Bible Stories: Jacob, Dinah, the Shechemites, & Vengeance
On reaping what you sow and on accepting that the cycles of violence can only be ended when the vengeful choose peace instead of vengeance.
I have found returning to the Bible a challenging task. I was travelling for all of October playing music and found myself deeply affected, like many Jewish people, by the situation currently playing out in Israel. My heart breaks for the Israelis killed by Hamas and I sit in fear each day that we are about to witness the genocide of the Palestinian people living in Gaza.
Returning to the book of Genesis, I find myself comforted by parables that seem to speak directly to what is happening today – so I wanted to share these reflections with you, in case you may also find them illuminating. The beginning of the essay lays a lot of exposition that I think is important, before I return to connecting the stories with what is happening in Israel today.
I have been reading the stories of Jacob, son of Isaac and Rebekah. There are certain parts of this story that I have long been familiar with – though it is a less prominent passage that I wish to truly discuss. What is very clear throughout Genesis is that people have long understood that one of the great challenges of living a righteous life is passing that righteousness down across generations. Family dynamics are difficult to master and learning to navigate the complexities of community and society are no trivial matters.
Jacob was born after his twin brother Esau, clinging desperately to Esau’s heel as they were born. Jacob’s story comes into focus when his father, Isaac, is laying upon his deathbed, blind with old age. The blessing of a father to his eldest son is of utmost importance in passage of righteousness across generations – the blessing of the father to his eldest son represents the passage of the father’s way of being onto his chosen son.
Rebekah loves her son Jacob more than her son Esau… like I mentioned, the early stories of Genesis are about family dynamics and how complicated they are to navigate. When she discovers that Isaac is to bless Esau, she devises a plan to deceive Isaac so that Jacob may receive his father’s blessing instead. Esau is a very hairy man, a hunter, a manly man – Jacob is depicted as the opposite.
So, Rebekah has Jacob wear fur coats all on his body so that he may seem as hairy as Esau and so that he may smell like a hunter. This is why the name Jacob is interpreted to mean, “he who deceives”. Isaac, believing Jacob to be Esau, gives Jacob the blessing of the first-born and he gives Jacob the blessing to be the leader of their people: “May nations serve you, and peoples bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you. May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed.”
Esau returns moments later and Isaac “trembled violently” when he discovers that he had, in fact, blessed the wrong son. I remember learning this story as a child from a rather pro-Jacob perspective – by that I mean, we often read this story knowing the importance of Jacob in the Judaic lineage and, as a result, we viewed the deception of Isaac as both important and warranted. However, this begins a sequence of events that I believe should be interpreted as a cautionary tale.
So, now, the deception of Rebekah and Jacob had made it unsafe for Jacob to remain so Isaac gives him a blessing to leave for Paddan Aram where Rebekah’s family lived. Isaac tells Jacob to head to Laban, Rebekah’s brother, and to marry one of his daughters. So, he arrives in Paddan Aram and he immediately falls in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. Jacob asks Laban if he can marry Rachel and Laban responds that if Jacob works for him for seven years, then he can marry Rachel.
After seven years of devout servitude, Laban agrees to let Jacob marry Rachel. Yet, after the wedding night together, Jacob discovers that he has in fact been married to Rachel’s older sister, Leah. Laban tells Jacob that it is not the tradition of his people to marry off the younger daughter first and says that Jacob may marry Rachel if he gives another seven years of servitude to Laban – and so he does this too.
After Jacob and Rebekah deceive Isaac, Laban deceives Jacob. This is Jacob getting a taste of the old adage, “You’re going to reap just what you sow.” The deceiver becomes the deceived.
Here is the thing, though. If one sows the seeds of deception, there is going to be a harvest of some kind. And, if you harvest the plants that grow from the seeds of deception, you will then have even more of these deceptive seeds. After many seasons, one may find a garden full of these wicked crops. And, in these stories, we see how a single deception evolves and causes harm to many people.
First, when Isaac sent Jacob away to Paddan Aram, he told Jacob not to marry a Canaanite woman. Esau, bitter about the deception, then proceeded to marry a Canaanite woman to spite his father for blessing Jacob. The deception has created a rift between Isaac and Esau, between father and son.
Then, the deception of Laban creates bitterness between his daughters, Leah and Rachel. By giving away Leah in an act of deception, he sentenced Leah to a life of being married to a man who loves her sister more. She gives birth to three sons, Reuben, Simeon, and Levi – and upon each of their births she says something along the lines of, “Now that I have borne a son to Jacob, maybe now he will love me.”
Rachel, unable to have children, becomes jealous of Leah. So, she instructs Jacob to conceive with her servant Bilhah, so that she may have a child of her own. Then, when Leah stopped having children, she demanded that Jacob conceive with her servant, Zilpah. Leah had several more children before Rachel finally conceived Joseph. The deception of Laban has turn Leah and Rachels’ lives into a bitter game of jealousy – the seeds of deception have caused them to reap bitter fruit. Now, having children, they plant the seeds of that bitterness within them.
Eventually, Jacob wishes to return to his homeland. He has become a successful farmer and Laban offers him whatever he desires if he will just stay in Paddan Aram. In order to leave, Jacob deceives Laban by running away – unknown to Jacob, Rachel also then steals Laban’s household gods. Deceptions upon deceptions.
Laban follows Jacob and his daughters and their families. Laban accuses Jacob of stealing his gods, but not knowing Rachel stole them, he chastises Laban for making such an accusation. The web of deception grows thicker. In the name of his daughters and grandchildren, Laban agrees to a truce in which they will not bother one another so long as they do not cross into one another’s’ territories. These deceptions have now created a geopolitical border between tribes – you’re going to reap just what you sow.
As Jacob returns to his homeland, he fears that Esau will seek revenge upon him. At this stage in the story, Jacob is quite conscious that his past deception is likely to return back to him in some fashion. So he sends, as an advance, flocks of livestock as presents, so that Esau may receive him favorably.
Esau meets him on the journey and hugs and kisses his brother and says there are no need for gifts, but Jacob insists. Further, Esau insists that they all return to Canaan together, but Jacob says that he cannot push his livestock that hard and insists that Esau returns and that he would follow shortly behind. Here, Jacob seems to feel safer creating his own plan than receiving the guidance of his brother who he had previously deceived out of his birthright.
This leads us to the passage I wish to discuss, Genesis 34. This is the tale of Dinah and the Shechemites. Dinah is the daughter of Jacob and Leah. They arrive in the land of Shechem and, upon seeing Dinah, Shechem falls in love with Dinah and “he took her and violated her”. Shechem and his father Hamor came to Jacob to ask what it would take for Jacob to let Shechem marry Dinah. Jacob’s son are filled with fury – how dare this man defile our sister and then have the audacity to ask for her hand in marriage?!?
And so, the brother’s aim to deceive Shechem and his people. These are, after all, the children born from the seeds of deception and so deception comes quite naturally to them. They tell Shechem and Hamor that their sister cannot marry an uncircumcised man and they tell them that if all the men of their kingdom were to be circumcised, then their two tribes could live in peace and intermarry with one another.
Hamor and Shechem agreed to this deal. All the men in their tribe were then circumcised. Which, to be clear, is such an extreme display of devotion and servitude for adult men to circumcise themselves.
Of course, all the men were in a great deal of pain after being circumcised. This is when Simeon and Levi, the sons born from Leah’s unrequited bitterness, entered their city and killed every single man. They went to Shechem’s home and they took Dinah back. The sons of Jacob looted the entire city of every valuable possession they had and took the women and children.
So, we arrive at the passage I am most interested in:
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me a stench to the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.
But Simeon and Levi replied, “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?”
This is how the passage ends. The book does not tell us who is “right”. Is Jacob right or are Simeon and Levi right? Well, this is why considering the deceptions that have led up to this point are important to consider. Jacob’s life has been defined by a series of deceptions and he has witnessed all of the troubles that these deceptions have caused. He has learned, quite deeply, that “you’re going to reap just what you sow.”
Simeon and Levi were controlled by their rage. They essentially say that Shechem sowed the seeds of war by taking Dinah and that it was only natural to seek revenge, as they did.
Jacob deceived Laban and it was resolved by coming to a truce. Jacob deceived Isaac and Esau and it was resolved by the offering of gifts and the bond of family. Now, Shechem deceived Jacob and his family and, in return, Jacob’s sons not only humiliated Shechem’s men (by having them circumcise themselves before they were murdered), but then Jacob’s sons murdered all of the men.
In this moment, Jacob becomes deeply fearful. When he has wronged people in the past, he has not tried to go to war with them, but instead sought their forgiveness. Shechem and his men repented to Jacob and his family by circumcising themselves (let’s be clear, nobody circumcises themselves for funsies). But, Jacob’s sons murder them anyway. This means, there is no route to forgiveness. Jacob realizes that his household must now live in a world where his household has committed a deception that cannot be forgiven, for the victims are now dead.
Jacob realizes that he must now walk through a world that sees his household as a tribe of monsters, capable of deceiving and murdering an entire city. The initial crime against Dinah is no longer relevant because the perpetrators are dead. Jacob is not that concerned that Shechem and his men “reaped what they sowed” – Jacob is now concerned that he and his kin are now going to reap what they have sown.
There is a clear and obvious parallel between this story and what we see in Israel today. Hamas attacking Israel and killing over one-thousand people is akin to Shechem taking and violating Dinah. The rage of Simeon and Levi embodies the fury of the Israeli response, returning the violence of the perpetrator by one-hundred-fold.
So, there are two questions. First, were Simeon and Levi justified in killing the men of Shechem? Well, yes… justification is something we provide to ourselves to explain what we have done. Shechem violated Dinah and so Simeon and Levi killed all the men of Shechem. Likewise, is Israel justified in what it is doing in Gaza? Well, yes… justification is something we provide to ourselves to explain what we have done. Hamas killed 1,400 Israelis and now Israel is leveling Gaza to the ground.
The second question is far more important. Was it wise for Simeon and Levi to have killed the men of Shechem? Jacob does not think so. Jacob seems to believe that by acting so viciously, the other tribes of the region will join together and annihilate Jacob and his household. By acting so monstrously, Jacob reasons, the world will view them as monsters. Jacob’s life has been defined by the notion of “reaping what you sow” and he had never sown something as terrifying as the destruction of an entire city – that is, as the Bible will let you know, the work of God.
And so, we are able to ask the same question, Is it wise for Israel to so thoroughly destroy Gaza? From reading Genesis, I would venture that Jacob would say it is not wise. Yes, you may be justified in seeking vengeance for the ways you have been hurt, but then, by hurting others, they will seek vengeance against you. By seeking vengeance, you give power over your fate to the vengeful.
The story of Israel and Palestine in the past 75 years is the story of vengeance – can the story of vengeance end in vengeance? The story of Shechem points out that the cycle of violence can indeed end if one people thoroughly destroys the other, but Jacob warns that by doing so, a Pandora’s box is opened and that we may not desire the aftermath of our actions. Destroying cities, destroying people is the work of God – humans capable of enacting the destruction of God become a mortal threat to all people, even if only in perception.
And so, I conclude with this: Vengeance is always justifiable. Vengeance is, in fact, quite easy to justify. However, wisdom tells us that vengeance and deception always sow more seeds of vengeance and deception. A peaceful crop cannot be grown from violent seeds. And so, it is “easy” to live like Simeon and Levi. It is “easy” to let our fury consume us. Yet, when we follow the path of vengeance, of violence, of anger, we may send ourselves down a path that cannot be reversed. For, when we act in vengeance, our fate is now put in the hands of the vengeful, as now they have the choice of choosing peace or vengeance. It is the wise man who chooses peace when it is his turn to enact vengeance.