For the 1970s talk show hosted by Dinah Shore, see Dinah!

For the Japanese reconnaissance plane of WW2 with Allied code name "Dinah" see Mitsubishi Ki-46

Dinah (Hebrew: דִּינָה, Standard Dina Tiberian Dînāh ; "Judged; vindicated"), mentioned in the Book of Genesis as the daughter of Jacob and Leah. The episode of her abduction and rape by a Canaanite prince, and the subsequent vengeance of her brothers Simeon and Levi, is told in Genesis 34.

Summary

The story of Dinah is told in Genesis 34.

Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob, went out to visit the women of Shechem, where her people had made camp and where her father Jacob has purchased the land where he had pitched his tent. Shechem the son of Hamor, the prince of the land, "seized her and lay with her and humbled her. And his soul was drawn to Dinah ... he loved the maiden and spoke tenderly to her," and Shechem asked his father to obtain Dinah for him, to be his wife.

Hamor came to Jacob and asked for Dinah for his son: "Make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us; and the land shall be open to you," and Shechem offered Jacob and his sons any bride-price they named. But "the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah," saying they would accept the offer if the men of the city agreed to be circumcised.

So the men of Shechem were deceived, and were circumcised; and "on the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came upon the city unawares, and killed all the males. They slew Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went away." And the sons of Jacob plundered whatever was in the city and in the field, "all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses."

"Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, "You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household." But they said, "Should he treat our sister as a harlot?""

See also Dinah in Rabbinic Literature

Origin

See also documentary hypothesis and biblical criticism

Genesis 33:19 and Genesis 33:20, which tell of Jacob's purchase of land at Shechem and his erection of an altar there, are believed by some critics to come from the Elohist source within Genesis, while the rape-and-vengeance story at Genesis 34 comes from the Jahwist. Julius Wellhausen dated the Jahwist text to c.950 BC and the Elohist to c.850 BC; subsequent scholars have questioned Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis and revised his dating, often drastically, but the general view^{[citation needed]} is that Genesis does combine originally separate strands and does not pre-date the 1st millennium BC.^[1] The Jahwist's rape story at Genesis 34 was designed to cast a bad light on the northern kingdom of Israel, which had Shechem as its first capital, the Jahwist text itself originating in the southern kingdom of Judah. The brief Elohist account of the purchase of land by Jacob in Genesis 33 represents the northern kingdom's more peaceable account of the origins of Shechem, the Elohist being a northern text.^[2]

Two layers of narrative have been suggested within Genesis 34 itself, an older account ascribing the slaughter of Shechem and to Simeon and Levi alone, and a later addition (verses 27 to 29) involving all the sons of Jacob.^[3] A. Rofe has suggested that the verb describing Dinah as "defiled" was added at this time also, as elsewhere in the bible only married or betrothed women are "defiled" by rape; the fact that Genesis 34 is the sole exception suggests that it "reflects the late, postexilic notion that the idolatrous gentiles are impure [and] the prohibition of intermarriage and intercourse with them." The anachronistic view of defilement in the Dinah story, and the preoccupation with racial purity, indicate a date in the 5th or 4th centuries BC, when the restored Jewish community in Jerusalem was similarly preoccupied with anti-Samaritan polemics.^[4]

Some scholars have questioned whether Dinah was actually raped at all: the story is vague about what happened between Shechem and Dinah (the verb translated as "humbled" or "violated" can also mean "to subdue"), and the older version of Genesis 34 may therefore reflect a custom of abduction marriage.^[5]

References

• Scherman, Nosson (1993). The Chumash. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mesorah Publications, Ltd. ISBN 0-89906-014-5

1. ^ See Source analysis for an overview of current thinking on the origins and dating of Genesis and the Pentateuch.
2. ^ See Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, pp.62-63; also Jewish Encyclopedia on Shechem
3. ^ First suggested in the 19th century, repeated by John Van Seters, “The Silence of Dinah (Genesis 34)”, Jacob. Commentaire à plusieurs voix de Gen 25–36. Mélanges offerts à A. de Pury (Genève 2001), 239-247.
4. ^ A. Rofé, "Defilement of Virgins in Biblical Law and the Case of Dinah (Genesis 34)", Biblica Vol. 86(2005)
5. ^ See footnote 7 of A. Rofé, "Defilement of Virgins in Biblical Law and the Case of Dinah (Genesis 34)", Biblica Vol. 86(2005)

External links

• Dinah's Abduction from a Jewish perspective at Chabad.org

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