Beyond The Basics

Transcript:

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Welcome to the Beyond the Basics Bible Study podcast. My name is Dan Snyder and I am your host. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Beyond the Basics, where we are exploring the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, one chapter at a time.

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Well, every family has some level of dysfunction, right. We’re going to get into Genesis chapter 34 today, and we’re going to see the consequences of years of dysfunction in Jacob’s family. So now in chapter 34, it says, now, Dinah, the daughter of Leah, who is the only daughter of Jacob that we know of. The Bible doesn’t tell us whether or not Jacob had any other daughters. And this says whom she had born to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land, the implication being that she was unsupervised. She went by herself to hang out with the women of Shechem, and Jacob and Leah were not around when she did this.

So remember that the Canaanite people are a picture of worldly living. They’re a picture of living separate from God or apart from God. The sons of Abraham were not to mix with the Canaanites. They were not to intermarry. They were not to have anything to do with them. And that that picture that it provides is a picture of how we, as believers need to be separate from the world, from worldly living. So Dinah here is seeking a relationship with the world. She’s seeking a relationship with a lifestyle apart from God because Jacob, for all his faults, still lived separately from the Canaanites outside the city of Chicago. He did not move into the city like our friend Lot did several chapters earlier, but Dinah clearly did not learn this lesson. She’s going out to see the women of the land to hang out with the women of Chesham, so she’s putting herself into a dangerous position by joining herself to the Canaanites.

In verse two it says, When Shechem, the son of Hammar, the Hivites, we’re told he’s the prince of the land. And he saw her and seized her, just like Eve saw and took. Always look out for that type of language. Remember he saw and he seized, or he saw and he took, just like Eve. So Dinah here is being compared to the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She’s being compared to the forbidden fruit.

Now, the interesting thing about this word seized is in Hebrew, it’s just a general word for take. In our English translation, it implies that he kidnapped her or took her by force, the implication here being that that he raped her. But that’s not actually what the Hebrew word here implies. Just implies that he took her. And that could mean all sorts of things. That could mean that he raped her. Could also mean that he just met her and brought her back to his house, and she did it consensually. The translators have chosen to interpret it this way, and I am no expert in Hebrew to English translation, so I tend to defer to the translators. But I just want you to recognize that sometimes we place expectations or we we have expectations of the text that aren’t always necessarily well founded because of what we’ve heard in the past. And I’m sure if you’ve heard this story in this chapter in the past, you’ve probably heard that Dinah was raped by Shechem, but that is not necessarily the case.

Moving on in verse two. And it says, he lay with her and humiliated her. So the phrase lay with her is a phrase that is used in the Bible in reference to sinful sexual relationships. Again, could include rape may not include rape, it could just mean fornication, which is sex outside of marriage. And then he humiliated her. Again, could include rape, but it also could indicate that it just meant that she was a virgin, and now she would have a hard time being married because she had lain with a man. So there’s two possibilities there. I want you to see that there’s two possibilities of what actually happened. The English translators once again have made a choice to indicate rape. And I’m going to be assuming that from now on, but it may not be the case.

So in verse three it says, and his soul was drawn to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. So this is contrasting his actions in verse two and verse two. He was very violent and forceful, and now he’s he’s tender. What’s happening here is we’re seeing a picture of the twisted morality of the Canaanites, and we’re seeing that picture being painted all through the story of Genesis. You remember the depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah. The entire city came out to lot’s house to try and rape those two men that had come to visit him. Esau’s wives brought grief to his family. And when we get into Genesis chapter 36, we’re going to go into more detail on Esau’s wives and the reason why they may have brought grief to Esau’s family. Now Shechem treats a woman he loves like a slave. He took her and raped her and claimed to love her. He clearly has no idea what love even means.

I mean, obviously we don’t treat a person that we love that way. It’s showing the reader the awful, awful state that the typical Canaanite conscience typical Canaanite morality is in. And it’s intended to give Israel an idea of what they’re dealing with 400 years later. Remember, the Israelites are going to be reading this right before they enter the land of Canaan to destroy the Canaanite nations. They’re going to be reading this, and they’re going to be they’re going to see, oh gosh, yes, this group of people is completely against God’s commands, and they need to be dealt with.

So in verse four Shechem spoke to his father Hamor saying, get me this girl for my wife. So now Hamor needs to go to Jacob to negotiate a price. Shechem decides, I want this girl as a wife. So now his father Hamor needs to go to Dinah’s father Jacob and negotiate a price in order to make that happen.

So in verse five, Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter Dinah. Now this word defiled can also be translated become unclean. So moving on, in verse five it says, Jacob’s sons were with his livestock in the field. So Jacob held his peace until they came. So he didn’t say anything or respond to him in any way.

In verse seven, now the sons of Jacob have heard of what happened, and were told that they were indignant and very angry with righteous anger. They’re ready to do something about this, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel. This phrase indicates that Jacob’s sons had begun to consider themselves a nation. They had now grown powerful enough and large enough that they and others were looking to themselves as a nation. Now remember, in those days, nations were much smaller. They were usually city states rather than true nations. What we think of as a nation today. So even just a group of people gathered around a city or a small geographic area could have been considered a nation.

But what it means is that this act by Shechem isn’t an offense against just one person. It’s not just Shechem defiling Dinah and Dinah’s father. It’s an offense against an entire nation and their customs. They had already built up their customs and their culture enough that this is now a defiling of an entire culture.

It’s like if you were to go to Mexico and make a taco with white bread, if you were to do that, the Mexican people would look at you like you have three heads. You’re not doing something necessarily against one person. You’re doing something against an entire nation’s customs. If you were to replace a tortilla with a slice of white bread, that would be kind of a silly way to make a statement against their national customs. But that kind of goofy example is illustrating what this truly is. It’s not an offense against Dinah herself. It’s an offense against the entire nation of Israel and their customs as small as they are at this time.

So in verse eight, Hema spoke with Jacob’s son, saying, the soul of my son, Shechem, longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife. Make marriages with us, give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. So Israelites were not supposed to be intermarrying with the Canaanites. I mentioned that earlier in the episode. This was a command from Abraham again.

Hamor here says give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves. So this is a generational proposal. This is not a one time thing. This is generational proposal. If you give your daughters to us in marriage and we give our daughters to you in marriage, now, we become one people. That’s the result. We become one people, our sons and our daughters. The result of those marriages will be a 50/50 mix of our people and yours. So by the time we get to our sons and our grandsons, no one can tell us apart. The result would be that the Israelites would eventually become completely assimilated into Canaanite culture.

So let’s move on. Verse ten, Hamor goes on. He says, you shall dwell with us and the land shall be open to you. Now, Israel was not supposed to acquire the land through compromise with the Canaanite tribes. This land wasn’t even the Canaanites land to give. It was God’s land to give. And Israel was supposed to acquire the land through God’s promise. And so this negotiation tactic from him, or this is an assault on God’s covenant promise. This is an attack on God’s promises to Israel.

We have marriage and we have the land. And these are the two ways that the inheritance promised to Abraham could be compromised through marriage and through land. And these are the two very ways that Hamor proposes a negotiation and that Jacob’s sons could be tempted to compromise in this area.

So in verse 11, Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, let me find favor in your eyes. And he says, whatever you say to me, I will give.

So in verse 13, the sons of Jacob answered, Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled his sister Dinah. So Jacob’s sons now are going to deceive Hamor and Shechem. They’re going to come up with a plan that will make their father proud, and it indicates that they planned this in advance. This wasn’t a spontaneous thing that they did. They planned this what they’re about to do.

So what are they going to do? In verse 14 they said to them, we cannot do this thing to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us. So they masked their plans with false righteousness. What they’re going to end up doing is absolutely wicked and depraved, but they’re masking it with false righteousness. They’re saying, hey, we can’t do this. This would be against our custom. It would be against our law to give DNA to an uncircumcised people. That’s that’s a disgrace. That’s that’s not okay with us. That’s immoral.

So they said in verse 15, only on this condition will we agree with you that you will become as we are by every male among you, being circumcised. Now they knew that this would not make them like the sons of Israel, like Jacob’s sons. But Hamor and Shechem did not know this. They thought that becoming circumcised would make them like Jacob and his sons. They thought that was just part of the culture. That was part of what they did. The Israelites were not the only ones in in those days that did this. So it wasn’t even that outrageous of a thing to ask.

But the difference is Shechem and his people did not receive the covenant that was given to Abraham. Jacob and his sons did, and that’s why they circumcised themselves as a sign of the covenant. So for him and his family to circumcise themselves, it accomplishes nothing because they didn’t receive the covenant, but they didn’t realize this. So it was deceitful. Sons of Jacob knew that they wouldn’t realize this.

So in verse 16 they say, then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become one people. Now this is the same goal as those who built the Tower of Babel. And again, remember that Jacob’s sons are speaking deceitfully here. This is not their true goal to become one people, but it is Hamor and Shechem’s goal to become one people, which they are sharing in that goal of those who built the Tower of Babel.

In Genesis 11:6 it says, the Lord said, behold, they are one people, and they have all one language. And this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. So this language of them becoming one people here in verse 16 is an indication that this is a really, really, really bad idea.

Verse 18, their words pleased Hamor and his son Shechem. So they agreed to do this. And the young men did not delay to do the thing, because he delighted in Jacob’s daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his father’s house. So the people of the city of Shechem would be very likely to listen to him, because he had a lot of honor in Hamor’s house. So when he comes to the people of the city and says, hey, this is the plan that Jacob’s sons have presented to us, this is how we can make this problem go away. This is how we can avoid a fight here with this young nation of Israel, and we can become one with them.

That’s what he does. They came to the gate of the city and spoke to the men of their city, saying, these men are at peace with us. Let them dwell in the land and trade in it. For behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives, and let us give them our daughters. So they’re saying that Jacob’s sons are at peace with us, and other translations here are going to say friendly instead of at peace. I’m going to say these men are friendly with us.

So in verse 22, Shechem says, only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us to become one people. And the condition is, of course, that every male among them would be circumcised. So that would have been very painful for grown men. It’s painful for little babies when we do it on our little babies. Painful enough then, but it’s extremely painful for grown men. But for them, the benefits would be worth it. Take a few days and deal with the pain, and they get to intermarry with this new nation.

And in verse 23, this is where their true motive comes out. He says, will not their livestock, their property and all their beasts be ours. This right here is where we see the true motive of them. They intended the men of Shechem intended to absorb Jacob’s wealth and Jacob’s family’s wealth into their own.

So in verse 25, it says, on the third day, when they were sore and they were probably sleep deprived and feverish as well, says two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon Levi, Dinah’s brothers. Now Simeon, Levi and Dinah, were all children of Leah.

This is where the dysfunction comes in. This is where we see the consequences of that dysfunction. Because Leah and her children were mostly ignored by Jacob. Jacob had clearly shown that Rachel and Joseph were favorites when he was meeting Esau. He did nothing to protect Dinah or defend her when he more came to negotiate. So he had shown throughout the years, over and over and over, that Leah and her children were worth less to him than Rachel and Joseph. And so now years of family neglect has turned into rage, boiled over.

So Simeon and Levi took their swords and came against the city. While it felt secure and killed all the males. No one was spared. It’s probably around 50 to 100 men.

And instead of using the sign of God’s covenant to stand on righteousness, to protect their sister and their daughters, instead of standing on God’s promises, instead they use the sign of God’s covenant for violence, deception, and revenge. They defiled what God had given them out of rage for the defilement that Shechem had brought on their sister.

Verse 26, they killed him and his son Shechem with a sword. So now we see how God uses this for good to keep his promises. Was it good that Levi and Simeon killed Hamor and Shechem? Of course not. It’s murder. It’s nothing less. But. God used their sin to keep his promise to Abraham.

Remember his promise to Abraham. He says, I will curse those who curse you. Now Hamor and Shechem are cursed because of their curse, because they cursed the family of Abraham. Now they are cursed by God. God is using Simeon and Levi to bring judgment and curse on Hamor and Shechem.

This is not the first time we’re going to see this in the Bible. And this is a very, very difficult thing to reckon with. I have a difficult time with it. This should all make us feel uncomfortable. But the truth is there. The fact remains we cannot deny it, that God uses wicked men and wicked acts to bring about his purposes. He simply does. This is not even going to be the last time we see it in this book, much less the entire rest of the Bible. If you have a hard time with this, if you have a hard time with God using wickedness to bring about his purposes and to bring about judgment on others, you’re going to have to reckon with that.

And I encourage you when studying stories like this, when we’re reading the Bible and we come across a story like this and it makes us feel uncomfortable, ask the question, why does this make us feel uncomfortable? And ask the question, why do I have a hard time agreeing with what God is doing? Because that is going to bring out our own insecurities. It’s going to bring out our own sinful tendencies. If we start with the assumption that God is good and all his acts and his works are good. If we start there, then when we get to a story where we disagree with what God is doing, then it’s an invitation into recognizing our own flawed ways of thinking. And it’s an invitation into seeing a greater truth about God than we had known previously.

So if you’re having a hard time with this, wrestle with this text. This is not going to be the first time we’re going to encounter this. The fact remains that God does this. God uses wickedness to bring consequences down on wicked people’s heads.

So they killed him here in Shechem, and they took Dinah out of the house and went away. And then in verse 27, the sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city, because they had defiled her sister. So they took everything. They took the flocks, the herds, the donkeys, the wives, the children, all the wealth in their homes. There was nothing left inside or outside the city. They took everything in.

Verse 30, Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble on me. Jacob was more concerned about the consequences he would face than he was concerned with the injustice his sons had done. Once again, dysfunction comes and rears its ugly head. Jacob doesn’t care that his sons had just murdered an entire city, and how he was going to deal with the wickedness that his sons had just done. He was more concerned about how this affects him.

So he says, you brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land. This is a figure of speech, this phrase making me stink. The idea is that offense was taken through the nose or through the sense of smell. And this is important because Jacob had just built an altar to worship God before the Canaanites. If you remember, in the previous chapter, the very last sentence, we’re told that Jacob built an altar in the presence of the Canaanites to worship his God, Yahweh. But now his sons were acting like the Canaanites, and they were hurting his testimony as a God fear. So in this sense, it’s important that he’s concerned about how this reflects on him, how this is going to impact him, because he did make a statement in the previous chapter that he does not worship the same God as the Canaanites. He worships one God, Yahweh.

But in verse 30, Jacob still is going to show that he’s not trusting God with his safety because he says, my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household. Even though God is working through this situation, Jacob still is not trusting God with his safety.

And verse 31, Simeon and Levi said, should he treat our sister like a prostitute?

So how does this chapter point to Jesus? I’ve hinted at several of these at various points in the show, but to recap, obviously the promised seed of Abraham must remain separate from the seed of the serpent. We know this because how can the promised seed of Abraham crush the seed of the serpent if they’re one and the same? It’s impossible. So they have to remain separate. And this chapter presented a threat to the integrity of that seed. As I mentioned earlier, if Jacob’s sons had accepted Shechem’s proposal, that family line would have been corrupted. So this chapter is presenting a situation where the promised seed is at risk. And of course, Jesus would eventually become that promised seed.

And the reason this chapter in particular is significant is because this is not the only time that the seed is going to be at risk of being corrupted. This is actually the first of three incidents. This is going to happen again in Genesis 37 and then in 38.

Now the number three, as I’ve mentioned many times, indicates testing or trial. So the promised seed is going to be put to the test through Jacob’s family. Is Jacob’s family going to be able to protect the integrity of the covenant? That’s the test that they’re facing here.

The other way this chapter points to Jesus is that Simeon and Levi were the second and third born sons. Reuben, of course, was the firstborn. He’s going to lose his blessing, his birthright. Later on. He’s going to end up sleeping with his father’s concubine. He’s going to end up forfeiting his birthright. So Jesus, who is that promised seed, should have come through Reuben. Reuben is going to forfeit that birthright. Simeon and Levi were the second and third born sons. They would have been next in line for the blessing, but Jacob refused to give it to them because of their murders. So that means that the blessing and the birth rate and the promised seed, the bloodline where the promised seed is going to come through, is now going to fall to Judah, who is the fourth born son who would eventually become the ancestor of Jesus.

So before I let you go this week, let’s meditate on this question. Let’s consider the following question. Meditate on it. Pray on it. This week, as you’re going through your day, reflect on this question. The question is, why does God call us to be separate from the world? And what are some areas in your life that you need to separate from the world? So this is a common theme that I mentioned over and over throughout the chapter of Being Separate from the world. So are there any areas that you need to separate yourself from the world? Why does God even ask us to separate ourselves from the world? So meditate on that question and let’s pray.

Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you for what you’re showing us in this chapter, even though it’s a difficult chapter. Thank you that there are those who have gone before us that have made mistakes that we can learn from. I pray that you would show us ways this week that that we need to separate ourselves from the world. And I ask you, Holy Spirit, that you would empower us to remain separate from the world, set apart for you and set apart for your service. I thank you that you give us the power to do this. Thank you that you have given us the promises that we read about in Scripture that we can stand on so that when it becomes difficult, when becomes tempting to compromise our beliefs, we can stand on you and we can stand on your promises. Jesus name. Amen.

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