One of the stories that always bothered me was Dinah. I read this one to my kids from the Bible Story Book to get their take.
Apparently Dinah (daughter of Jacob and Leah-the wife he didn't like but managed to have ten sons with) was hanging around with the girls of "the land". Shechem sees her somewhere around and "took her and lay down with her and violated her". In the Bible Story book this is said to be a rape, though I couldn't find in my Bible where there was any mention of force. It does say he was in love with Dinah and wanted to marry her. So his father goes to Jacob and asks if Shechem can marry Dinah. Shechem says, "Let me find favor in your eyes and whatever you will say to me I shall give it. Raise very high the marriage money and gift imposed upon me, and I stand willing to give according to what you may say to me; only give me the young woman as a wife."
Always seemed to me he wanted to do the honorable thing here. So her brothers say that Shechem and all the other Hivite men have to get circumcised. Shechem and his father talk the others into this (I always thought that seemed like the ultimate in friendship) and while all the men are "aching", Simeon and Levi (Dinah's brothers) proceed to murder her new husband and father-in-law. The rest of the brothers decide to get in on the act:
"The other sons of Jacob attacked the fatally wounded men and went plundering the city, because they had defiled their sister. Their flocks and their herds and their asses and what was in the city and what was in the field they took. And all their means of maintenance and all their little children and their wives they carried off captive, so that they plundered all that was in the houses."
Genesis 34
The moral (or punchline)according to the WTBTS is that this is all (drumroll) DINAH'S fault. You couldn't really blame her brothers, they just got mad and went a little far. If Dinah had stayed home and not had worldy friends, none of this would have happened. You can't blame Shechem (even if it was a rape)because if she's out there walking around in public and talking to worldly people, apparently she was asking for it.
After I read the story I just waited for a response. The kids sat there for a moment and then my middle one says, "If that isn't the dumbest thing in the world! How was it the girl's fault that all these guys were nuts?"
Made me feel like I'm raising them right...
Jewel
