Dinah

Biblical Account

Dinah's birth is briefly recorded in Genesis 30:21. After Leah, the wife of Jacob, had borne six sons, she bore a daughter and named her Dinah. The name is sometimes interpreted as related to a word meaning "judgment" or "judging."

The account in which Dinah takes center stage is Genesis 34. While Jacob's family was staying at Shechem in the land of Canaan, Dinah "went out to see the daughters of the land." Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, violated her (the KJV reads "lay with her, and defiled her"; the Korean New Korean Revised Version explicitly renders the act as rape), and afterward he asked to have her as his wife. Jacob's sons set as a condition of the marriage that the men of the city of Shechem be circumcised. On the third day, while the circumcised men were still in pain, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's full brothers, attacked the city, killed the men, and brought Dinah back. Fearing retaliation from the surrounding peoples, Jacob rebuked his two sons (Genesis 34:30). Dinah's name appears once more, in the list of Jacob's family members who went down to Egypt (Genesis 46:15).

Significance Within Scripture

On his deathbed Jacob again rebuked Simeon and Levi for their violence (Genesis 49:5-7), and the incident is read in connection with the later history of those two tribes. The narrative also leads into Genesis 35, where Jacob's family puts away their foreign gods and goes up to Bethel. Dinah is not mentioned in the New Testament.

Interpretation and Debated Issues

• The question of Dinah's responsibility: Older interpretations and some sermons have drawn a moral lesson about Dinah's imprudence from the statement that she "went out to see" (Genesis 34:1). More recently, a number of theologians and preachers have criticized such readings for placing blame on the victim. The text itself offers no direct judgment faulting Dinah.
• A silent figure: Throughout the chapter Dinah does not speak a single word, and neither her thoughts nor her later life are recorded. Some interpretations focus on this silence.
• The justification of revenge: The brothers' protest, "Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?" (Genesis 34:31), is the final word of the chapter. For this reason, some interpreters see the text as leaving open the question of whether Jacob or his sons judged rightly.
• Later traditions: Later Jewish tradition records stories that Dinah became the wife of Job or that Asenath, the wife of Joseph, was Dinah's daughter. These accounts are not found in the biblical text.

In the Korean Church

In Korean church preaching, Genesis 34 is usually treated in connection with Jacob's spiritual journey. Sermons commonly read the incident as a consequence of Jacob's remaining at Shechem instead of going up to Bethel. Because the passage deals with sexual violence, it is addressed mainly in sermons for adults or in Bible study rather than in children's Sunday school. In recent years, in connection with the issue of sexual violence in the church, some have called for rereading this passage from the perspective of the victim.