Genesis 34: Rape! Murder!

Vengeance gone overboard.

Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as we discover new insights and new perspectives from a very old book.

I’m reading the Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

This chapter seems to end in the middle of the story. My understanding is that the chapters don’t exist in the original texts but that later scribes divided them into chapters. I don’t think they always did a great job of it.

In any case, it’s been so long since I’ve had any engagement with this part of Genesis, that I don’t remember what comes next.

As a story, we may ask, what about the innocent men? Why were they slain? Even after they agreed to be circumcised? Such a procedure suggests that they, too, were willing to become “children of Abraham.”

It’s as if the entire city repented for the sins of their prince Schechm, only to be murdered and plundered.

In modern morality, and what most people would say is basic morality, only the rapist Shechem would be punished and Dinah would be compensated in some way. She wouldn’t be forced to marry the rapist, no matter how rich he is or how much her family is paid.