Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [43]
PLOT SUMMARY: THE RAPE OF DINAH
While the legendary twelve sons got most of the attention, Jacob also had a daughter, Dinah. Her story was another of those uncomfortable ones that Sunday school conveniently skips over. But it is a reminder that these stories were set in a primitive culture of blood feuds and personal vengeance. After the peaceful settlement with Laban and Esau, Jacob and his family get into a nastier bit of trouble when they return to Canaan. They camp outside the city of Shechem and purchase a piece of land on which they can tend their flocks. But one of the local men, also identified as Shechem, takes Jacob’s daughter by force. The young man’s father expresses his regret and offers to have his son marry Dinah. He even proposes that the men of the city will be circumcised, implicitly recognizing Jacob’s God, and the two groups can be joined through intermarriages. Jacob sees the wisdom in this and accepts the agreement; his sons sign on to the agreement but for different motives. Dinah, of course, has no say in the matter. As a woman of the time, she is her father’s to do with as he wants. What she wants can only be guessed. Dinah remains with Shechem during the “negotiation.” Is she a hostage, as the traditional view holds? Or has she fallen for the Canaanite Shechem? A few hundred years after this battle over a woman taken by a young man, there would be another similar war over a stolen woman. Was Dinah a violated hostage or, like Helen of Troy, a willing woman in love? The Bible doesn’t tell us which.
As the men of Shechem lay in pain after being circumcised, Dinah’s two full brothers, Simeon and Levi, kill Shechem and escape with Dinah. Jacob’s other sons then plunder the city in reprisal for their sister’s rape, going so far as to steal the wives and children of the men of Shechem. Jacob is furious at this turn of events, fearing reprisal from neighboring Canaanites. But the sons answer their father, “Should our sister be treated like a whore?”
Following this violent episode, Jacob travels on and makes altars to God. At the same time, he buries all of the foreign gods, household idols, earings, and magical amulets carried by his family—a symbolic purging of the other local Canaanite deities.
PLOT SUMMARY: JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS
After his long, eventful sojourn, Jacob returns to Canaan with his family and flocks. At age seventeen, Joseph has emerged as his father Jacob’s favorite, the first son of the beloved Rachel. Joseph’s brothers seem to find him a nuisance, especially when he rats on some of the brothers for something they had done wrong. Exactly what they did isn’t spelled out, but Joseph “brought a bad report of them to their father.” As Joseph’s favoured status grows, his brothers grow jealous of him. Jacob even gives him a special robe with long sleeves. Joseph makes things worse for himself when he tells his brothers about two dreams in which he is shown ruling over them and they bow down to him. The brothers first consider killing him, but Judah convinces the others to sell him instead, and Joseph is taken by a caravan of Midianite traders for twenty pieces of silver. The brothers then soak Joseph’s robe with goat’s blood, take it back to their father, and tell Jacob that Joseph was killed by an animal. The Midianites take Joseph to Egypt, where he is sold to Potiphar, captain of the Pharaoh’s guard.
Was there a “coat of many colors”?
Sorry. Once again, bad translation by King James’s men. The correct translation of Joseph’s famous “coat of many colors” is a “long robe with sleeves.” You can see why “coat of many colors” caught on—it has a much better ring than something that sounds like a fancy bathrobe. Such a robe is mentioned again later in the Bible and is said to be the dress