Depths of Depravity - Genesis 34

©September 1st, 2019 by Rev. Rick Goettsche SERIES: Genesis

Sometimes we encounter situations so grievous that we are almost paralyzed by the account. Most of us felt that way when we first heard of the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. Each time we hear of a school shooting, we are left reeling, thinking of the senselessness of what happened. And when we hear about people close to us being diagnosed with a deadly disease, we often have those same feelings swirling inside of us. It is a mixture of anger, fear, and shock. We just don’t know what to do.

Our passage this morning should elicit a similar response. The horrors recorded in this account are shocking on all fronts. There is so much for us to be angry and shocked about that we struggle to find meaning in it. Some preachers simply skip over this passage, arguing that it is so heinous that it cannot be preached. We disagree. Though everyone in the story is guilty in some way, their examples can teach us much.

Background

We turn our attention to the story of Shechem in Genesis 34. Here’s how it begins,

One day Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, went to visit some of the young women who lived in the area. 2But when the local prince, Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, saw Dinah, he seized her and raped her. 3But then he fell in love with her, and he tried to win her affection with tender words. 4He said to his father, Hamor, “Get me this young girl. I want to marry her.” (Genesis 34:1-4, NLT)

The text reintroduces us to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. We are told she went out to visit some of the young women who lived in the area. At first glance this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but there is more going on here than meets the eye.

In that culture unmarried women (especially young women, like Dinah) did not go out without a chaperone. The fact that Dinah does means she may have been sneaking out. The fact that she goes to visit some of the young women in the area may mean that she was leaving the territory of her father Jacob and instead going to explore the surrounding area, which was dominated by godless people. There is a reason these young women were to have chaperones: this was a dangerous place.

Don’t misunderstand me. Dinah is not to be blamed for Shechem’s actions. It is not her fault she was raped. With that said, she does bear the blame for her own disobedience. By defying her parents in order to satisfy her own curiosity, she put herself into a dangerous situation. The boundaries were for her protection, but she didn’t see it that way. Don’t we struggle with this same mentality? Sometimes we choose to wander beyond the boundaries God sets because we think we are missing out. But God puts boundaries in our lives for a reason. He knows that if we stray beyond them, we will put ourselves in danger.

Though Dinah sinned by ignoring her parents’ custom, the far greater sin was committed by Shechem. We are told he saw her, he seized her, and he raped her. This was a violent crime and an incredible violation. Shechem acted with total disregard for Dinah. The only thing that mattered to Shechem was getting his desires fulfilled.

After this, Shechem decided he loved Dinah and wanted to marry her. He tried to woo her, but (as you might imagine) Dinah was unmoved by his advances. So Shechem and his dad decided to negotiate with Dinah’s father to arrange a marriage.

The Negotiation

When we pick up the story again, Jacob has heard about what happened to his daughter. We don’t know exactly how he heard this, but he decided not to go tell Dinah’s brothers right away, as he knew they’d want to take immediate action (as you might expect).

When Shechem and Hamor came to talk to Jacob they kept their focus only on the economic impacts of their proposal, while completely failing to mention the sin of Shechem. They offered to essentially join their two tribes together, and to offer their daughters to his sons in marriage. Shechem shows no remorse for what he has done, nor even any acknowledgment that he has done wrong. The more we see of his character, the more we dislike him. It is easy to be convinced this would be a bad marriage. He doesn’t seem to be concerned about Dinah, only about himself.

When the brothers came in from working in the fields and heard what happened, they inserted themselves into the negotiation. Shechem made an impassioned plea, explaining how much he loved Dinah, and that he would do whatever it took to be able to marry her. He tells the brothers to name their price. Listen to their response.

13But since Shechem had defiled their sister, Dinah, Jacob’s sons responded deceitfully to Shechem and his father, Hamor. 14They said to them, “We couldn’t possibly allow this, because you’re not circumcised. It would be a disgrace for our sister to marry a man like you! 15But here is a solution. If every man among you will be circumcised like we are, 16then we will give you our daughters, and we’ll take your daughters for ourselves. We will live among you and become one people. 17But if you don’t agree to be circumcised, we will take her and be on our way.” (Genesis 34:13-17, NLT)

The author tells us the brothers responded deceitfully, which tells us something is up. They tell Shechem that the only way they could join tribes and intermarry is if every one of the men in the city is circumcised. They claim that they are simply being obedient to the Lord by following this commandment. On the surface, their claim seems noble. But we know they were not. They were setting a trap for Shechem. They were taking God’s holy rite of circumcision, a sign of obedience to the Lord, and using it as a pretense for revenge (and ultimately murder). What they are doing is just as bad (if not worse) as what Shechem had done.

Remarkably, Shechem agrees to these terms (this is what happens when you are ruled by your desires), and we are told he immediately complied with their request. When he and his dad got home, they now had the difficult task of convincing every man in the city to be circumcised. They brought the men of the city together and talked to them about all the economic benefits that would come from joining together with Jacob’s family (again, failing to mention Shechem’s ulterior motive and his sin), and amazingly, all the men of the city agree to be circumcised! This shows just how much influence Shechem and his father had in this city.

The Slaughter

Now the story takes an even darker turn. Two of Dinah’s full brothers, Simeon and Levi now carry out the plan they’d had all along. While all the men of the city are still healing up from their recent surgery, they decide to attack. We are told it is three days later. This means the brothers had thought this out, considered their options, and still chose to go forward with their premeditated slaughter. They came into the city and slaughtered every single man there, including Shechem and his dad. It was a fairly easy task, since their ruse had made the men of the city unable to defend themselves. In the midst of this, they rescue their sister, who seems to have been living in Shechem’s house. I can only imagine the swirl of emotions she must have felt: relief for being rescued, sorrow at the atrocity surrounding her, and even fear of her brothers and what they were capable of, not to mention the trauma she had experienced at the hands of Shechem.

After Simeon and Levi had killed all the men of the city, the rest of the brothers came and plundered the city. They took the women and children away as slaves and took away everything in all of the houses.

When Jacob’s family is finally reunited, Jacob is incensed at the actions of Simeon and Levi, but it is not for the reasons you might think.

30Afterward Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have ruined me! You’ve made me stink among all the people of this land—among all the Canaanites and Perizzites. We are so few that they will join forces and crush us. I will be ruined, and my entire household will be wiped out!” (Genesis 34:30, NLT)

Jacob doesn’t condemn their actions because of how evil they are; he condemns their actions because of how it is going to affect him! His concern is that no one is going to want to do business with him, and that now the surrounding nations will want to wipe him out.

When confronted with their father’s rebuke, the boys reply that they couldn’t simply allow their sister to be treated like a prostitute. In other words, they are claiming they had no choice but to do what they did. They defended their choice to hide behind God’s law in order to slaughter others. Like Shechem, there is no remorse for their actions.

Lessons

Every aspect of this story is appalling. We don’t want to believe people would act in this way (even though we read stories just as horrible every day). It is tempting to conclude that there is nothing to learn from such a horrific account. But we believe that all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching. So what can we learn from this passage?

First, we learn that when we focus only on our own selfish desires we are capable of terrible things. Everyone in this passage acts selfishly. Dinah ignored her parents’ instructions, Shechem wanted to be with Dinah and simply took her, the brothers took revenge, and Jacob looked out for his own interests.

We’d like to believe we would never stoop to such deplorable actions, but we should not be so quick to claim we are not like these people. Don’t we, as a society, function under the principle that everyone needs to do what’s right for themselves, and that the only person who can tell us what we should do is us?

When we studied the book of Judges, we saw the same principle at work. The refrain of Judges is that everyone did what was right in their own eyes. And as people focused more on themselves and less on following God, the culture became more and more immoral, eventually doing things that were similarly horrendous.

We need to root out such attitudes. We should make decisions not on how we feel in the moment, but on the unchanging Word of God. In other words, we need to ask, “Do my feelings square with the teaching of the Bible? If not, we should not follow our feelings—and instead do what God says. If we allow ourselves to be driven only by our feelings, we can quickly go down the same path as the people in this story.

Second, we are reminded of the intrinsic value of all people. Part of the issue in this passage is that people are treated like objects, and not as people with inherent worth, value, and rights. Shechem treated Dinah like an object and not a person. The brothers treated Shechem and the people of the town like they didn’t matter. Jacob looked only at the economic effects of the actions of his sons. When we are concerned only about how things affect us, we open ourselves up to terrible abuses of the people around us, just as they did. Every person is valuable and deserves to be treated fairly and with respect, even if we don’t like them. This means:

We shouldn’t use people for sexual gratification. This goes beyond rape, to any situation where we are blind to the needs/feelings of the other person.

We shouldn’t use people to get ahead in business or in our social circles.

We shouldn’t exploit someone’s generosity or naivete to benefit ourselves.

We shouldn’t discard those we deem inconvenient (the unborn, the disabled, the aged), whether by simply casting them aside, marginalizing them, or trying to end their lives.

We shouldn’t try to exploit contractors, businesses, or employees in order to try to get more out of them simply because we think we can.

In short, we should treat people the way we would like to be treated—with respect and dignity.

Third, we need to leave vengeance in the hands of God. The reaction of Simeon and Levi is understandable. In a sense, their desire to defend their sister is even honorable. When people have hurt my sister, I have felt similar feelings. I get where they’re coming from…But that doesn’t make their actions ok.

When we take it upon ourselves to “make sure justice is served” we tend to do a pretty poor job at it. Our idea of justice tends to be to hurt the other person more than they have hurt us. Shechem raped Dinah. That was a horrible crime. But executing Shechem and everyone in his town was not justice. When we put ourselves in the place of God and try to exact vengeance for ourselves, we tend to overreact. When we allow the fires of resentment, rage, and bitterness to grow within our hearts the potential for great sin increases exponentially. We are not tasked with administering justice. That’s God’s job. When we have been hurt, rather than trying to exact revenge, we would be better served to turn the matter over to God and trust Him to do what is right. He knows far better than we do.

Fourth, we mustn’t overlook or minimize sin. One of the hallmarks of everyone in this passage is that they never owned up to their sin. Shechem never admitted that what he’d done was wrong. He justified his actions by telling himself, “but I love her.” The brothers even defended their actions, rationalizing that they were just defending the honor of their sister.

We often do the same thing. When confronted with our sin, we get defensive, we blame, we try to rationalize why the bad thing we did was actually ok. We cannot grow or be forgiven until we own our sin. We cannot dismiss it as not a big deal, we must not explain it away. We mustn’t distract from our failures by pointing out the failures of others. Our only hope is to admit our failures, accept responsibility for them, ask God for forgiveness, and learn from our mistakes. The longer we excuse our sin, the more it grows and the worse it becomes.

Finally, past sins do not disqualify us. Though we see some horrendous sin here, scripture reminds us that God can redeem even flawed and broken people if they will admit their sin, repent of it, and turn to Him. This should be a great encouragement to us. God can use our past failures to refine us, teach us, and strengthen us for the future. But He can only do that if we own up to our sin and deal with it. If we do, then we are forgiven. Though there may be consequences, the story is not over. God can use broken people. God can use people who have sinned terribly. He can use you and me.

Conclusion

This account is meant to be disturbing. The temptation when we see such depravity is to cover our eyes and pretend it isn’t there, or to sit in judgment upon those involved, believing we could never sink to such depths. But all of those responses are unhelpful and dangerous. Such tremendous sin doesn’t happen overnight—it is a gradual slide away from what we know to be right into things that are further and further from the truth.

Inside each of us is the capability for tremendous evil. If we allow ourselves to compromise with sin, we invite that evil to take root in our lives; and if we don’t act, we can end up doing things we would have never thought imaginable. So the better response when we encounter great sin is to reflect on our own lives, and identify the areas where we are compromising.

My challenge to you this morning is to take a hard look at your life. What are some areas where you see compromise? Maybe you don’t see them as big things. Maybe they are things other people would even say are ok, but in your heart you know you are compromising your faith. Maybe it’s,

The kinds of TV shows or movies you watch

The places you browse on the internet

The way you choose to spend your free time

The way you manage your finances

The way you treat your spouse or your children

The things you allow you come between you and the Lord

The hurt you nurse and replay

The way you talk when you’re away from church

The thoughts you choose to dwell on because you think no one else knows

Grievous sin is almost always a result of a series of smaller compromises. So deal with these areas while they are small, before they grow into something huge.

Seeing the depths of human depravity is often paralyzing. It’s hard to watch, because we don’t want to believe we’re capable of doing such things. But we are. So when we see such sin, either in the Bible or in the world around us, we should be motivated to examine our own lives for those areas of compromise, for those places of selfishness, for the places where we are not following God fully, and deal with them now, before we end up doing things we would never have thought possible.