Dinah and Princess Tamar: Violated Women

Chapter 7 Dinah and Princess Tamar: Violated Women

Oral traditions and history books are replete with battles and conquests. Yet, these accounts focus primarily on the injuries and wounds sustained by men. The stories of men who have lost limb and life overshadow the accounts of the innumerable women whose bodies and lives have been ravaged and pillaged. Violated women have been wounded, widowed, raped, captured and rendered childless, often the unacknowledged casualties of individual desire and na- tional expansion. Dinah and Princess Tamar’s sexual violations are caused by individual desire that becomes a violent turning point in the history of their families and nations. The historical accounts of their fathers, and brothers, largely focus on male loss and male grief rather than the desolate women in the wake of male lust. The narratives of Dinah (Gen 34) and Princess Tamar (2 Sam 13) will be ex- amined. These two women, both the only named daughters of their fathers, are sexually violated by princes. In the ANE context, rape had the ability to render them unmarriageable—except to their perpetrator. Dinah and Tamar, after their trauma, both disappear from the narrative scene. Both women are frozen in time, unable to move through marriage onto the ultimate life- passage. Dinah and Tamar are rendered socially barren because, as sexually violated women their marriage opportunity is diminished and they are rendered childless.

Dinah’s Narrative

Dinah’s narrative is the first of three in-depth stories concerning Jacob’s children (Dinah, Judah and Joseph).1 Yet, Dinah is first introduced as “the daughter of Leah” (Gen 34:1). The mention of Leah foreshadows the unfortunate circumstance that Dinah is about to endure as her narrative unfolds. Of the

1 Genesis 38 tells the story of Judah. Genesis 37–50 is dedicated to Joseph. Simeon and Levi and the other sons are minor characters in relation to the priority given to the other children in the previously mentioned narratives. Furthermore, “while this story might seem at first sight to be an interlude in the patriarchal story, it contains the three major elements of Abrahamic blessing.” The three major elements are then described: the promise of becoming a great na- tion, the promise of the land and the call to be a blessing; Turner, Genesis, 151.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004366305_011 212 Chapter 7 three narratives following Jacob’s children, Dinah’s is the only one in which the main character’s voice is omitted. Dinah is a flat character that is silent and passive. The tragedy of Dinah’s narrative is linked to the male characters that serve their own interests.2 Furthermore, Dinah’s greatest trauma is that after Shechem’s violation she remains unmarried and therefore childless. In the ANE context the childless disposition of a woman was an added tragedy to her rape. The connection between Dinah’s sexual violation and her social barrenness will be further explored. Due to her rape, Dinah does not become a wom(b)an; she is never mentioned within the tôlĕdôt again. Dinah’s narrative commences in Gen 33:18 and ends in Gen 35:1–7. The narrative begins and ends with Jacob coming to a new location and erecting an altar to Yahweh. When we start the narrative from Gen 33:18 instead of Gen 34:1 we get the sense of irony that the narrator intends. The narrator states that Jacob and his family arrived “peacefully” at the Canaanite city of Shechem (Gen 33:18).3 As the narrative unfolds we find out that this city, and the activi- ties that happen therein, are not at all peaceful.4

The Sexual Violation It is no coincidence that Dinah is identified as the daughter of Leah5 “the one she bore to Jacob” (Gen 34:1). Dinah’s first description is that she is her mother’s daughter. Like mother, like daughter; Dinah will be treated with a similar apathy like her mother has endured. It may not be far-fetched to speculate that carries the ( דִ י ן Dinah is unloved like her mother.6 Dinah’s name (from the root

2 Shechem because he violates her; her brothers because it is not too clear how much of their actions are actually done to protect her; and her father Jacob because he is disturbingly silent in regards to her ordeal. should be translated as a noun, that is the name of a town, or as an adjective is ׁשָ לֵ ם Whether 3 debated. I have translated it as an adjective since there is no other reference to a Hivite city Also, when Abraham arrives at Shechem earlier in Gen 12 there is no mention of . ׁשָ לֵ ם called a place called Shalem in, or near, the city of Shechem. However, from the Septuagint to Claus Westermann there has been a tradition of interpreting this as a place Salem, near Shechem; Alter, Genesis, 187. 4 “There is more than a touch of irony in this adjective, for he certainly did not leave it in that state”; Gibson, Genesis, 213. 5 Parry insightfully comments, “Jacob’s lack of love for Leah is the background for his lack of concern for Dinah (contrast his later attitude to the loss if his favorite wife’s son, Joseph). This tension also explains the overreaction of Dinah’s full brothers”; Parry, Old Testament Story and Christian Ethics, 130. 6 Apparently, Jacob favours Joseph and Benjamin more because they are Rachel’s children. Even the notice in Gen 37:3 that Jacob loved Joseph because he was born in his old age is curious since Dinah may not be that much older or younger than Joseph.