The Rape of Dinah / Jacob Returns to Bethel / The Birth of Benjamin and the Deaths of Rachel and Isaac / Esau’s Descendants and the Inhabitants of Edom
The Rape of Dinah: Genesis 34.1-31
Dinah is the daughter of Leah, the only daughter of Jacob. One day she goes out to visit the women of the region. But Canaan is a wild place: “When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the region, saw her, he seized her and lay with her by force. And his soul was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob; he loved the girl, and spoke tenderly of her.” (Gen. 34.2-3). The prince’s son then asks his father Hamor to get the girl for him to be his wife.
The violent lust of rape evolves into love for Shechem, but the bible gives no indication of Dinah’s own feelings – it rarely reports at all the words or actions of women. The bible is not only laconic, it is also androcentric. All we know is that Jacob does eventually hear of the rape.
When Jacob hears of the rape, he holds his peace until his sons come in from the field. Coincidentally, Jacob’s sons and Hamor arrive at the same time. The sons become understandably angry when they hear their sister has been raped. (Shechem “had committed an outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done.” [Gen. 34.7] The reference to Israel is an anachronism by editors. The nation of Israel did not exist at this time.)
Hamor tries to defend his son by arguing for Shechem’s longing for Dinah. He proposes intermarriage between the two families and will allow Jacob’s family to live and trade in the area. Perhaps the audience is unimpressed, as he afterwards asks to find favor with them, and invites them to put the marriage gift as high as they like.
Jacob’s crafty sons figure out a way to get back at Hamor and Shechem. They propose painful circumcision (the sign of Abraham’s covenant) for every male member of Hamor’s family so that the two families can intermarry. Hamor and Shechem inform the city of the mass circumcision, which will guarantee the residents of the city will own the livestock and property of Jacob’s family.
Three days after the mass circumcision of all the males of the city, when the men are still in pain, Simeon and Levi take up their swords and kill all the male residents of the city, most importantly Hamor and Shechem. The other sons plunder the city in their anger, taking the livestock, and wealth and women and children. The city’s greed for the possessions of Jacob has been ironically reversed, so that Jacob’s family instead wins the wealth of the city (and they don’t even have to intermarry!)
Jacob is rather angry with Simeon and Levi:
You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.(Gen. 34.30)
But his sons reply, “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” (Gen. 34.31).
This story serves to set up Israel as an underdog in the land of Canaan. It also goes a long way to characterize Jacob’s sons. They can be brutal, but are loving and united together. For them, the honor of the family is an important matter. They are also tricksters, just like their father.
Jacob Returns to Bethel: Genesis 35.1-15
Think there is only one God? Jacob probably didn’t. In fact, a number of people at the time probably didn’t. Jacob was a monolatrist. Whereas monotheism is the belief that only one god exists, monolatry allows for multiple gods, though there is one specific god that is worshipped. Here is the story of Jacob the monolatrist:
God tells Jacob to settle in Bethel, where God first appeared to him after he fled Esau. Jacob tells his family to pack up:
Put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your clothes; then come, let us go up to Bethel, that I may make an altar there to the God who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.(Gen. 35.2-3)
Jacob buries the foreign gods and ear and nose rings under an oak near Shechem.
So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that up until this point, the worship of God alone was not even exclusive! It is probable that Jacob’s family members were polytheists, worshippers of multiple gods. Perhaps the God of Abraham would be a high god, but these other lesser gods were still worshipped for various reasons. Nowhere in the text does Jacob mention that these are false gods. The text indicates that these are simply gods that Jacob and his family are not to worship. Only one god may be worshipped, but this does not preclude the existence of other gods.
Let’s take a look at belief in the time of Moses. The first of the Ten Commandments, found in Exodus 20.2-3 and Deuteronomy 5.6-7, reads:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
Note that God is the “Lord your God.” This is the one God that you worship and brought you out of Egypt. The phrasing indicates that other people might worship other gods, and perhaps would not be incorrect in doing so. Furthermore, the phrase “you shall have no other gods before me” does not deny the existence of other gods. Rather, the God of Abraham is the sole god that should be worshipped. This is monolatry, not monotheism.
Back to the story. As Jacob and his family journey to Behtel, a “terror from God” falls upon the cities they pass, so no one (who might be angry about the slaughter of Hamor’s city) attacks them (Gen. 35.5). he comes upon a place named Luz/Bethel, and renames it El-bethel (roughly God of the house of God, el-beth-el). Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, dies there and is buried beneath an oak, which is called Allon-bacuth (oak of weeping).
That, above, was the E-source story. Here is the P-source story.
When Jacob arrives in Paddan-aram, God appears to Jacob and blesses him, renaming him Israel in the process. The blessing is the traditional blessing of land and offspring:
I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall spring from you. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.(Gen. 35.11-12)
Finally this seems possible. Abraham had one son to fulfill the blessing, Isaac had one son to carry on the blessing, but now Jacob/Israel has 11, and it will soon be 12. After so much waiting, perhaps it is finally possible that this blessing will be fulfilled.
Jacob erects another pillar and pours a drink offering and oil on it, calling the place Bethel.
The Birth of Benjamin and the Deaths of Rachel and Isaac: Genesis 35.16-29
After leaving Bethel, Rachel experiences hard labor delivering a son. She dies shortly after childbirth, naming her son Ben-oni (son of my sorrow) as her soul departs. Israel changes the name to Benjamin (Son of the right hand/son of the south). Rachel is buried on the way to Ephrath/Bethlehem, and Jacob erects a pillar at her grave site, “which is there to this day” (Gen. 35.20).
Israel and his family settle down in Eder, where Reuben lays with Bilhah, Israel’s concubine. Israel hears of it, but that episode is not recorded.
The text then gives a recap of the sons of Jacob:
Leah’s
Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun
Rachel’s
Joseph, Benjamin
Bilhah
Dan, Naphtali
Zilpah
Gad, Asher
Jacob visits his one-hundred-eighty year old father Isaac at Mamre/Kiriath-arba/Hebron. Isaac dies, and Jacob and Esau bury him.
Esau’s Descendants and the Inhabitants of Edom: Genesis 36.1-43
*ahem*
...
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
...
- T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton” from Four Quartets
So here is the deal. Genealogies are getting way too convoluted to keep track of. It’s like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Different genealogies come from different sources that are sometimes contradictory, so keeping track of them would mean creating diagrams with different paths based on different sources, which ideally would be colored and hyperlinked and made so that branches could disappear if desired. Right now I have neither the time nor software to do this, so I will only summarize the important parts of these genealogies.
Though Esau’s story ends here, his ancestors are named, as well as the various clans in Edom, where Esau lives.
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