Sister-keeping is for brothers too

In Genesis 34, Dinah’s brothers avenged her rape. This was good but also bad. It’s good they were looking out for their sister, but bad that they and their father Jacob hadn’t done more to protect her. And it’s bad they overdid their vengeance by committing an atrocity.

Rape is an act that God’s law would later say was punishable by death, but “only the man who raped her shall die” (Deuteronomy 22:25). Dinah’s brothers Simeon and Levi not only killed the rapist but also his father and all the townsmen. Then they enriched themselves by plundering (stealing) the dead mens’ flocks, herds, donkeys, wives and little ones, everything in their houses and all the town’s wealth. 

This brutality had an effect on the surrounding region. Genesis 35:5 says, “As they journeyed, there was a great terror upon the cities which were around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.” Despite parts of the story that cause us discomfort, we could call this a good result since the family God chose to bless was protected and allowed to flourish. The patriarch didn’t see it that way, however. 

Jacob’s immediate reaction was one of dismay: “You have brought trouble on me by making me repulsive among the inhabitants of the land” (Gen. 34:30). He feared retribution. 

Years later, at the end of his life, Jacob’s mind returned to the incident. Even though the family had been left alone to thrive in peace, their atrocity gnawed at his spirit. During an occasion designed for blessing all his other sons (except Reuben), he had only disapproving words for Simeon and Levi because of what they’d done so long ago:

Simeon and Levi are brothers; their swords are implements of violence. May my soul not enter into their council; may my glory not be united with their assembly; for in their anger they killed men, and in their self-will they lamed oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce; and their wrath, for it is cruel. I will scatter them in Jacob, and disperse them among Israel. —Genesis 49:5-7

This amounted to a prophecy against the two-of-a-kind brothers. It must have surprised and shamed them. Their father hadn’t changed his mind about them after all those years. He still viewed their violence in a negative light, and took no glory in any “success” it brought the family. He didn’t trust them and didn't want to be associated with them. They had behaved like men “filled with violence,” as in pre-flood times. They had shamed him. He could not shake the memory of the ferocity of their fury and the depth of their cruelty.

This passage perfectly illustrates James 1:19-20: 

Now everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; for a man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness of God.

The episode with Dinah and her brothers foreshadows laws concerning rape (Dt. 22:23-29) and murder (Numbers 35). We'll examine Numbers 35:14-34 more fully in a future post, but it bears noting here that the text specifies a “blood avenger” would be allowed to carry out a sentence of death once an investigation has been done and guilt concluded. The avenger would most likely be a brother or close kin, in accordance with Gen. 9:5. The KJV, RSV, NASB, and other translations mention a brother’s role.

The key principle that is emerging from scripture—from Cain’s murder of Abel to Lamech’s glorification of violence, to mankind’s proliferation of violence before the flood to God’s institution of capital punishment after the flood, to Simeon and Levi’s reckless disregard for life to the encoding of how sentences of death should be carried out—is that vengeance without restraint is not justice. It violates the pro-life ethic.

Next: The best and worst of brother-keeping

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Image credit: Simeon en Levi nemen Dina mee naar huis (Simeon and Levi Take Dinah Home), by Harmen Jansz Muller, after Maarten van Heemskerck, 1579-1585, Rijksmuseum