Teaching Team
Exonerating Dinah
Tags: anah, Dinah, edrash, Rashi, Shechem, Shechem the Canaanite, Vayishlach, ΧΆΧ Χ”
In the new edition of Torah Club Volume One, Unrolling the Scroll, I commented on the affair of Dinah and Shechem in Genesis 34. That commentary was excerpted and sent out as this last week's edrash Torah commentary for parashat Vayishlach. Following Rashi's lead, I pointed out that the problem began when Dinah "went out to visit the daughters of the land." I also wondered about the traditional reading which has it that Shechem raped Dinah. I wondered if this was really the case. If he had raped her, why would Jacob have consented to the marriage?
The New American Standard version says that Shechem the Canaanite, "Saw her, he took her and lay with her by force" (Genesis 34:2). Yet the Hebrew does not say this, nor does it use the regular Hebrew word for rape. The Hebrew could be more literally rendered as, "He saw her, and he took her, and he lay with her, and he afflicted her." The word for "afflicted" is anah (ΧΆΧ Χ”), and it is sometimes translated as "humbled." I supposed that this might be read as "humiliated," in the sense of having disgraced her. This seemed more consistent with the summary of the episode we find in Genesis 34:7, where it says Shechem "had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done." It says that "lying with Jacob's daughter" was the disgraceful thing, but it does not mention rape or taking by force.
This line of thought led me to suppose that perhaps Dinah had been seduced by Shechem rather than forcibly raped, and I followed that reasoning in the commentary.
After the edrash was distributed though, a thoughtful reader wrote in to complain that I had mishandled the Hebrew, and that the word anah did indeed suggest that Shechem took Dinah forcibly. I decided to see if there was any other instance in biblical Hebrew where anah was used to denote rape.
Hineh! When Amon the son of David seized his sister Tamar to rape her, she cried out, "No, my brother, do not violate (anah, ΧΆΧ Χ”) me, for such a thing is not done in Israel, do not do this disgraceful thing!" (2 Samuel 13:12). Then, to punctuate the point, it says, "However, he would not listen to her; since he was stronger than she, he violated (anah, ΧΆΧ Χ”) her and lay with her."
The verdict is clear, and Dinah is exonerated. May her soul forgive me the offense, and may God forgive the blunder. The commentary on Genesis 34 inTorah Club Volume One will be corrected.
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