Israel and the Shechemites

The Tragedy of Dinah and the Shame of Canaanite Culture

Well, we hope to complete chapter 34 this morning. There's some messages you look forward to preparing, and then there's sometimes words out of season, even for the preacher. I'd have to admit I wasn't exactly looking forward to spending so much time in Genesis 34, given the rather graphic and tragic subject, and yet at the same time we recognize that all of Scripture is profitable.

It's all given for the sake of God's people to understand more about Him, more about ourselves, and I think I was encouraged as I worked through this passage to consider how much there is to be taken away from this, and of course we want to keep in view this larger flow of redemptive history where there's both positive movements forward, but also negative ways that our anticipation and yearning for the one who is promised to come begins to grow, and I think in chapter 34 we experience something of that yearning.

When will God bring about what He has promised? We enter chapter 34 and really begin an interlude in the story of Jacob. Now, I say that because we've seen a sort of pattern as we've worked our way through the patriarchal narratives.

So you have the cycle of Abraham, the cycle, though short, of Isaac, and then of course the cycle of Jacob, and significantly where we'll be heading shortly, the cycle of Joseph. Isaac is so small we could almost sort of put him, situate him under Abraham, but as far as narrative patterns we have Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, and you find this interlude in each of these cycles.

With Abram we had the interlude of Hagar in Genesis 16. Here in chapter 34 with Jacob we have this interlude with Dinah, and then in Genesis 38 in the Joseph cycle we have the interlude of Tamar with Judah.

And so there's this pattern as we're uncovering the story of God's work in and through the patriarchs. We have these moments, these chapters, that are devoted to a plight in the life of a woman, often experiencing the effects of the fall, sin, in shocking and tragic ways, and this creates a pattern that breaks up the, I think, the focus of the narrative.

And so we want to be sensitive to the significance of that. Now, of course, as we work through this chapter we'll see the way that this relates to Jacob and sets up where we're going in chapter 35, which is Bethel, where God will renew His work in the life of Jacob.

There's almost a revival in the life of Jacob that we'll be discussing next week. But we want to be sensitive to the fact that we're seeing the effects of the fall, and as we look at the patriarchal narrative, we're also looking at the spread of sin, the spread of the effects of the fall.

This is, again, framing our hope for the one who is coming to undo the fall, to redeem the curse of sin. And when we begin in verse 1, we begin with the rape of Dinah. Now, we're gonna move through this chapter in six parts, and I'll just announce them as we go.

I don't want to... you're not that fast at writing, so I'll just announce them as we go. So first, we'll begin with the rape of Dinah. We read, beginning in verse 1, Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land.

Already we're getting, and we're gonna see this throughout the chapter, we're getting these little notes, we already know who Dinah is. It's emphasized that she's the daughter of Leah. Perhaps that's cluing us in to that she's not exactly close to Jacob's heart.

Remember when Jacob was arranging his family in succession for Esau to be able to meet them, how it was at the very end that Jacob was there with Rachel and Joseph. And so you can see the significance of perhaps this mention of Leah.

Perhaps Leah was still feeling somewhat on the outside of Jacob's affection, and then maybe even Dinah more so as a result of that. But we're reminded whom she had borne to Jacob. Again, we already know this.

We know who Dinah is. We know that she's Jacob's daughter. But the text is going to keep forcing this into view. Jacob's daughter, his daughter, the daughter of Jacob. And that's meant to highlight the shock of how Jacob reacts to the news of this rape of Dinah.

So we have Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob. Jacob's own flesh and blood. She went out to see the daughters of the land. Now the verb to see here, it's followed by a preposition, so we would almost want to translate it.

She wanted to go, overlook, oversee, observe in a very intent way. She wanted to see the daughters of the land. So it's not just see her friends in the land. You know, they had been chatting on Facebook Messenger, and it was just their plan to get together for lunch.

No, no, it's not that kind of casual see. She had this intent. She went out to go observe and see and look at the daughters of the land. Some think she's likely around 15, maybe 14, 13, 16, somewhere in that range.

We don't have an exact age. But like many girls of that age, she perhaps was feeling like, I have an identity crisis. Who am I? My family's so weird. What are the other girls like my age? What am I going to be like?

What am I going to look like? How am I going to be? What are my prospects? What are the other girls doing? And who are they with? And how are they? And we get the sense that in going out, she really wanted intently to observe, maybe even to mimic, to imitate, to get a sense of what she was missing out on.

Very typical for this age, that fear of missing out, that identity crisis. Who am I? I'm not ready to be locked into the ways of my family. And so some rabbis think they're significant to the went out.

It implies maybe she snuck out. This was not something that Leah or even Jacob would have condoned. Of course, Nahum Sarna reminds us, unmarried girls in the ancient Near East would very rarely enter into a town unaccompanied.

And that's still true in many parts of the Middle East today. You won't find an unmarried woman unaccompanied in the middle of the city, in the middle of the town. And there's this honor-shame dynamic that we're going to see unfold.

So perhaps Dinah's going out implies a secret departure, and we're given this reason in verse 1. She had this longing, this heart to observe the ways of the daughters of the land. Her heart was being drawn toward the Canaanite culture.

Now that doesn't excuse at all what happened to her. In fact, we're going to see ways that her own siblings are complicit in their own influence by Canaanite culture in chapter 35. We don't have the details of it here, but I think we'll be able to read between the lines in chapter 35.

They too were rendered unclean and impure by Canaanite culture, and that had to be purged from them at Bethel. This fateful departure turns tragic. She went out to observe the ways of Canaan, and she got more than she ever wanted of the ways of Canaan.

Shechem's Assault and Jacob's Silence

Verse 2, when Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, prince more like a tribal leader, chief, all the same word, saw her, he took her, lay with her, and violated her. At a literary level, we might notice the echo of the fall here.

He saw her, he took her. At a literary level, we're having the repetition of Eve's fall when she saw the fruit and she took it. Sin was crouching at Shechem's door. He needed to resist it, but he didn't.

He saw and he took. We're reminded of that same echo back in Genesis 12 when Abram came into Egypt. The Egyptians saw the woman that she was very beautiful, saw the fruit that it was pleasing to the eye, and they commended her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken to Pharaoh's house.

They took her, and so we have that repetition of the fall.

They saw,.

They took. This is fallen behavior, the seeing and the taking, the impulse toward evil as a result of self-will at the complete and utter expense, the tragedy of the other. But in Genesis 12, interestingly, though Sarai was seen, though Sarai was taken, the Lord intervened, right?

The Lord plagued Pharaoh in his house with great plagues because of Sarai. We see that same pattern, and God intervened to preserve Sarai. Again, Genesis 20, Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarai.

But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said, indeed, you are a dead man because of the woman you've taken. So we're here in Genesis 34. We've said Jacob is retracing the steps of Abram. He's here in Shechem.

He's now feeling threatened by the threat of someone like unto Pharaoh, someone like unto Abimelech, a prince in the land, as it were, who's now taken a liking to his daughter. We're going to see that fear in the rest of the chapter.

And we're here sitting in Shechem with Jacob and the footprints of his grandfather, Abraham, and we're watching as Shechem sees and takes, and we're waiting for God to intervene. We're waiting for plagues to break out on Hamor's household.

We're waiting for Shechem to wake up sweating from a night terror because God said, you're a dead man, and it doesn't come. She's raped. Birds chirp. The street has the noise of the marketplace. God never intervened.

There's no dream. There's no plague. There's no divine intervention. In fact, God's name isn't even mentioned in this whole chapter. Where is God? It's sort of on the face of the chapter. Where is God in the midst of this?

Why didn't he intervene? This is part of what this chapter is meant to say. It's helping us frame and understand evil acts, not excusing them, not explaining them away, but also not trying to offer an excuse as to why God did not intervene.

The text has no interest to do that. An evil man does an evil thing. God's people cry out, why? How long, O Lord? Why do the wicked prosper? Now, of course, retribution comes, and it comes in a wrong way, as we'll see.

And yet here we see God not intervening in the way that he had intervened in the life of Abraham. Here we see this evil not stopped short, not cut off, but actually come into full bloom. Reports of civilians murdered in Busha in Ukraine.

Shallow graves. Estimates of at least a hundred. Where is the intervention? One of them, Vitaly Vinogradov. He was a dean of an evangelical seminary in Kiev. One of the ones that I think was reported had their hands bound, evidence of torture.

And as God's people, we say, why was there no intervention? Where was the plague? Where was the dream? Why does evil happen? Why are people that had no reason to be tortured or brutalized or raped, why do they experience this kind of suffering?

How long, O Lord? Shechem took her, laid with her, humiliated her. That word humiliate, it's in the PL stem. It's intensive. Violate, humiliate, defile. And that's said in contrast with Shechem's own understanding of what he has done.

So the Bible gives us the description of what he did. He saw, he was led by lust and impulse, he seized, he brutalized her, he humiliated her, he defiled her, he made a shame out of her. That's what really happened according to Scripture.

But according to Shechem, we have verse 3. His soul was strongly attracted to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. Again, there it is, the daughter of Jacob. And he loved the young woman. He spoke kindly to the young woman.

So you see the contrast between these three actions. Verse 2, he seized, he took, he laid with, he humiliated. Verses, he was strongly attracted, he loved, he spoke kindly. Do you see the difference between the honesty of Scripture and the perversion of man's own imagination?

Shechem just thought, well, of course. How could I help myself? And I'm gonna make it right now. I'll make up for it. It was actually a noble thing because of the way I feel for her. So the sin is exposed in verse 2, and his own warped perspective is exposed in verse 3.

His soul, we read, was attracted to Dinah. That's language from Genesis 2. We could almost translate it, his soul was cleaved to Dinah. Dinah didn't want his soul to be cleaved to her. This is a perversion of this marital language.

Not God's good design, but a forced intimacy that defiles. And perhaps it was because of this he saw how distraught he had made Dinah. That's why perhaps he spoke kindly to her. It's literally he spoke to her heart.

He was almost trying to comfort her. We get the same verb in Hosea 2 .14. I will bring her back to the wilderness. I will speak comfort to her, reassurance to her. Don't worry. I'm gonna make this right.

Don't worry. You're gonna be my wife. Don't worry. It will all be okay. You don't have to cry. You don't have to feel this way. And we begin to see this twisted nature of Shechem emerge even further. We know he was an important figure in the town, as we said, sort of a tribal chief.

We also get the sense he was used to getting what he wanted. Not exactly a patient man, not a pious man. Look at the way in verse 4 he speaks to his father. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor saying, get me this young woman as a wife.

If we see perhaps at the beginning of this chapter a breakdown in the way that Dinah was raised and guarded, protected, cherished, warned. We also see a breakdown in the way Shechem was raised, the way that he was regarded, the way that he was disciplined.

We don't know anything about Hamor. We don't know anything about the upbringing of Shechem, but it can't be good if the son says to the father, get me this young woman as a wife. That speaks volumes to not only the kind of man Shechem is, but the kind of father that Shechem had, who allowed his son to grow up thinking he was the pearl of the world, that he could have things on demand.

If he saw something and he wanted it, he would take it. I'm gonna take Dinah for myself, and father, I want you to go do this for me. And we say Hamor running off to the tents of Jacob to work out his son's request, his son's demand.

So we see a breakdown, I think, of sin affecting family relationships. I think this speaks volumes against Leah and Jacob. Apparently they weren't looking at the warning signs of Dinah's heart craving after the ways of Canaan.

It's not like everything's going really well, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, singing the hymns, rounding the family worship, finishing up that homeschool workbook, and then one day she's like, I'm gonna run off and go see how it's done elsewhere.

You know what? That sounds like a great idea. I'm just gonna run off, sneak out in the middle of the night, and I'm gonna start to see how I can be a little more like the young ladies of Canaan. It doesn't happen overnight.

And Jacob seems to be passive. These years in Shechem have compromised him. We came from that triumph when he pitched his tent and built the altar, but that was years ago. The subtlety of the world, the influence of the flesh, he's become very passive.

So passive when he gets this news, as we'll see, he doesn't even react. He doesn't even know what to do. His sons end up taking the action. And so I think we see a breakdown of the way Jacob and Leah were parenting Dinah.

We see a breakdown in the way Hamor had raised Shechem, and brothers and sisters, we better be aware of the Shechem's and the Dinah's that we are raising. Jacob heard, verse 5, that he had defiled Dinah, his daughter.

Again, please notice that language, his daughter. We already know who she is. Why is that there? It's emphatic. This is Jacob's daughter. Now his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob held his peace until they came.

We're not told how Jacob heard this, whether servants had observed it, whether the gossip came out of the city of Shechem and came back toward the tents of Jacob. However, he heard about it. When he heard about it, we read he held his peace.

His lack of shock is shocking. His lack of fury is infuriating. The narrator wants to emphasize this by saying this was his daughter. This was the daughter born to Jacob. This was a little girl that he cradled, that he prayed and wept and sang over.

This was a little girl who he pushed year after year, cake with more candles, year by year, in front of, had all the iPhone pictures which would show dotingly. This was his daughter. And when he hears the news that she's been violated, humiliated, and she's not even there, she's still in the household of Shechem.

It's like she's captive. He's not even there. He's not even able to comfort her, not even able to say what really happened. He holds his peace, and it's shocking almost. Could it be the numbness of a discouraged parent?

You know, sometimes that's a defense mechanism. Some grievous news happens, and it seems like the parent is just checked out, and it's almost like I don't even want my feelings to go there. It's just easier to sort of dissociate.

Is that what's going on? Maybe he's insulating his heart. Maybe he really is just so passive that he doesn't actually have that strong of affection for Leah or Leah's children. Maybe it's the fear. Here comes Shechem.

Here's Hamor, maybe many others besides, and like Abram, he's feeling a little spooked, and so the fear is almost restraining him. I'm not really going to say anything. I'm going to restrain my fear. We can't really say.

All we can say is he held his peace, and that's shocking. The narrator, I think, wants us, Moses wants us to see that as wrong. The expected response would be anger, rage. Remember when Laban was pursuing him and how he, as it were, let out this great exclamation, this great cry to God in prayer, and then as a result of seeing God's deliverance, he was able to boldly rebuke Laban.

He let him have it. He unloaded everything on him. So it's not that Jacob doesn't have it in him. We've seen that, but first of all, where is the exclamation of prayer, and then where is that loud, furious rebuke, how dare you?

You will pay for what you've done to Dinah. Jacob doesn't act at all. He waits for his sons, and even when his sons come, he still doesn't act. He's so fearful, so distraught, so anxious, he's unable to act decisively.

And we can see, as a principle, when a leader, this is true in society as a sort of magistrate level, this is true in the church, this is true in the home, when the one that God has appointed to lead does not lead, is caught up with anxiety and fear and confusion, the more zealous will step up in that vacuum and they will lead, and usually not in a good way, not in a wise and balanced way.

It's the vacuum that is created. So we go from first, the rape of Dinah, to second, number two, the response of Hamor. The response of Hamor. We have two fathers now meeting face-to-face in light of this.

Crisis.

The response of Hamor. Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to Jacob to speak with him, and the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it, and the men were grieved, very angry, because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, a thing which ought not to be done.

This whole exchange between Hamor and Jacob is not driven by Shechem's sense of guilt. We don't read Shechem saying, I've done a horrendous thing, father, you have to help me. You have to work this out.

Let there be peace between us and Jacob. It's not driven by Shechem's sense of guilt at all. It's actually driven simply by his desire to have Dinah as a wife. Go make this happen. I want her as my wife.

And by the time Hamor is negotiating, even he sees, hey, this could actually be in my interest, too. We might actually get Jacob's livestock, get some plunder out of this whole arrangement. We see the contrast between Jacob and his sons.

Jacob held his peace. His sons come in from the field. When they hear what happened to their sister, they're grieved and very angry. Occasionally, translations don't do justice, and here's a moment where translations don't do justice.

I don't know how you could translate it better, but it's weak. It's too weak to say they were grieved and very angry. It's like, if I go through the drive-thru and something wasn't put in the order, I'm grieved and very angry.

This is a lot more than that. That verb grieve, the last time we saw it, Genesis 6, verse 6. God regretted that he had made man. He was grieved in his heart.

It's,.

It's almost unutterable to think of this kind of grief. They weren't disturbed. They weren't annoyed. They would have put their hands over their mouth. Their stomachs would have turned. Their eyes would have squeezed out tears.

They would have been vacillating between rage and sorrow. Rage when they looked at Shechem standing there in his fine robe. Sorrow when they imagined how Dinah was doing, shacked up in the household. That's how Jacob should have been.

These brothers, of course, had a responsibility to protect their sister, but the text emphasizes again and again, not Dinah, their sister, but Dinah, Jacob's daughter. It was the father's role. It was the father's domain to defend the honor of his daughter.

Now, that's not a very popular thought, sentiment in our culture today, is it? The culture loves to mock what's derisively called purity culture. The idea of fathers taking their daughters to some ball, you know, that's seen as repressive, outmoded, old-fashioned, bizarre, awkward.

What's the world's answer to that? Isn't it better to shave your head and have nothing to do with your family, pretend you came out of nowhere, and you have no obligations or relations, and live your life freely as if you have no vulnerability whatsoever?

That somehow is a better alternative to what I think the text is pointing us to see. The father's obligation to protect the honor and integrity of his daughter. The way that that does not repress or diminish, but rather enhances the nobility and the beauty and the value of a young woman.

This is not something that God gives to all men for all women. This is not something that all men are to do for the sake of all women. This is something that is bound up in relationship. There's a covenantal arrangement to this, right?

Priscilla relates to Aquila in a very different way than she relates to Paul. There's a covenantal arrangement to these things. It was upon Jacob not even necessarily upon his sons, so much as upon him.

And yet, of course, his sons were to also be concerned and prepared to step in to defend their sister. Again, we see this arrangement. This is the way that God has designed the distinction between men and women, not generally, but in terms of those familial relationships.

And when you have families and households that are ordered in this way, society begins to reflect that. Now, because of this, women are protected, revered, honored, ennobled at different levels of society.

We used to live in a day when doors were held open, and you can watch old reel-to-reel films from the 1920s, and you'd have to say, women had it better then than in these days. I don't mean to whitewash sins and crimes and corruptions that have always been a part of our fallen race, but I mean to say, in terms of the societal ennoblement of women, the very fanatics that think they're advancing it are actually bringing it down.

And it's because of these things right here. It's because brothers aren't outraged over the dishonor of their sisters. Because fathers aren't furious about the humiliation of their daughters. It's because men and the family won't protect the women in their family.

It seems, in fact, that Jacob is going to let Shechem marry Dinah. He doesn't seem to be in on this plot. Remember in Genesis 28, when Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, you shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.

And here we are in Genesis 34, and Jacob seems ready to let his daughter marry a Canaanite. Jacob's not following after Abraham or Isaac's example here. And this is in contrast to the narration that's given.

Shechem had done a disgraceful thing in Israel. Here's Moses writing, and this is not technically Israel yet. Israel is literally Jacob, and yet we have a sort of narrative comment. You'd almost say a parenthetical comment.

Shechem had done a thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, a thing which ought not to be done. It's like, if you missed what we're saying in this chapter, let me put it in bold so you don't miss it.

Jacob allowed this. Jacob was almost willing to let this happen. This should not have been done. Shechem had done a disgraceful thing. So Moses is writing for the people of Israel, and this is an application to the nation of Israel.

Don't intermarry. Don't intermingle in a way that your daughters will be vulnerable to this. Don't be tempted by the threat of this. You need to raise up Nehemiah's that will cut off the marriages from the peoples of the land.

This phrase, disgraceful thing, again, the translation fails. This is something abominable, provoking. It's not disgraceful like you forgot to say bless you after someone sneezed. It's shocking. It's the kind of thing in Deuteronomy 22 that requires stoning and the constant refrain, let the evil be purged from among you.

Let the evil be put out from your midst. That's something disgraceful that ought not to be done. But Hamor spoke with them. The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him as a wife.

Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us. Take our daughters to yourselves. And if you do this, you'll dwell with us. The land will be before you. Is it up to Hamor if the land will be before them or is it up to God that the land will be before them?

What is God's way versus Hamor's way? Dwell and trade. Acquire possessions for yourselves in it. Is it up to Hamor that they will be able to dwell and acquire abundance or is it up to God? You're put before the way of the righteous in the way of the wicked throughout the patriarchal narrative.

It's no different here. Psalm 1 shining light upon this moment in Genesis 34. And Jacob seems willing to go the way of the wicked, willing to intermarry, willing to give his sons and the covenantal legacy of his sons over to the Canaanites.

This is opening the doors to intermarriage. Something that God had forbidden. Abraham charges Isaac. Isaac charges Jacob. But here's Jacob at the fork in the road and he's seeming to fail. If they married, Israel's calling to be distinct from the nation, to be set apart from the people of the land, will inevitably fail.

Israel will be completely assimilated into the Canaanite nations. That's what we're seeing in verses 8, 9, and 10. And then, to enhance this, Hamor now has said his part. Shechem, he steps in. This is the vulnerable moment.

If Jacob was like, okay, but, you know, Shechem's just gonna close the deal. Verse 11, Shechem said to her father and her brothers. Again, notice the the way this is reported. Not Shechem said to Jacob.

Shechem said to her father,.

To her brothers.

We already get the sense of what the narrator is wanting us to see. Whose side he is on. Let me find favor in your eyes. Whatever you say to me, I'll give. Ask me ever so much dowry and gift. I will give according to you what you say to me, but give me the young woman as a wife.

Because he goes from demanding it from Hamor to now demanding it from Jacob. He gives Jacob a blank check. Write in what you want. It'll be in your account. The world thinks that everything has a price, inevitably.

Right? Everything has a price tag at some level. And there's some things that, as Christians, we recognize. There's no price. There's no amount of money. There's some things that have infinite value. Some things that you could gain the whole world for, and it would be a bad deal.

Short of Dinah's consent. We don't read like Rebecca arranging this negotiation with the servant. Well, as long as our sister is okay with it, we'll go for it. We don't have that kind of negotiation. Dinah's not even able to say yes or no to this.

We don't have her consent. More importantly, we don't have Shechem's repentance. Shechem has never acknowledged what he's done. Shechem doesn't seem apologetic. Shechem doesn't come hanging his head in guilt.

He doesn't say, please spare my life and whatever else. If it's possible, I will pay reparation, and I can only even imagine that you would even consider me, that somehow I might even have a relationship.

So we don't have Dinah's consent. We don't have Shechem's repentance. Money, marriage. They can't take away this stain. They can't take away the evil that was done. Another thing that might have been taxing Jacob is, notice the way Shechem approaches.

Let me find favor in your eyes. Boy, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? If only I could find favor in your sight. Without saying it, I've wronged you. Oh, Jacob, Shechem says, to find favor in your sight would be like your face shining upon me.

It would be like seeing the face of God. Maybe Jacob is reminiscing on the fact that he was a lot like Shechem. Maybe he's gone soft, and rather than stepping forward in justice for the sake of his daughter, he's beginning to sympathize with this young man, and oh, maybe it'll be okay.

You know, I can think of a good amount to write on that check. I can think of what I would like for the dowry, and maybe this will be okay. In fact, this will give us some security and protection in the land.

But Jacob's not able to give an answer. If he was about to say, yeah, his sons cut him off. Thankfully, his sons cut him off, but sadly for what they planned. Verse 13, the sons of Jacob answered Shechem.

Shechem's been speaking to Jacob, and now the sons bust in. Our father's not fit to lead. We're gonna tell you what this will be like. The sons, Jacob's sons, are actually concerned about Dinah. They have not lost sight of the victim of Shechem's evil.

The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father and spoke deceitfully. Because he had defiled Dinah, their sister, and they said to them, we cannot do this thing. To give our sister to one who's uncircumcised, that would be a reproach to us.

On this condition, we will consent to you. If you will become as we are, if every male of you is circumcised, we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you.

We will become one people. But if you will not heed us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and be gone. It's fascinating that they're speaking of Dinah as their sister and yet they say our daughter.

It's almost like their way of saying we're gonna speak on behalf of our father because he's not really speaking like a father. Even though Dinah is but our sister, we're gonna refer to her as our daughter because this is what a father should be doing.

A father should be defending his daughter, should be concerned about the injustice and defilement of his daughter. The response to Shechem and Hamor was planned, calculated deception. They're going to use circumcision, God's covenantal sign with them as the sons of Abraham, as a method to bring the Shechemites to ruin.

Of course, God desired for the sons of Israel to make him known and circumcision would have played a role in that. As they proclaimed the name of God and as they demonstrated the worship of God, as they lived out the ways of God before the Canaanites, the idea was the Canaanites would be drawn toward the worship of Yahweh, nations streaming toward the Mount of Zion and they would be entering into the refuge of the Abrahamic Covenant.

As sojourners among the Covenant, they would have been circumcised. And so they're using this covenantal sign, the prospect of evangelism, to actually cover over a planned mass murder. They take Israel's most cherished symbol of faith at this point.

And they use it as a tool of vengeance. And Shechem takes the bait. The words, please, we read verse 18, Hamor and Shechem. So the young man did not delay to do the thing because he delighted in Jacob's daughter.

I've been pretty mean to Shechem and I intend to be mean to Shechem. But I will give him credit for that. It was wrong what he did to Dinah, but his feelings weren't artificial. He wasn't just saying, well, if I can't have her the way I want her, then I don't want her.

He genuinely desired her in an evil way. And yet his desire is shown in his willingness to be circumcised. He rushed to circumcise himself out of his feeling for Dinah. I love Elisha,.

But,.

To paraphrase a 90s song, I would do anything for love, but I won't do that. I will not rush to circumcise myself. So Shechem's on a different level. Now, verse 19 has an interesting translation. He was more honorable than all the household of his father.

Well, if he's the most honorable in the household, that doesn't speak well for the household. He's a rapist. But I think that's actually not the most helpful way to translate verse 19. And verse 19 is helping us understand verses 20 and following.

He is convinced he's ready to circumcise himself, but that's not the condition that Jacob's sons let out. It's not just that he needs to be circumcised. All of the Shechemites need to be circumcised. Well, now that's gonna be hard to convince a town full of men to do.

And so verse 19 is here to say, he was more honorable than all the household of his father. And that's not saying that Shechem has the virtue of honor. He was a very honorable man, as though that were a virtue.

No, no, no, no. The Hebrew verb here, kavod, it means heaviness, weight. We translate it as honor, sometimes glory. And significantly here, it has a secondary sense of meaning. He was very important. He was very significant.

He was weighty, right? He had more weight, more significance than anyone else in his father's household. That's verse 19, and that explains why in verse 20, when the people are coming and going through the gate, they actually, well, okay, I'll consider getting circumcised.

This seems like a good, good arrangement. It's because of the weight of Shechem. Verses 20 and following, Hamor and Shechem, his son, came to the gate of their city and spoke with the men of their city, saying, These men are at peace with us.

Therefore, let them dwell in the land and trade in it, for indeed the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters to us as wives, and let us give them our daughters. Only on this condition will these men consent to dwell with us, to be one people.