Chapter 34
An
infamous rape episode dominates this chapter.
The victim is Leah’s
daughter, Dinah, the attacker,
Sheckham, a prince of the Hivites.
Jacob, her father is
enraged, as are all his kinsmen.
Hamor, father of the rapist tries to appease the situation by
promising his son is willing to marry the poor girl. He promises Jacob great
wealth and land as a dowry.
Jacob seems to seek a
genuine peace but his kinsmen and sons only feign peaceful agreement as part of
a brutal revenge plan. Jacob states that his daughter
cannot marry anyone from an uncircumcised people. Haram talks to his men and
persuades them all to be circumcised by Jacob’s people trained in such work.
The circumcision is
conducted properly (bet you thought as I did, that they were al going to be
castrated), but the men are sore from the operation, and therefore still unfit
to fight on the third day when Jacob’s sons,
Simeon and Levi, against their father’s wishes, exploit the situation by
forming an army, attacking the rapist’s city-men to massacre them all. They
take the men’s wives and children as their own.
Jacob
sees the dead and the hostages. He is furious with his sons, but they see their
action as justifiable vengeance.
Chapter 35
This chapter begins
with a very odd visitation from God. He comes to Jacob and tells him, (Verse 1)
“"Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there; and make they’re an altar to
the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau."
So God is
either talking about himself in the third person or referring to a different
deity entirely. Given his later claim to being the only God and denouncing
worship of other gods this seems very strange behaviour.
As
instructed, Jacob sets off on the quest, and hides or disposes of the various
statues and idols of other gods (possibly the ones he got from Rachael in
Chapter 32) by putting them under a tree. The phrase used is ‘hid’ (Verse 4).
It is not clear if this means hiding them for possible recovery later, or
disposing of them completely.
Other peoples,
probably the friends of the people massacred over the defilement of Dinah,
above) are sent into great terror by God, enabling Jacob a safe journey, free
from attack. At Bethel, where God
had come to Jacob on an earlier journey, they build a temple to God as
requested by God. At this point, D’eborah, a previously unmentioned nurse to
Rebecca, dies and gets buried under the oak tree near the temple.
God now tells Jacob
his new name is Israel, not Jacob, a strange mistake as he has already done
this earlier in Genesis 32, after
there wrestling match.
Rachael
dies then, giving birth to Benjamin.
At Edar, Israel, the name finally sticking in
place of Jacob learns that his son Rueben has had an affair with a concubine
belonging to Bilhah.
Jacob
travels on to meet up with Esau and they are just in time to see Isaac, their
father before he dies. They bury him at Mamre. Unlike the death of Abraham,
this seems to be a minor aside, as though the author is just tidying up loose
ends.
Chapter 36
As Jacob becomes Israel, Esau’s name
changes to Edom. His seed is bountiful and the chapter is pretty much dominated
by naming his offspring, who grow so numerous and powerful as to spread across
many lands.
Text studied - http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1801
Arthur Chappell
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