has been debated for centuries. What hasn’t been debated much is the question I pose to my sophomores: “Whose voice is missing in all this?” That’s right. Dinah, the afterthought.
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