Genesis 34

Dinah was the daughter of Jacob and Leah and the sister of Simeon and Levi, among others. As Jacob and his family came back home and began a new life far away from Laban and even from Esau, they settled in Shechem. But Dinah became involved with the women of the land, and an important young man noticed her, seizing her, and laying with her. He humiliated her.

This situation became somewhat more complicated and entangled because, we are told, “his soul was drawn to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her.” He asked his father to arrange a marriage, so that he could have Dinah as his wife.

Where was Jacob, her father, when all this was happening? We understand that he heard that the young man had defiled his daughter, but it was the brothers who moved toward action. When the boy's father came to make the arrangements for Dinah to be his son's wife, her brothers spoke to him before he met with Jacob.

Moses records the right assessment of what has taken place here: This young man “had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done.” Whatever else anyone might say about this situation, we must not allow ourselves to be swept up in our imagination about a love story between this prince of the land and Dinah. What took place here was wrong. It was “outrageous.” The right order of family engagement in decisions of marriage was not followed.

This man of Shechem does not want only one marriage to result from his contact with the sons of Jacob. He is looking to use this situation to build a very close tie between their peoples, and this with the goal of gaining their many possessions. Here we have another Laban, who loves what the world has to offer and is willing to use people in pursuit of his higher goal of wealth.

The son also spoke not only with Dinah's brothers, but also with her father Jacob, professing desperate need for Dinah and a willingness to pay a great bride price for the woman he had already taken without her father's permission. This ordering of events may fit in with the cultural practices of Shechem, but it is not the Lord's way. It is not for a boy to first force himself emotionally or physically upon a girl and only then to seek to make things right with her family.

The family, and especially the father, should protect the young woman from this kind of abuse, even when she may seem to be in favor of what is taking place. Just because a young girl may like a young man, that is not permission to consummate his desires. The Lord would have a father protect his daughter, even if that means protecting her from her own will, which might be too easily swayed by the words and advances of a man.

There is more to marriage than romance, lust, or even love. It is through marriage that the next generation comes. Some may wish to get a woman for their own strange purposes. Greed, selfishness, and many other depraved motives could move a person to be convinced that wrong is right, and not to be denied. Other more experienced protectors must stand in the way of those who would deliberately or even innocently take advantage of a girl.

More than that, the Israelites are God's covenant people. They are not to be swallowed up by the Shechemites because one of the leading fellows of the land takes someone that is not his. Something bigger is at stake than the impulses and desires of a girl and a boy. God does not want his people to mix with the people of the land.

There is no evidence that Dinah's brothers understand all of this. We do see that they are indignant and full of vengeful hatred. They come up with a plan to use the Lord's ordinance of circumcision to deceive and weaken the Shechemites, so that they can more easily murder them. The men of Shechem take the bait, convinced that they will gain all of the goods of Jacob's people by combining with them through submitting to circumcision.

This plot was not commanded or commended by God. They do rescue Dinah back, but Jacob is very displeased with what Simeon and Levi, in particular, have done. They have murdered and looted people without God's direction. Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land.”

The plan of God in Christ is not murder and stealing, but sacrificial love and protection of the weak. Christ came as someone far better than Laban, Esau, Shechem, and even Jacob. Many men will fail us. They will neglect their wives and daughters, treat them as property, belittle them, or in other ways ignore them as fellow-heirs of the grace of eternal life. Jesus has not treated us that way. He did not rape us, and then try to marry us out of lust or to secure our possessions. He never abandoned His commitment to protect us. He secured every blessing we have now through His blood. He loves us as His bride. We can trust Him even when all the men in the world seem to fail us.