31 Aug What Hope Does God Have for Assault Victims? Part 1
Genesis 34:2 – And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her.
When he was nearly finally home after a 20-year absence, Israel (formerly Jacob) settled in Shechem. This father’s decision proved to be as devastating as Lot’s decision to settle in Sodom was earlier in Genesis, as he should have continued on to Bethel as he was supposed to.
Eventually, Jacob fathered 13 children with four different women, two of whom were wives (the sisters Rachel and Leah) and two of whom were maidservants to the wives. At this point in his life, Jacob had 12 children, as his son Benjamin was not yet born to complete the 12 Tribes of Israel. Therefore, he had 11 sons and only one daughter, a young woman named Dinah, at this time.
Dinah went out to visit other women who lived in the area that her father should not have moved her to. While she was out, the son of the man who ruled that area saw her. Whether he raped or seduced her is unclear, but the effect is, in essence, the same in that he defiled her and took her virginity dishonorably. Worse still, he was a pagan man and then wanted to marry her. Intermarriage between believers and unbelievers is condemned throughout Scripture, and earlier in Genesis, Abraham was worried that Isaac would marry outside of the covenant as Ishmael had (Genesis 21:21, 24:3-4) and Esau’s intermarriage with the unbelieving Hittites was a source of great trouble (Genesis 26:34-35, 27:46, 28:8).
Jacob kept quiet about the defilement of his daughter until her brothers came home. The boys were rightly grieved and furious, as well as disgusted by the thought of allowing their sister to marry the unbelieving vile man. Dinah’s brothers then devised a plan to use the covenant of circumcision instituted by God with Abraham in Genesis 17 in a deceitful manner to avenge their sister’s defilement.
(continued in next devo…)
How does the shame brought on by sexual sin here violate the report of God’s intent in Genesis 2:25?
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