Dinah's Rape

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The Hebrew Bible offers a complicated engagement with the intense topic of sexual assault. The account of Lot’s rape by his daughters in Genesis 19 depicts how the Bible seems to not completely reject sexual violence, considering the daughters do not receive a punishment. The text instead seemingly awards the daughters with offspring for this action, which suggests a justification of this behavior in certain situations. Genesis 34’s account of the rape of Dinah, on the other hand, condemns sexual assault through the harsh punishment Shechem receives. However, given the two differing accounts of sexual assault, the similarity in the texts’ use of the rapes as narrative devices further problematizes the stories because it diminishes the seriousness …show more content…

Dinah’s brothers react to the assault by killing Shechem and “[killing] all the males” in his city for the violation of Dinah (Genesis 34: 25-27). Here, the text presents an attempt at justice to compensate for Dinah’s rape, suggesting a position against assault. The text suggests the rape’s intensity by matching it with a forceful reaction to argue that Dinah’s rape is not justifiable. Although the text seemingly supports Dinah, it fails to give her a voice when it features her brothers and father speaking and acting for her. Instead of Dinah directly recounting the assault, the text notes that “Jacob heard that Shechem had defiled his daughter” (Genesis 34: 5). By doing so, the text restricts Dinah's identity to depend on others, which contradicts the previous notion of siding with her through Shechem’s punishment. On the other hand, the text gives rhetorical power to the perpetrator while silencing the victim when Shechem openly speaks in this scene. Since the only role Dinah seems to serve in the text is a catalyst for her brothers’ slaughter of Shechem, the text once again utilizes the rape of a character as a narrative tool, which lessens the seriousness of rape. Although the text appears to reject sexual violence through Shechem’s punishment, its relegation of Dinah’s identity to other characters and its use of the rape as a narrative plot device complicates this by diminishing Dinah’s power as a

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