An Outrageous Thing in Israel

In the narrative of Genesis 34:1-31, the word in verse 7, translated by the ESV as “outrageous,” as in ‘he had done an outrageous thing in Israel,’ is the word נְבָלָה. In other contexts is rendered alternatively as “wicked” and “folly,” so that the sense is very often the senselessness of the thing.1 But the dominant idea is the moral outrage, but it is only made possible by folly. And what is especially interesting is the construction with the preposition “in” (-ב)— בישראל.

How could one have done anything “in Israel” at this point in history? Israel, at this point, is an individual, not a nation, right? But God’s people were treated as a camp, not as an incidental collection of disassociated persons, who just happened to be traveling together for practical purposes. And so it is always with his people, that we are called “a holy nation” (1 Pet. 2:9).

• God’s people ought never set themselves up for violence.

• God’s people ought never to sign the devil’s peace treaties.

• God’s people ought to be straightforward with justice.

Doctrine. When God’s people make a false peace with Babylon’s violence, our daughters will be violated and our sons will be radicalized.

God’s people ought never set themselves up for violence.

Note that the first context is that Bethel was the proper destination, and Jacob settled for Succoth first, and then Shechem.2 What on earth did he need in these places? Commentators guess several common things: ease, comfort, and the resources of the first tribes he came to. These are not ultimate reasons to settle down in a place.

Look now in the chapter itself, and how it begins: ‘Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land’ (v. 1). Went out to what? Where was Jacob, or where were some of the older brothers? So, if you’re counting: that’s two strikes. You stay among the violent. You intermingle indiscriminately. Now I realize that of all of the features of ancient society that are foreign to today’s reader, the vulnerability of women in all societies that have not been transformed by Christian morality is off the radar screen. Calvin’s comments reflect the ordinary vantage point from before the effects of modern liberalism on Western society:

“Dinah is ravished, because, having left her father’s house, she wandered about more freely than was proper. She ought to have remained quietly at home, as both the Apostle teaches and nature itself dictates.”3

This was a severe neglect by the family, but especially Jacob. Some suppose that the passivity in Jacob results from Dinah being Leah’s daughter, and thus that he had less affection for her. However that lesser degree of affection might have been, that seems not to be the driving force of the passivity at all. For her part, it was, as Henry described it, “vain curiosity.” This vanity he further sets against the backdrop of all of our domestic duties to cultivate each other’s company: “It is a very good thing for children to love home; it is parents’ wisdom to make it easy to them, and children’s duty then to be easy in it.”4

The primary antagonist of the story is named after the city: Shechem is the place, but it is also the name of the individual who violated Dinah. That is fitting. He orders her like a product off the shelf: ‘Get me this girl for my wife’ (v. 4). Those words,

“He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her” (v. 3b).

These two descriptions do not speak of a genuine love and care for her. Calvin even seems to suggest that Shechem’s speech “to the heart” was “to allure her to himself … [but] that when she was unwilling and resisted, he used violence towards her.”5 But there should be no mistake that the initiating act was contempt and using her: ‘he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her’ (v. 2). God’s people ought never set themselves up for violence.

God’s people ought never to sign the devil’s peace treaties.  

The immediate and obvious objection to this would be: “It’s not the literal devil, even if this prince of Shechem is servant to the devil.” Well, let me ask you about the terms of this treaty: Who is dictating all of the terms? ‘Hamor’ (v. 8). And yet, his son is the one who just violated their sister. Now, look at the next wonderful offer: ‘Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves’ (v. 9). This guy moves fast—from single victim turned property to an entire depletion of the covenant line! But wait: there’s more! And it is so generous from an earthly perspective, isn’t it?

“You shall dwell with us, and the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it, and get property in it” (v. 10)

You can co-exist here. You can “call” things your own. But it is a dwelling with us. When people violate things so precious or fundamental to life, and yet press on, they make their violent intentions clear—in such a case, the Christian is duty-bound to separate at once from the violent aggression. To fail to draw that line is to try to bottle up violent passions, which is no real peace at all. Jacob had no need to even allow his sons to be an audience to this. When Jacob heard their scheme, he should have known it was a scheme, or even if not, he should have said, “AGREE TO WHAT!”

Ultimately, the context of how to think about this offer is God. Had not God covenanted with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Had not God given them this land? Had not God set an eviction notice for all inhabitants of planet earth on the day that Adam would eat of the fruit (Gen. 2:17)?

So, when we teach that it was imperative that the covenant community not intermarry with these pagans, and not form entangling alliances with these tribes, you have to first understand the widest and oldest context. This people group in Shechem had to be treated as invaders in the land, as violent enemies against God and against all mankind, as the later conquest of Canaan was supposed to teach the reader of Scripture.

Someone may say, “But the present inhabitants of Shechem naturally considered this their land.” Well, they forgot to consult God. It is God who “divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples” (Deut. 32:8). If we are not to remove the ancient landmarks, as the Proverb says, then the most ancient landmark of all is the one God decreed for this people. The only thing that is unique here—and maybe tougher to get our minds around—is that the “outsiders” are really the insiders, as God gave this land to Abraham’s seed (Gen. 12:1; 13:15; 15:7, 18; 17:8). So on the surface, Israel look like the sojourners in relation to these people. In fact, we read later on, it is entirely reversed. But here is the universal principle from Deuteronomy 28:

“The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail” (Deut. 28:43-44).

Now that’s a future curse for Israel, but they would have lived it back here in Genesis if God didn’t get them out of there. And that curse of being slave to the violent on what was your home soil is the natural result of courting violence.

But if I can give “the art of war” in this Satanic peace treaty to Israel: If Jacob attempts to keep peace by placating the violent, then he (really, they) would only be bottling up their own violence for later. As we see, that is exactly what happens. Not only that, but violence is exponential, in the heart of the violent, all the way out to the hands. In saying nothing about Hamor’s total lack of remorse, Jacob showed all their cards.6 They would be weak and willing to be trampled upon.

It is one thing to overlook sin if a sinner sins, purely and simply. The Proverbs even say “it is [a man’s] glory to overlook an offense” (19:11). But it is another thing altogether to enable flagrant violations that operate from clear presumption and an intent to expand that territory of violence. There are many Christians who seem to think that Jesus’ words—“But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Mat. 5:39) is interchangeable with, “If someone violates one of your sisters, offer him also your other …” There is a world of difference between private offense and public duty. And there is a world of difference between forgiveness of the repentant versus pacifism and enablement.

If there is any doubt that Hamor’s intent to advance in evil toward Israel was echoed in his son, just as Shechem was starting to sound all-generous, no-exploitation, when he explained the terms to his own tribe, he adds: ‘Will not their livestock, their property and all their beasts be ours?’ (v. 23). There’s always a catch, and it’s not just a “catch.” As the kids say, “It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.”

So, God’s people ought never set themselves up for violence and God’s people ought never to sign the devil’s peace treaties.

God’s people ought to be straightforward with justice.

Like father, like sons. Jacob had to learn to wait on the Lord—to not strive with man—in order to inherit the blessing. The question is not whether or not these people had it coming to them. Justice really did demand their punishment. No acknowledgment of this great evil is made by Hamor or his son. The problem was in Jacob trying to wait it out, in merely wishing it would go away, in pretending that this Hamor and his son Shechem were not somehow the monsters that they obviously were. And making peace with moral monsters makes us moral monsters ourselves. We normalize the outrageous to our own souls.

When you compromise with violent people, flirt with violence, romanticize violence, or pretend that the violent are not violent toward you, or just stare uncomprehendingly saying, “Violence—what’s that got to do with anything,” when you do that, you put yourself in the place of having to commit to that violence in the end—one way or the other: either through blowing up in a greater violence, or by cowardice, sitting frozen like Jacob. But these sons of Jacob weren’t the cowardly bunch. Their sin would be the sin of the radical. First: ‘The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully’ (v. 13). The circumcision of course was a ploy—which Calvin rightly catches as “doubly sacrilegious,” namely “they cared nothing about circumcision.”7 And ‘Simeon and Levi’ (v. 25) knew who to strike both for vengeance and as a matter of military strategy, as Hamor and Shechem acted at the head.

Let’s piece together the progression in these young men—treating verses 7 and 29 as two snapshots:

“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 … All their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered” (vv. 7, 29).

Notice that when Jacob attempts to rebuke them, both his rationale and their response. Although Jacob was in the wrong for his passivity, he is not wrong in his diagnosis of the consequences of their radical solution.8

“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” (v. 30).

Jacob was technically correct, but he should have been saying this to himself, long before Dinah was ever defiled. Well before Hamor set the terms for false peace, Jacob had already made the same peace that Lot had made with Sodom. What Jacob knew now recalls the words of Jesus:

“For all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Mat. 26:52).

To live by the sword is not to use it per se in any circumstance. Luke records that same incident including Jesus approving of their possession of swords. To LIVE BY THE SWORD is to settle into violence, either by aiming to fight when you can live peaceably, or by cowardly throwing your generations to the sword by pretending Peace, peace, where there is no peace.

This teaches us that when violence is bottled up with the violent, you won’t be in majority when things come to a head. You won’t have the sympathies of the passive, onlooking neighbors. Those that stay in to fight for worldly gain will become a stench when they finally have to break ranks. And why was this still Jacob’s only concern anyway?!

And that brings us to the last piece of the puzzle, namely, the radicalized sons final word on the subject. Do you think they will be ashamed that the father will compare them to all those bad guys from the stories they grew up with? No.

“But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?” (v. 31)

Make no mistake. The outrage was called something done “in Israel” because the outrage, as far as these sons were concerned, went beyond what Shechem did. The outrage that made that outrage possible to begin with was what their father did not do.

Jacob sat there. Jacob taught them about barbarians in books, but then he let the barbarians in to his loved ones. The sons saw a future in which being a man meant nothing but accepting more and more of a subordinate status to foreigners. They, who grew up in a Christian home. They, who were told of God’s design for masculinity. They, who were taught a biblical worldview that extended itself to defending life—when they were all grown up, they turned and saw the one who sold them that bill of goods sitting there, as one frozen in a dream. Silent. Resigned. Emasculated.

An outrageous thing has been done in Israel, our father. He’s not doing anything. Isn’t he going to do something? Fine—then we will do it for him.

We see this father and his sons, as a mirror exposing our own life and times.

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Instruction. If our doctrine was this: When God’s people make a false peace with Babylon’s violence, our daughters will be violated and our sons will be radicalized. Then the most obvious use in our day follows:

The sons and daughters of a formerly Christian culture have made a false peace with the violence of modern ideology, under the guise of liberalism and pluralism. Now, daughters are being violated and sons radicalized.

Much has been made of the differences between one generation and another in our country. The Boomers and the Zoomers are most are most at odds, and precisely on this point. Jacob represents the Boomer generation and the Zoomers are typified by the violent sons. Both have their sins, but ignoring the obvious cause and effect relationship between them is not going to deal honestly with either. 

Yes, this passage is a mirror into the general ugliness still residing in the heart of God’s own people.9 But it is important to see that sin specifically. In fact, it is not only the love of violence in the end (which most people realize is more than they would like to bargain for), but for most, it is the emasculated resignation to the violent—that is, God’s people making a false peace with Babylon’s violence, which is what sets our daughters up to be violated and our sons to be radicalized. So, we are taught three main things about this sin of courting violence—its ROOT, its STEM, and its FRUIT …

First, its root is Jacob settling for it to begin with—that is, settling into violent Babylon when it was obvious to return to Bethel. Deciding to live where and among whom we live for short-term and lazy reasons is not God’s will for us. Giving shape to our communities to be a pluralistic playground for “whatever” was never a Christian value.

Second, from that root up through the stem of violence: by accepting the pact made by the violent, this is to accept the terms of their continued and expanding violence. When we entertain the violent, we place ourselves into their debt. In fact, we become debtors to violence.

Third, from that root and that stem of violence, comes the rotten fruit of violence. No group of people will simply go away when an alien way of life is being imposed on them. And regardless of their deal about circumcision, the Canaanites weren’t going to put up with all the terms of the covenant. If Israel was to stay here and grow and prosper, they would very quickly begin to be an imposition, as much as Israel would eventually be a threat to the Egyptians (cf. Ex. 1:9-10). Sticking around, just to match violence for violence doesn’t separate from the violence. It escalates.10 We see these very Shechemites later on causing trouble for Israel and even invoking the name of “Hamor the father of Shechem” (Judges 9:28) as a sign of their true loyalty against the nation they were causing trouble within. So the outrageous thing done in Israel, yet again, was refusing to separate Israel from those who had made it clear they would commit violence against them.

Consider the awkwardness of ending like this. It is the Scriptural narrative that ends like this. It is not our job to put flowers on this bloodbath and call it “gospel.” It is our job to read it, consider our sins, repent, and do otherwise. 

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1. Kidner comments, “Folly is too weak a term for nəḇālā, which always implies some outrageous act or attitude” (Genesis, 184).

2. Of course Bethel was much closer to where Jerusalem would be; but we don’t need to read too much symbolism into this. Jacob was the one who encountered the LORD at Bethel. He made an altar there with the rock. He declared the the LORD was in this place (28:16).

3. Calvin, Commentaries, I.2.218.

4. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 73.

5. Calvin, Commentaries, I.2.219.

6. Henry says “Hamor came to treat with Jacob himself, but he turns him over to his sons” (Commentary on the Whole Bible, 73). It is certainly not clear that some arrangement was not worked out with Jacob first, or conversely, the words “But Hamor spoke with them” (v. 8) do not demand that the arrangement was initiated with them.

7. Calvin, Commentaries, I.2.222.

8. Belcher captures this in his remarks: “Simeon and Levi are justified in their anger concerning how their sister was treated, but they express their anger through deception in order to execute revenge.” Belcher then adds in a footnote: “An appropriate response would have been to appeal to the unjust actions of Shechem against Dinah and to call for justice to be done. Even unbelievers have a sense of justice. Although the city of Shechem might have rejected a call for justice, it would place the family of Jacob in the right and allow God the opportunity to work in a way that would show His covenant faithfulness. The approach of deception short-circuits an honorable outcome” (Genesis, 212).

9. Boice comments, “Whenever the Bible contains material that reflects so badly not merely upon the sins of humanity in general but also upon the particular wickedness in the hearts and lives of God’s people, this is evidence of the divine and not merely the human origins of Scripture.” Genesis, II:829.

10. One more comment by Calvin is fitting here, that on Jacob’s and the sons’ responses to each other in the last verse: “Moreover, their insensibility was prodigious, because they were not affected by the thought of their own death, and that of their parents, wives, and children, which seemed just at hand. Thus we are taught, how intemperate anger deprives men of their senses” (Commentaries, I.2.229).