The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible by Jonathan Kirsch

slaughter.
    “Come, sister,” said Simeon, taking her by the arm and leading her toward the door of the house, “we are here to take you home.”
    Jacob fretted and sputtered as he watched the grim parade that headed toward the compound. What would become of them now, he wondered? What vengeance would be visited upon him because of the massacre of Hamor and his people? Hamor and his menfolk might be dead, their wives and children taken captive, but there were still many more Canaanites than Israelites across the land. Surely they would not overlook what had happened.
    Simeon and Levi had returned only hours before, leading their weeping sister between them, and their brothers had greeted them with shouts and laughter. But they celebrated only briefly before the bloodiedheroes sent their brothers back to the town with orders to wreak a further vengeance on Hamor’s people.
    The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister. They took their flocks and their herds and their asses and that which was in the city and that which was in the field; and all their wealth, and all their little ones and their wives, took they captive and spoiled, even all that was in the house
.
    — GENESIS 34.28-29    
And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi: “Ye have troubled me, to make me odious unto the inhabitants of the land, even unto the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and, I being few in number, they will gather themselves together against me and smite me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house.”
    — GENESIS 34.30    
     
    “Take the spoils of the city,” Simeon had commanded his willing brothers, “because they have defiled our sister.”
    Levi had been even more precise. “Take their sheep and their oxen, take everything you find in the city and everything you find in the fields,” he instructed them. “Take their wealth, and their little ones, and their wives, too.”
    Now the brothers were returning from the day of conquest, driving before them a herd of many species—lowing cattle, wailing women, weeping children—and carts loaded high with clothing and bedding, silver vessels and objects of wrought gold, jars of wine and jars of oil, all the spoils of the now-empty city of Hamor.
    If Simeon and Levi expected praise from their father, they were disappointed in their moment of glory. The fretful Jacob looked at them—their bloody clothing, their captive women, their spoils—and glowered with anger and fear.
    “Do you know what trouble you have caused for me?” Jacob scoldedthem, pacing back and forth in front of his house. “For all of us? You have made my name
stink
among the people of the land, the Canaanites and Perizzites. Today you have slain a hundred of them, but we are still few and they are many. Did you not realize that they will gather them’ selves together against me and slay
me
because of what
you
have done? I shall be destroyed, me and my house!”
    Simeon was silenced by his father’s anger, but Levi spoke up for both of them in a voice that sounded like it came from a sulky adolescent rather than a bloodied warrior.
    “What would
you
want us to do?” he cried. “Should our sister be treated as a whore?”
    And they said: “Should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?”
    — GENESIS 34:31    
     

CHAPTER FIVE

“SEE WHAT A SCOURGE IS LAID UPON YOUR HATE”
     
    The Strange Affair of Dinah and Shechem
     
    R APIST , S EDUCER, OR S UITOR
T HE C URIOUS P UNISHMENT FOR THE C RIME OF R APE
“M Y C OVENANT S HALL B E IN Y OUR F LESH ”
“I H AVE L OVED S TRANGERS ”
T WO B ELLIES , O NE S PEAR
T HE B IBLICAL C OURT OF C ONSCIENCE
“F OR THE H ONOR OF O UR S ISTERS ”
     
     
    O ne voice alone is not heard in the Bible’s account of the rape of Dinah, the voice of Dinah herself. While the menfolk speechify and haggle and plot among themselves and against each other, no one bothers to ask her whether she wants to marry Shechem or see