The Genesis of Justice (22 page)

All the Bible tells us is that the brothers resented the implication of any deal being made under which a rapist marries his
victim and the victim’s family obtains material remuneration. “Should our sister then be treated like a whore?” they ask rhetorically.
But it is the Bible itself that treats an unbetrothed rape victim in this manner. What the clan of Shechem proposed in the
Dina narrative is very nearly what the law books of the Bible later decree: payment to the rape victim’s father and marriage
to the rape victim.

Why should the clan then be punished by mass murder for offering to do what the Bible would later mandate? Moreover, these
same brothers who were outraged that their sister was treated like a commodity later treat their own brother in much the same
way, selling him into slavery. A midrash on Jacob’s blessing of his sons recognizes this inconsistency:

After Reuben had had his “ears pulled” thus, he retired, and Jacob called his sons Simon and Levi to his side, and he addressed
them in these words: “Brethren ye were of Dinah, but not of Joseph, whom you sold into slavery. The weapons of violence wherewith
ye smote Shechem were stolen weapons, for it was not seemingly for you to draw the sword.”
²³

Another example of the Bible speaking in different voices is provided subsequent to the Dina narrative in the deathbed testament
of Jacob, in which the patriarch alludes to the earlier events:

Shim’on and Levi
,

such brothers
,

wronging weapons are the ties-of-kinship!

To their council may my being never come
,

in their assembly may my person never unite!

For in their anger they kill men
,

in their self-will they maim bulls
.

Damned be their anger, that it is so fierce!

Their fury, that it is so harsh!

I will split them up in Yaakov
,

I will scatter them in Yisrael
.
²⁴

The fact that their rebuke comes at the end of Jacob’s life—after the passions of his daughter’s rape and his sons’ revenge
have cooled—gives added significance to Jacob’s condemnation of vigilante justice. Nevertheless, the tribes of Simeon and
Levi prosper, with the Levites becoming the holy priests.

The narrative is thus a Rorschach test to be interpreted anew by every generation, consistent with its experiences and needs.
In fact, the Dina narrative—most particularly the relative guilt and innocence of the avenging brothers—has been subjected
to very different interpretations over time. In the biblical period, when clan violence and retaliation were the norm, the
actions of Simeon and Levi were praised as demonstrations of strength. In subsequent generations, when rules of law and process
began to emerge, Jacob’s rebuke became more prominent. Then, when intermarriage became a major concern, the narrative was
interpreted as a condemnation of intermarriage. The fact that Shechem raped Dina was less opprobrious than the fact that he
then tried to marry her.
²⁵
In the post-Holocaust era there was a return, among some, to praising Simeon and Levi for taking the law into their own hands:
“A pronounced revisionist strain in postwar Biblical scholarship suggests that Simeon and Levi, rather than Jacob, are the
‘real heroes’… precisely because they picked up their swords and made war on Shechem to vindicate their sister’s defilement.”
²⁶
Simeon and Levi are the “real heroes” because their “idealistic and uncompromising stance makes them the most intricate,
colorful and attractive characters in the story.”
²⁷

Not surprisingly, zealots have cited the story of Dina to justify utterly reprehensible actions, such as Baruch Goldstein’s
murder of twenty-nine Muslims at prayer in Hebron. Similarly, it has been cited by Muslim and Christian extremists in support
of their murderous actions.
²⁸

Today, some feminists point to the Dina story as speaking with a different voice about the horrors of rape than the subsequent
law books of the Bible. Without justifying the mass murder of the entire clan, they praise Dina’s brothers for at least understanding
the humiliation of rape better than those who later punished it by a fine paid to the “real” victim—the father.

Therein lies both the glory and the danger of morally ambiguous biblical narrative. Because of its open-textured quality, it
endures from generation to generation, taking on new meaning as historical experiences change, and inviting continuing reassessment
of its implications. By the same token, because it is subject to multiple—often conflicting—interpretations, the biblical
narrative can be cited by the devil, or at least his human counterparts, to justify the most evil of deeds.

1.
Only two brothers, Shim’on and Levi, actually do the killing.

2.
On his deathbed, Jacob is far more reproachful of Shim’on and Levi: “Their weapons are tools of lawlessness…. [W]hen they are angry they slay men” (49: 5-7).

3.
Except in a listing of descendants (46:15). A midrash has her becoming Job’s second wife. Ginzberg, vol. 2, p. 226.

4.
Kugel, James,
The Bible as It Was
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 233. Genesis 49: 5-7.

5.
Rashi and Ibn Ezra avoid the difficult issue, since they generally limit themselves to interpretation (
pshat
).

6.
See Deuteronomy 22:28-29.

7.
See Riskin, Shlomo,
Confessions of a Biblical Commentator
(Ohr Torah Institutions, 1997), pp. 12-13.

8.
Chasam Sofer,
Bereishis
, p. 256.

9.
Numbers 35: 9-34.

10.
Deuteronomy 19:6.

11.
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 2, p. 953, n. 2.

12.
The voice of women is all too rarely heard in the Bible. A contemporary midrash, in the form of a fascinating novel, tells the Dina story from the point of view of the woman involved. Diamant, Anita,
The Red Tent
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

13.
Deuteronomy 22: 28-29. The Bible draws a distinction between a betrothed woman who has sex with another man “in the city” and “in the field.” The former, who could have cried, is complicit; the latter, who could not have been rescued even if she cried out, is not. Deuteronomy 22: 23-27.

14.
See Hauptman, Judith,
Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998), pp. 77-82; Kirsch, Jonathan,
The Harlot by the Side of the Road
(New York: Ballantine, 1997), pp. 76-99.

15.
Sims
v.
Balkcolm
, 136 S.E. 2d. 766.

16.
State
v.
Shane
, 590 N.E. 2d 272 (1992).

17.
Ginzberg at p. 395.

18.
Quoted in Kirsch at p. 76.

19.
Ibid.

20.
Ginzberg at p. 395.

21.
In discussing Shechem’s love for Dina, the Torah uses the word
“na’ar”
twice. A
na’ar
is a boy. Thus the literal reading of the sentence is “And he loved the boy and he spoke comfortably unto the boy” (Genesis 34: 3). The editors of the Hebrew Bible regard this as a common transcription error and instruct the reader to “read it as ‘na’arah,’” the young girl. Perhaps this gender confusion is what led Rashi to speculate that Shechem had “unnatural” anal sex with Dina—as if she were a boy! Saperstein edition, the Torah, p. 383.

22.
Midrash Rabbah
, vol. 2, p. 743. Maimonides makes a related observation: that one of the reasons why Jews are circumcised is to reduce their sex drive. See Stern, Josef,
Problems and Parables of Law
(Albany, NY: SUNY, 1998), pp. 88-91.

23.
Ginzberg, vol. 2, p. 142.

24.
49: 5-7.

25.
See Kugel, James,
The Bible as It Was
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 237-39.

26.
Kirsch at p. 95.

27.
Meir Sternberg as quoted in Kirsch at p. 96. A midrash compares the Dina story to the Book of Esther, suggesting that the clan of Hamor was planning to kill the Jews, who acted in preemptive self-defense (Ginzberg at p. 399).

28.
Recently an ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Israel cited approvingly the story of the biblical religious zealot Phineas, who murdered two lovers in cold blood because one of them was not Jewish (Numbers 25: 6-9). The rabbi’s words were understood by some as justifying the murder of intermarried couples by “real” Jews. See Kirsch at p. 91.

Yehuda went down, away from his brothers

and turned aside to an Adullamite man—his name was Hira
.

There Yehuda saw the daughter of a Canaanite man—his name was Shua
,

he took her [as his wife] and came in to her
.

She became pregnant and bore a son, and he called his name: Er.

She became pregnant again and bore a son, and she called his name: Onan
.

Once again she bore a son, and she called his name: Shela
.…

Yehuda took a wife for Er, his firstborn—her name was Tamar.

But Er, Yehuda’s firstborn, did ill in the eyes of YHWH, and

YHWH caused him to die
.

Yehuda said to Onan:

Come in to your brother’s wife, do a brother-in-law’s duty by her
,

to preserve seed for your brother!

But Onan knew that the seed would not be his
,

so it was, whenever he came in to his brother’s wife, he let it go to ruin on the ground,

so as not to provide seed for his brother
.

What he did was ill in the eyes of YHWH
,

and he caused him to die as well.

Now Yehuda said to Tamar his daughter-in-law:

Sit as a widow in your father’s house

until Shela my son has grown up.

For he said to himself:

Otherwise he will die as well, like his brothers!

So Tamar went and stayed in her father’s house.

And many days passed
.

Now Shua’s daughter, Yehuda’s wife, died
.

When Yehuda had been comforted
,

he went up to his sheep-shearers, he and his friend Hira the Adullamite, to Timna. Tamar was told. …

She removed her widow’s garments from her,

covered herself with a veil and wrapped herself
,

and sat down by the entrance to Enayim/Two-Wells, which is on the way to Timna
,

for she saw that Shela had grown up, yet she had not been given to him as a wife
.

When Yehuda saw her, he took her for a whore, for she had covered her face
.

So he turned aside to her by the road and said:

Come-now, pray let me come in to you—

for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.

She said:

What will you give me for coming in to me?

He said:

I myself will send out a goat kid from the flock.

She said:

Only if you give me a pledge, until you send it
.

He said:

What is the pledge that I am to give you?

She said:

Your seal, your cord, and your staff that is in your hand
.

He gave them to her and then he came in to her—and she became pregnant by him
.

She arose and went away
,

then she put off her veil from her and clothed herself in her widow’s garments
.

Now when Yehuda sent the goat kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to fetch the pledge from the woman’s hand
,