The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible

by Jonathan Kirsch

  As if to elevate and even sanctify the love that Shechem feels toward Dinah, the biblical writer pauses to point out that Shechem “cleaves” to Dinah. The only other passage in the Hebrew Bible where the word is used in the same sense—“to describe a loving relationship between two human beings”10—is the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, where God creates Adam and Eve, and then blesses the bond between them as an expression of the natural order of human life: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). The oblique reference in the story of Dinah and Shechem to the very first man and woman can be read as an endorsement of Shechem’s good will toward Dinah, whether he first approached her as a rapist, a seducer, or a suitor.

  Some scholars have detected traces of both rape and seduction in the biblical text, a seeming contradiction that can be explained by the fact that the oldest strands of the biblical narrative are probably the work of two distinct authors, one known as “the Yahwist” because he (or she) calls the deity by his proper name, “Yahweh,” and the other known as “the Elohist” because he calls the deity by the Hebrew word “Elohim,” a term that may literally mean “the gods.” (See appendix: Who Realty Wrote the Bible?) The blending of two separate versions of the story of Dinah by the editors or redactors who gathered together the texts that we know as the Bible may explain why one sentence in Genesis 34 emphasizes Shechem’s abuse of Dinah while the very next sentence emphasizes his love for her. One Bible scholar has decoded the text of Genesis 34 in a way that suggests the Yahwist was describing a rape, the Elohist was describing a seduction, and the so-called Redactor stitched the two accounts together into the ambiguous narrative that appears in the Bible.11

  So the biblical account of Dinah and Shechem may preserve two separate and starkly different tales or “traditions” from the earliest history of the Israelites. One tradition is a pure and pristine love story—the courtship of Shechem and Dinah and the marriage negotiations that followed between their fathers and families, perhaps leading to a successful marriage and a happy ending. The other tradition is a war story—the armed conflict between the clan of Jacob and the native-dwelling Canaanites whom they sought to displace. According to some scholars, a biblical author conflated the two stories and turned the encounter between Dinah and Shechem from a romantic liaison into a forcible rape in order to justify the slaughter of the Shechemites.12

  Seduction rather than rape may also be suggested in a passage of the Book of Judith, a work that was excluded from the biblical canon but is included in some Christian Bibles as a part of the Apocrypha (or Deuterocanon, in Catholic usage). Judith appeals to God in the name of her forefather, Simeon, and briefly recalls the massacre of Shechem and his people. Significantly, she credits God for sanctioning the violence against Shechem by bestowing upon Simeon the very sword that he used “to take revenge on the strangers who had loosed the adornment of a virgin to defile her” (Judith 9:2).13 The same passage as translated in the New American Bible (NAB) is even steamier in describing Dinah’s treatment at the hands of Shechem, who is accused of having “immodestly loosened the maiden’s girdle, shamefully exposed her thighs, and disgracefully violated her body.” Notably, while Judith condemns Shechem for “shaming” and “dishonoring” and “polluting” Dinah, she does not assert that he actually raped her, and some of Judith’s phrases—“loos[ing] the adornment of a virgin”—somehow evoke a gentle if insistent seduction rather than a forcible rape.

  One striking omission from the biblical text, however, raises even more troubling questions about the intentions, good or ill, of all of the characters in the tale. After the encounter between Shechem and Dinah is reported at the very outset of Genesis 34, we are told nothing more about Dinah or her whereabouts until the very end of the biblical text, when we discover for the first time that Dinah had apparently been sojourning in Shechem’s house since the day of their first encounter. Is she a prisoner and a hostage of Shechem, as conventional biblical commentary would have us believe? Or, as some scholars have dared to suggest, is she a willing and perhaps even a loving guest of the young man who is so smitten with her?14

  The Bible does not provide an answer to the mystery of Dinah’s whereabouts. If, however, Dinah is held as a hostage in Shechem’s house during the marriage negotiations between Hamor and Jacob, then we might begin to see Hamor as even more cynical than his own oily words suggest; his friendly entreaties to Jacob take on a dark and sinister meaning if, in fact, Dinah remains at his son’s mercy. And the vengeance that her brothers will wreak on Hamor and his people seems somehow less excessive if, in fact, they concede to Shechem’s marriage proposal only under the unspoken threat of further violence to their sister.

  Even more intriguing is the notion that Dinah lingers in Shechem’s house because she has fallen in love with him. Contemporary scholarship is willing to entertain the notion that Dinah is seeking solace from Shechem, a “kind and loving” man, as Bible critic Ita Sheres puts it, who “recognizes [Dinah] as a person of value.”15 Although the biblical text provides no hard evidence of Dinah’s motives, a faint trace of the same idea can be found in the commentary of one ancient rabbi who surmised from the biblical text that Simeon and Levi found it necessary to drag their sister out of Shechem’s house after slaying her betrothed. “When a woman is intimate with an uncircumcised person,” wrote the sage, betraying what may be a certain degree of sexual jealousy, “she finds it hard to tear herself away.”16

  But if we recall Shechem’s fervent protestations of love and his urgent desire to marry Dinah, we may be tempted to speculate that the two of them—young, unwed, and, crucially, each from a different tribe—have fallen so deeply in love with each other that they dare to engage in some kind of forbidden sexual encounter. If Dinah takes up residence in Shechem’s house after that first encounter out of choice rather than compulsion, then we might conclude that the two of them are lovers, not rapist and victim.

  In fact, some scholars have argued that the rape of Dinah may have been inserted into the biblical text by a priest or a scribe with an ulterior motive. According to the conventional wisdom of modern Bible scholarship, the biblical editors brought a sometimes harsh ideological agenda to the task of collecting and retelling the tales and traditions of the Israelites, a burning distrust of non-Israelites and an explosive hatred of the gods and goddesses they worshipped. For these religious authorities, the prospect of marriage with a non-Israelite and the risk that one of the Chosen People might be lured by a spouse into the worship of some thundering mountain god or lascivious fertility goddess, were a threat to the very survival of Israel. So the anonymous editor of Genesis 34 may have sought to sully the reputation of Shechem—and to provide an excuse for the massacre of his people by Simeon and Levi—by accusing him of a crime of sexual violence.*

  Perhaps the real crime of Shechem and Dinah, then, is that they happened to fall in love with each other despite the fact that one was an Israelite and the other was not.+Perhaps what really happened between Shechem and Dinah was more nearly a forbidden romantic liaison than a rape or even a seduction, an expression “of innocent love between two young people who were ready to merge culturally, politically, and religiously,”17 as one contemporary feminist scholar proposes—or, to put it another way, the story of a man and a woman whose love for one another boldly defies ancient tribal rivalries and ends in catastrophe for both of their families.

  “See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,” Shakespeare wrote of another pair of star-crossed lovers from rival houses, and the words apply to the Israelites and Hivites as well as the Montagues and Capulets, “That Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.”

  THE CURIOUS PUNISHMENT FOR THE CRIME OF RAPE

  Even if Shechem is a rapist, his proposal of marriage is less bizarre than it may first seem if we consider the curious punishment for the crime of rape under biblical law. According to the Book of Deuteronomy, any man
who comes upon an unbetrothed virgin “and lay[s] hold on her, and lie[s] with her,” must pay her father fifty shekels—and marry the woman he wronged (Deut. 22:28–29). To avoid adding insult to injury, of course, the rapist is obliged to marry his victim only if the woman and her family are willing.18 And the Bible decrees that, unlike the husband in an ordinary marriage, the rapist is never permitted to divorce his victim-turned-wife.19

  The Book of Deuteronomy was probably composed long after the events described in Genesis were supposed to have taken place, but similar laws are found elsewhere in the ancient Near East dating back to the eighteenth century B.C.E. Indeed, the legal codes of nearby Assyria suggest that a man might actually claim a wife by forcing himself upon her,20 a practice that offends our contemporary sensibilities but suggests that Shechem’s motive (if not his method) may have been rather more honorable than the biblical text allows us to understand.

  What’s more, the law that compelled a rapist to marry his victim can be seen as an entirely positive and even progressive measure, at least in the social context of the world in which Dinah actually lives. A woman in biblical times was expected to remain under the authority of a male at all times: as a child and a virginal young woman, she lived in her father’s home until she married; once married, she lived with her husband and, she fervently hoped, bore and raised his children; and, if widowed, she relied on her own male children, who inherited their father’s property.21 No other role was permitted, and a woman like Dinah—not yet married but no longer a virgin—was not entitled to marry, bear or rear children, earn a living, or safely engage in sexual conduct.

  So the notion of marriage as a punishment for rape can be seen as a form of reparation. The victim is now “damaged goods” in the eyes of her community and no longer acceptable as a wife and mother to any man except her rapist, and thus he is expected to repair the damage he has done to her—and, in a sense, to her family and the tribe at large—by marrying her. Of course, the Bible does not suggest that anyone bothered to ask Dinah whether she wanted to marry Shechem, but neither did they ask whether she wanted to see him dead. And by slaying Shechem, Dinah’s vengeful brothers deny Dinah even the possibility of marriage and thus condemn her to a life of solitude and loneliness.22

  The Bible does not tell us what happened to Dinah after the night of carnage in Shechem’s house. All we know is that Dinah is still in Jacob’s household when, many years later, the whole clan follows Jacob down to Egypt, where his favorite son, Joseph, now reigns as Pharaoh’s chancellor (Gen. 46:15). The ancient literature that attached itself to the Bible imagines one or another grotesque and ironic epilogue to the biblical tale: Perhaps Simeon offered to marry his “defiled” sister, according to one bit of overheated speculation by an ancient rabbinical sage, or maybe Dinah wed an Egyptian high priest and gave birth to the daughter who later marries Joseph, according to another traditional source.23 But a more likely surmise is that Dinah was shut away in the house of her father or perhaps one of her brothers, a spinster aunt with a dark past and no prospects, and she lived out her life in despair.

  “MY COVENANT SHALL BE IN YOUR FLESH”

  Shechem’s desire to marry Dinah is so ardent that he offers to pay any price—the Hebrew word is mohar—in exchange for her hand in marriage. Mohar, commonly translated as “dowry” or “bride-price” or sometimes “marriage gift,” is mentioned in only three places in the Bible: the story of Dinah; the Book of Exodus, where it is decreed that one who seduces a virgin must marry her and “pay money according to the dowry of virgins” to the father (Exod. 22:15–16); and, finally, the First Book of Samuel, where the payment of a bride-price figures oddly but importantly in David’s courtship of the daughter of King Saul.24 As we shall see, there is strong if curious linkage between the rape of Dinah and the courtship of Saul’s daughter: both stories turn the solemn rite of circumcision into a grotesque mohar and, at the same time, an elaborate dirty trick.

  A mohar, as the story of Shechem makes clear, is something of value that is given to the father of the bride by his prospective son-in-law. Fifty shekels is the prescribed bride-price to be paid by one who rapes a virgin and is compelled to marry her (Deut. 22:29), but the Bible is silent on the going price for a bride under ordinary circumstances. Several biblical stories suggest that a man could pay the bride-price for his betrothed in labor or goods rather than in money. When Dinah’s own father, Jacob, falls in love with Rachel, the younger and more beautiful daughter of a man named Laban, young Jacob offers to render seven years of labor to his future father-in-law as a bride-price. But Jacob is tricked into serving a second term of labor when the wily Laban slips his older and less comely daughter, Leah, into the marriage bed in place of Rachel (Gen. 29:18–29).

  Much later in the Bible, we encounter David, the future king of Israel, as a young war hero who seeks to marry one of the daughters of the reigning king, Saul. Like Jacob, David is tricked into paying an odd bride-price, a bizarre “payment in kind” that was designed by the jealous king to cost David his life.

  Saul is already envious and distrustful of David when the young warrior asks him for one of his daughters in marriage. “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands,” the Israelite women sing in praise of David when he returns from a glorious campaign against the Philistines (1 Sam. 18:7). Saul’s son, Jonathan, declares his love for David—“[T]he soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David” (1 Sam. 18:1)* —and so does Saul’s daughter, Michal. To eliminate the up-and-coming and much beloved David, the crafty old king comes up with a scheme quite as dastardly as the one that Dinah’s brothers work on Shechem.

  Saul promises Michal’s hand in marriage to David, but only if he is able to pay an exceedingly bizarre bride-price—the mohar demanded by King Saul is “a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.” Sensibly enough, Saul is counting on the Philistines to resist circumcision: “For Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines.” But Saul did not allow for the young warrior’s skill and courage, his sheer determination to marry the king’s daughter, and his flair for the flashy gesture in battle. David, ever the overachiever, brings back two hundred foreskins, each one forcibly separated from its former owner, and claims Michal as his wife (1 Sam. 18:22–29).

  What is remarkable about both stories is that the sacred ritual of circumcision is treated so lightly and even so perversely, as if it were a cruel joke rather than a solemn sacrament. One could hardly tell from these tales that circumcision—that is, the surgical removal of the foreskin of the penis—was the single most important symbol of identity among the Israelites, and remains so among the Jewish people today. Indeed, circumcision is literally the sign by which the fateful contract between God and Abraham is sealed: God appears to Abraham, promises to make him “the father of a multitude of nations,” and, in exchange, extracts a single promise from Abraham on behalf of his offspring—Abraham and all of his descendants will submit to circumcision. (See chapter nine.)

  “My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant,” God decrees. “And the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of the foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken My covenant” (Gen. 17:13–14).

  When the biblical author who composed the Book of Samuel called attention to the grotesque bride-price that King Saul demands, he was seeking to show how deep and twisted is Saul’s hatred of young David. The point of sending David to retrieve a hundred Philistine foreskins, of course, is to put him in harm’s way and, Saul hopes, to let the Philistines rid the jealous king of the pesky young David once and for all. Indeed, the Bible tells us that David’s astounding success in his mission is taken by Saul himself as a sign of God’s favor toward David and an augury of his own doom.

  A different point is made by the biblical author who tells the story of Dinah; this author uses circumcision to underscore the “otherness” of Shechem and his people. Here is a tribe so alien to the Israelites, the storytel
ler seems to say, that mass circumcision is necessary to purify them before a single daughter of Israel might be betrothed to their prince. Even then, the prospect of “marrying out” is so repugnant to Dinah’s brothers that they feel obliged to conduct a massacre to prevent the forbidden union. A fierce irony can be seen in the fact that Simeon and Levi feel free to turn the sacred rite of circumcision into a form of torture and trickery in order to prevent the wedding from taking place at all.

  To the contemporary reader (and to a fair number of biblical exegetes), the use of a sacred ritual to render men helpless so they can be more easily slaughtered is not only a dirty trick but a sacrilege. At best, the mass circumcision demanded by Dinah’s brothers suggests a kind of rough justice—Shechem and all the menfolk of his tribe are scarified in the very organ that Shechem used to “defile” her in the first place. But the biblical author who retold the tale of Dinah and her brothers was not merely setting up a sadistic joke at the expense of Shechem. Rather, he was reminding his readership of what was regarded by the established religious leadership as an urgent threat to the very survival of the Israelites: the lure of strange gods and strange bedfellows.

  “I HAVE LOVED STRANGERS”

  Although Genesis 34 purports to describe events of the far-distant past—long before the Israelites were enslaved by Pharaoh, long before they left Egypt under the leadership of Moses, long before they conquered and settled in Canaan—the story of Dinah and Shechem may have found its way into the Holy Scriptures in its current form as late as 400 B.C.E., when the oldest strands of Israelite legend, lore, and law were gathered and woven together into the work that we now know as the Five Books of Moses.