Fierce Grace
Notes
Transcript
Fierce Grace
Genesis 34:1-31
The life of Jacob is a little shocking, especially with the sheer ugliness and unlikability he has displayed throughout much of his story. And our chapter for tonight is definitely a lowlight in his character development.
Honestly, I haven’t found Jacob very likable even though at times he has been admirable.
He soared in his midnight wrestle and his crippling and renaming, and then in his turn toward Canaan and his making peace with Esau whom from youth he had so significantly cheated. But Jacob’s soar immediately turned into a slide when he deceived Esau as to his intent to return to Canaan, then loitered in Succoth, and finally settled twenty miles short of Bethel in Shechem in willful, halfway obedience.
There his pious act of building an altar and naming it after God couldn’t disguise the fact of his disobedience. The old Jacob was in full force. He was morally weak, unwilling to pay the cost of right actions, untrusting of God, and unmindful of the welfare of his children and the future of his people.
The cost of Jacob’s wickedness was immense, as chapter 34 records: rape, degeneration, treachery, and genocide. Yet in all of this a fierce grace was at work. In Shechem, in the event we’re about to study, God allowed Jacob to experience the appalling weight of his sinfulness so he would return to his call.
Divine grace will triumph despite human sin.
Rape and “Proposal”
Rape and “Proposal”
There was only one girl among Jacob’s children, Dinah, the daughter of unloved Leah. Leah’s children, as compared to Rachel’s, were less favored by Jacob, and Dinah appeared to have been of little interest at all to Jacob. This coupled with the fact that Jacob was not where God wanted him to be geographically or spiritually left her particularly vulnerable.
Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land.
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.
And so here in Shechem young Dinah was pushing at the edges when she “went out to see the women of the land.” Girls of marriageable age weren’t permitted to leave the tents of their people to go about visiting without a chaperone. In fact, the Hebrew term “went out” bears a sense of impropriety.
Likely she went out behind Leah’s back. And the worst happened! Dinah became a victim of rape. “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.” The three verbs (“seized … lay … humiliated”) describe a progression of brutality.
But unlike the case of Amnon’s rape of Tamar when afterward Amnon despised his victim, “so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her” (2 Samuel 13:15), Shechem became consumed with Dinah.
And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her.
So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this girl for my wife.”
Shechem’s brutality was changed to tender affection. He was madly in love, though it is doubtful that he could distinguish passion from love. The young prince proposed a proper marriage. Pagan Shechem certainly wasn’t all bad.
Shocking as Dinah’s seduction was, we are equally shocked by Jacob’s non-response:
Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter Dinah. But his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob held his peace until they came.
And Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him.
Though Jacob’s silence might have been sensible in part, his indifference casts him in an unfavorable light. Think about his passionate love for Joseph and Benjamin and his distress at their misfortunes. The truth is, Jacob never cared for Leah, and his attitude trickled down to her daughter and six sons. Ultimately, Leah’s less-loved sons would be at the forefront of selling his favorite son, Joseph, into Egypt.
Here Jacob’s heartless indifference toward Dinah and her brothers fueled his sons’ fury.
The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing must not be done.
And in their fury, Jacob’s sons responded properly to the demeaning of Israel as well as of Dinah. They understood that because Jacob had become Israel at Peniel, the rape of his daughter was a crime against Israel as a people, seeing that the relationship of Israel to God had been ignored and abused.
Tragically, their father Jacob had neither stood up for his daughter or his God!
Marriage Arranged
Marriage Arranged
Hamor and Prince Shechem addressed Jacob and his sons without apology. This was a little matter for which they believed that they had a reasonable and generous solution that Jacob’s family would like. But we have to also understand that they were careful not to mention two things: first, what Shechem had done to Dinah; and second, that they had Dinah in Shechem’s house (vv. 17, 26).
They had the upper hand, notwithstanding that they were willing to make it “right.”
Shechem’s father spoke first.
But Hamor spoke with them, saying, “The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife.
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. Dwell and trade in it, and get property in it.”
“No hard feelings. Let’s all get married and be one big happy family.”
It wasa thing that Israel could never do. Hamor’s offer was filled with economic appeal:property in Canaan, grazing rights, the freedom to travel and dwell anywhere. In sum, Hamor promised what God had promised Israel. Very enticing. A shortcut to the promised land!
As Hamor finished nobly, Shechem assumed that Jacob’s family was sufficiently placated to accept his offer.
Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and whatever you say to me I will give.
Ask me for as great a bride-price and gift as you will, and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman to be my wife.”
Impatient Shechem was extraordinarily generous in his offer. The price of a bride was already fixed by custom, so that his “name the amount” offer was uncalled for. And the promise of a gift for the family was an added bonus.
Father and son expected immediate acceptance. But, of course, Hamor and Shechem didn’t understand with whom they were dealing and especially their God-given religious scruples.
Now the writer warns the reader:
The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah.
Here the story goes from being dark to very dark. Jacob’s sons justified their deceit by the terrible nature of the crime done to “their sister,” and though this isn’t mentioned, she was still a hostage in Shechem’s house. Dinah’s brothers’ speech is one of shameless cunning.
They said to them, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us.
Only on this condition will we agree with you—that you will become as we are by every male among you being circumcised.
Then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become one people.
But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter, and we will be gone.”
The offer was plausible to the Shechemites because it reflected normal practice among the tribes of Israel. Genesis 17:9–14 installed circumcision as an indispensable rite of admittance into Israel. Also, some pagans used it as an initiation into marriage. But Jacob’s sons had no intention of extending their religious influence, much less the knowledge of God, to the Shechemites.
Genocide, not evangelism, was the goal. The irony of their deceit is extremely grotesque in that the aspect of Shechem used to perpetrate the crime would serve to bring about his death.
But more, there is here an abuse of the holy. Circumcision, Israel’s most cherished symbol of faith, would now become a tool of inhumanity. The desecration of the covenant sign of circumcision as a means to gain revenge, and the widening of the revenge to the murder and plunder of a town, were immense crimes deserving condemnation.
But Jacob’s sons weren’t thinking of anything but revenge and certainly not of God. And Shechem wasn’t thinking of anything but Dinah. So, the deal was struck.
All that remained was to get the consent of the male populace of Shechem, which was by no means a foregone conclusion! And here Hamor and his son showed themselves as masters of deceit as they concealed the Dinah factor and counted the domestic and financial pluses while making no mention of their promise to the Israelites.
Their words pleased Hamor and Hamor’s son Shechem.
And the young man did not delay to do the thing, because he delighted in Jacob’s daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his father’s house.
So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of their city and spoke to the men of their city, saying,
“These men are at peace with us; let them dwell in the land and trade in it, for behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives, and let us give them our daughters.
Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us to become one people—when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised.
Will not their livestock, their property and all their beasts be ours? Only let us agree with them, and they will dwell with us.”
And all who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city.
They were willing because their bottom-line selling point was that all their livestock, property and beasts would be theirs.
Genocidal Spree
Genocidal Spree
The birth order of Dinah’s four full brothers was Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, and it was the middle two who caused the massacre. As to why Simeon and Levi did all the killing, we can only speculate. We do know that Reuben, the eldest, was the least murderous of the brothers, being the one who later convinced the others not to kill Joseph but to sell him into slavery.
But Judah’s lack of participation remains a mystery, especially since he would show himself to be ethically challenged in the Tamar affair. But so was Reuben in his Bilhah affair.
In any event, excepting Reuben, it was Dinah’s two oldest big brothers who exacted the revenge.
Here now is bold biblical realism. The Bible doesn’t spare us the awful truth. These two were cold and calculating. The third day following the crude operation would be the most painful and incapacitating. So, Simeon and Levi counted the hours, sharpening their swords.
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 against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males.
They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and went away.
In tandem, the brothers engaged in a genocidal spree, charging from house to house, shoving screaming wives and children aside and hacking their helpless victims to death. The murderous spree ended with the executions of Hamor and the groom-to-be, after which the blood-soaked brothers led their trembling sister out of the wailing town.
This shocks us. But it was just as shocking to the ancient readers as it is to modern eyes and ears. The ancient law “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” had been trampled by Simeon and Levi. There had been no equity here, only exponential revenge. The brothers’ actions offended every convention.
And then the remaining brothers swooped in “like vultures descending on lifeless corpses.”
The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city, because they had defiled their sister.
They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys, and 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, they captured and plundered.
This is a desolate picture. All that was left were the bones and barren homes of the Shechemites. Years later, as Jacob on his deathbed was blessing his sons, Jacob would pause and pronounce an anti-blessing on Simeon and Levi:
“Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords.
Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.
Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.
Actually, no one escaped censure on that infamous day in Shechem. No one looked good, not even one (Romans 3:10).
But by far the worst was Jacob, as evidenced by his pathetic dressing down of the two sons.
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink 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.”
Jacob was pathetic for what he did not say.
He didn’t condemn the massacre. Neither did he condemn his sons for breaking the law “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” He didn’t mention that they violated his contract with Shechem. Jacob said nothing about their desecration of Israel’s most precious symbol of faith. And, of course, there wasn’t a word of concern about his just-raped daughter Dinah.
Jacob’s only concern was survival, to save his own skin and, by association, that of his family.
So there the patriarch stood, face-to-face with his bloody sons. And they weren’t buying it. They fiercely shouted back:
But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?”
Despite the immorality of their genocide, they had assumed the moral high ground. Jacob was silenced.
What a mess! And the whole thing was Jacob’s fault. Jacob’s faith had peaked at Peniel. His triumph had been in his weakness. He had struggled with God and prevailed. He became Israel (“strives with God”). Following his reconciliation with God, he was reconciled with his brother Esau.
But then came his lie and deception of Esau.
And instead of traveling straight to Bethel as God had called him to do, he first stayed in Succoth outside the promised land. Then when he did enter the land he didn’t settle in Bethel, but rather twenty miles away in prosperous Shechem.
It was almost obedience, which is simply disobedience.
If Jacob had gone to Bethel in full obedience, none of this would have happened. The rape, the desecration, the genocide, the disgrace was all due to his disobedience.
And more, the murderous deceit by his sons was rooted in his own deceitful ways. Why should they be concerned about deceiving the Shechemites when Jacob had deceived on so many occasions—the most recent being his deception of Esau when he broke his promise to visit Esau in Seir? What was wrong with their backing out of a commitment if it was okay for their father to do so?
On top of this, Jacob had provoked his sons’ revenge by his apathy about their sister Dinah.
Jacob’s sole hope, and our only hope, lay in the ultimate Son of Jacob, the ultimate Israel, Christ the Savior who bore the wrath of God for our sin, turning it away from all who believe.
Finally, the future would feature the outworking of the terrible fruit of his favoritism when the hatred of favored Joseph by Leah’s sons would perpetrate his sale to Egypt.
The sky had fallen on Jacob. But through it all was a fierce grace. Jacob could see himself for what he was.
Now the withering grace of God would spur Jacob on to Bethel. Sovereign grace would have its way. How absurd Jacob had been. How absurd we all are when we resist the Lord’s will. How tragic the consequences.
Charles Wesley would write these words in 1740:
· Now incline me to repent,
· Let me now my sins lament,
· Now my foul revolt deplore,
· Weep, believe, and sin no more.
