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DINAH

(Heb. dînâ)

Only daughter of the patriarch Jacob, by his wife Leah. The name is derived from Heb. dîn, “judgment” or “justice.” In Gen. 34 Dinah is raped by Shechem, who promptly falls in love with her. Eager to marry Dinah, Shechem begs his father Hamor to negotiate marriage terms with Jacob. But Shechem’s outrageous act, compounded not only by his desire to marry a Hebrew woman but also by his father’s intention to negotiate a general intermarriage between Hebrews and Shechemites, incites Dinah’s brothers Simeon and Levi to plan a treacherous revenge. They insist that all male Shechemites be circumcised prior to the intermarriage, and when the Shechemites comply, the Benjaminites enter the defenseless city, put all the males to the sword, and carry Dinah away. Jacob disapproves of his sons’ ruthless conduct, fearing it may encourage others to rise against him and his family. The episode closes abruptly with Simeon and Levi’s retort to their father: “Should our sister be treated like a whore?”

This brief and graphic narrative contains the whole story of Dinah in Genesis. But from an early date, interpreters found an “allusion” to the Dinah narrative in a saying about Simeon and Levi in Gen. 49:5-7, part of a series of “blessings” uttered by Jacob just before his death. Modern exegetes are divided about the extent to which this text is related to Gen. 34. Whether the “blessing” was quite unrelated to the Dinah narrative or related in ways still far from clear, these two texts were understood by early interpreters to be somehow connected.

Dinah’s story was reworked, retold, or alluded to in aprocryphal and pseudepigraphal works such as Judith, Theodotus On the Jews, Jubilees, the Testaments of Levi and Job, Joseph and Aseneth, Pseudo-Philo Biblical Antiquities, Josephus Antiquities, and the much later Genesis Rabbah. In some the Genesis narrative is freely expanded as a haggadic midrash to provide ethical guidance for Jews facing the tempting cultural advantages of hellenization. Most apply Dinah’s story to contemporary events, to emphasize the continuity of Jewish tradition and its everlasting validity and applicability. Simeon and Levi are models of zeal and courage in dealing with Gentiles, Levi is the perfect prototype of the Jewish priest, and the Shechemites represent the forces warring against the Lord and his covenanted people. Intermarriage with foreigners is forbidden, priestly failings are severely criticized, and Dinah, the virgin daughter of Israel, is restored by her marriage to Job.

Philo’s reading of Gen. 34 is allegorical: Shechem is the emblem of folly and shame; Dinah, of justice; and Simeon and Levi are the champions of truth. Philo demonstrates the power of etymology not only to disintegrate a narrative into the allegorical expression of a universal idea, but also to transform an episode of biblical history into a model for personal salvation. In this early Christian period, typological interpretation of the Dinah episode predominated (e.g., Simeon and Levi as types of the Scribes and Pharisees). But the key figure in the history of medieval interpretation of Dinah’s story is Gregory the Great, for whom Dinah is a figura for the soul wandering into the clutches of the devil, a pawn in the cosmic struggle between God and the evil one for moral possession of the human spirit.

While the broad brushstrokes of the biblical account fail to depict Dinah’s motives and feelings, the tropological readings of Gregory and his numerous followers rely consistently on the topos of woman as man’s downfall. Though these moral readings of Gen. 34 are quite thorough and ingenious, they generally demonstrate how slight a pressure on the sensus spiritualis the sensus literalis actually exerts. Potentially positive or ambiguous or even relatively neutral features of the biblical text are made to serve the moralizing purposes of the expositors, whose interpretations fall clearly within an ascetic tradition of misogyny stretching back to Pseudo-Clement and Jerome.

One of the least explored chapters of Genesis, the Dinah narrative continues to present problems for interpretation. Unequivocally clarified neither by the Hebrew text nor by ancient and modern translations, the question remains controversial in modern exegesis: some commentators explain Dinah’s plight as seduction, others as rape, and still others use the terms interchangeably or even state outright that Dinah is responsible for what happens to her. Some ideological critics have argued that blurring these distinctions constitutes a hermeneutically violent act that reflects, supports, and perpetuates the androcentric brutality of the narrative itself.

Lucille C. Thibodeau, P.M.

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

DINAH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)