Dinah

[Denise]

So in Genesis 34 do you think Jacob may have missed the opportunity God gave to Abraham, Genesis 22:18. That maybe Dinah was the catalyst for a try at a descendant blessing another nation? Anyone and everyone answers are most welcome.

[Ed Hurst]

No, the issue was that God had forbidden giving daughters in marriage outside the covenant promise. The blessing to nations was to come via the revelation, not intermarriage. The ancient folks of Shechem were Canaanites; there's good evidence the original name was something other than "Shechem". We have ample precedent for updated place-names in later editions of the Scripture text in other places in the Old Testament. At any rate, the Canaanites were the folks who gave us the worship of Molech, among other abominations. God had already condemned the Canaanites to expulsion or genocide, but the execution of that sentence was to come later. The original inhabitants of what is here called Shechem were under this ban.

Side note: The actions in Genesis 34 resulted in the city being destroyed. At some later date, when Israel moved to Egypt, one of their relatives returned well before the Exodus and rebuilt the place, and his name was honestly Shechem. Thus, during the Conquest, it was an allied city that was spared. However, a Canaanite city nearby was destroyed. We have no idea, and no useful archaeological evidence, of where the two different towns were located, only that both were somewhere near Jacob's Well.

[Denise]

But the Law had not been given yet, that is the covenant of the Old Testament, right? We only had Noah and Abraham covenant at Gen. 34? Maybe I am confused. Hamor seemed real sincere. Forgiveness was a thing Abraham seemed to advocate. Dinah is sure quiet, did she love this guy, maybe? Jacobs sons lied to these people. I am hoping to get what God has for me here. I am going to pray more on it. I just woke up this morning with this story on my mind.

[Ed Hurst]

It was based on the Covenant of Abraham at that point. It's not specifically stated in the text, but we know a good bit about the ancient Semitic customs that were eventually folded into the Law of Moses. We also know a lot about how the Canaanites were morally repulsive to just about every other nation and empire in those days. Hamor crossed the line, and he knew it before he did it.

There was plenty of culpability to go around here. At that point in history, Dinah didn't have much to say either way. She was a fool for spending too much time with the Canaanite girls, and may have even flirted some. But this kind of mixing was abominable to Abraham's folk; God had warned Abraham and Isaac both about avoiding marriage with these people. Twice the clan went back to Harran for wives. Remember the brouhaha about Esau marrying local girls?

What Jacob's sons did was also a sin, not least because it risked a reprisal from other Canaanite tribes. As it was, it forfeited their place in the line of inheritance. Recall how the anointing as heir passed over Reuben for his weird sin, but also Simeon and Levi for what happened here and passed to Judah. What Israel would have done without their criminal act was to demand a heavy dowry since she was defiled, yet Israel would have to keep supporting her because he still could not allow her to stay among those people.

Here's the hard thing for folks with a Western background: Marriage pairing must proceed from what blesses the covenant community. Nobody in those days argued with that custom. Love was assumed to grow afterward. How Hamor felt was of no consequence, as were Dinah's feelings about this. It was flat out evil in the first place, and inexcusable. We simply do not have any cultural background for understanding that.

[Denise]

Alright that really drives it home. I mean almost every book of the Bible is expressing the holiness of marriage in order to reflect the bride and the bridegroom message. Jesus was greatly stressing we get this. But I got a few more thoughts /questions. So that Hammurabi code I’ve read some of that was folded into the Law of Moses ( “folded like you said).Hamor, Shechem, and the sons of Jacob all speak to one another as though they are aware of the current law code to work out this situation. Exodus 22:16-17 seem to reflect the price to be paid to make Dinah Shechems wife and Deuteronomy 22:28-29. Maybe up in Deuteronomy 22:25-26 Shechem must only die, but it seems in the Law God is always seeking ways to preserve life.
Also over in Exodus 12:48-49 wouldn’t the Hivites be considered sojourners because of all the circumcision that Jacobs sons told them to do and they would become Israelites? So then with forgiveness and paying and doing as they were told they could marry? It would not be intermarriage then, right?
Another thing that makes me chuckle is how bad these Hivites wanted to get with the Israelites, like over in Joshua 9. God allowing these Hivites to fool Joshua and the princes to save their lives and it was cool for them to become slaves to Israel. Maybe they were smart? Maybe they were cowards? Maybe they were desperate? They did exalt the name of our God in Joshua 9:9. And God by the Holy Spirit did move the author of Joshua and Genesis to record these Hivites actions. The Word endures forever.
One more thing. After all the importance of Isaac getting a wife and Jacob getting a wife not from the Canaanites why was Jacob not watching while Dinah roams out to meet young women of the land? Jacob had all kinds of warnings from the marriages of Esau, Abraham was around til Jacob was about 15 and his dad Isaac made marriage law pretty clear. Did she have an escort that was a male servant that was sleeping on the job? Are we to assume?
Thanks everyone for hearing me out. Please correct me as needed.

[Ed Hurst]

I prefer to say that the Code of Hammurabi was a parallel to what God had decreed long before. The Law of Noah was common knowledge, though not necessarily by that name. Rather, it was the soil in which sprouted the Semitic culture and became a common base of law and custom throughout many nations in Mesopotamia. It wasn't the only cultural background, but a very dominant one. It included a lot of things we don't see specifically stated in the Law of Noah as recorded in Scripture. The Seven Noahic Laws were similar to the Ten Commandments; there was a lot more to it.

Because these Semitic folks had been roaming back and forth between Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Hivites and other Canaanite folks were familiar with those customs, if only imperfectly. Hamor should have known not to touch her; there's no excuse for what he did. He let his lust/passion run away with him. It was no big deal among Canaanties (the custom of "kidnapping" a bride), but a crime among Semites. Jacob should have guarded Dinah better, and it falls on his shoulders that she got so wrapped up with the local girls as to be vulnerable to Hamor. Whether she went along with it or resisted is not pertinent. You have to read the Bible text recognizing that it narrates failures quite matter-of-factly, but it requires the reader knowing when to condemn them. We cannot assume the text is trying to approve of everything it relates to us.

Hamor was flatly ineligible. Had the whole clan converted to the Code of Noah first, they might have a chance after several generations. That part of the Law of Moses was also customary from ancient times, so far as we can discern. We see how it works later, when the Gibeonites were allowed to keep living under the feudal authority of Israel. Their submission included knowing they had to very specifically adopt Noah's Law in order to stay in the land. Everything that happens with them later matches what we know about that. The narrative assumes you know that, so it doesn't mention how David's conquest of the Jebusite fortress meant the Jebusites had to embrace Noah or leave the land. It wasn't a slaughter, but a conquest. The gracious feudal submission of Arauna/Ornan to David's purchase of the threshing floor to stop the plague is just what you would expect, if you knew he was a Jebusite subject to Noah. (This threshing floor was above the old fortress, long before anything had been built there.)

So the sons of Jacob flat out lied to Hamor's clan about how to be accepted as allies for the purpose of intermarriage. They had no intention of forgiving; they were plotting to slaughter the whole city from the start. To become acceptable for intermarriage would have required full conversion to Noah first, and then in three generations to merge with the patriarchal clan under the Covenant of Abraham (if the Patriarch was willing to accept them). This is how the Ancient Near Eastern feudalism worked; you embraced the sheikh's gods first, and after a few generations, could petition to be part of the family.

Yes, Hamor's clan knew this was a bonus. Think about it: Abraham and his people were highly civilized, educated, wealthy and lived a whole lot longer than folks normally did in Canaan Land (Canaanite life expectancy, even among the ruling class, was about half Abraham's). Some of those fussy customs and laws were very much about community sanitation. The Patriarchs were pretty much revered and feared by the Canaanites. Who didn't want in on some of that? So Shechem was quite friendly to Israel's clan. It was a major boost to their economy, not to mention a very powerful warlord with a small army able to protect them from very real and frequent threats of raiders roaming the central highlands in those days.

We know that some of those armed servants should have protected Dinah, but things obviously got lax. We know most certainly that Simeon and Levi didn't work alone in slaughtering the men of the city; that would be impossible. Their brothers weren't there, but armed servants had to have helped them.

[Denise]

I get it! Home Run, Ed!