Dinah

Leah names her sons to express her longing for Jacob’s love, but eventually abandons that hope. When her daughter is born, Leah names her Dinah—from the noun דין (din), a silent cry for “justice” after being trapped in a marriage to Jacob, who did not love her. Growing up in the shadow of her mother’s marital agony, Dinah seeks a different life for herself. In the Bible’s only story to foreground a mother–daughter connection, she ventures beyond the safety of home to explore her non-Israelite neighbors.

Shechem, a local prince, falls in love with Jacob’s daughter Dinah, and her brothers approve of the marriage as long as he is willing to be circumcised. Given Deuteronomy’s prohibition against intermarriage, later scribes revised the story into a slaughter of the natives. This was too harsh for later scribes, who recast the story as brothers avenging their sister’s rape.

We cannot imagine anyone but Dinah as the victim, but does the Torah? Do the Rabbis? Understanding the story of Dinah and its reception in historical context can help us reflect on the role of women in ancient Israel and the meaning of sexual violence in a patriarchal society.

Is the Torah concerned about Dinah's consent? Why is Dinah not given a voice in the story?

What is the meaning of the literary parallels in Genesis 34–38 and 1 Samuel?

Originally the sons of Jacob saw the interest Shechem took in marrying their sister as an opportunity to plunder Shechem. A later editor, uncomfortable with this story, blamed the carnage on Simeon and Levi, and added the rape of Dinah as a motivation for their actions.

An intertextual reading of the Dinah story highlights how it polemicizes against marriage with non-Israelites, even those willing to take on Israelite practices. Some rabbinic counter-readings of the text, however, express a more positive notion of incorporating converts to Judaism into the community.