Commentaria in Genesim
Chapter Thirty-four
Dina is ravished and violated by Sichem. Hence, verse 13, the sons of Jacob make a deceitful covenant with him, demanding that he with his people be circumcised, and so take Dina. Whence, verse 25, Simeon and Levi attack and slay the Sichemites, who are suffering from the circumcision. This is the fourth temptation and cross of Jacob.
1. And Dina the daughter of Lia went out to see the women of that country. 2. And when Sichem the son of Hemor the Hevite, the prince of that land, saw her, he was in love with her: and took her away, and lay with her, ravishing the virgin. 3. And his soul was fast knit unto her, and whereas she was sad, he comforted her with sweet words. 4. And going to Hemor his father, he said: Get me this damsel to wife. 5. But when Jacob had heard this, his sons being absent, and occupied in feeding the cattle, he held his peace till they came home. 6. And when Hemor the father of Sichem was come out to speak to Jacob, 7. Behold his sons came from the field: and hearing what had passed, they were exceedingly angry, because he had done a foul thing in Israel, and committed an unlawful act in ravishing Jacob’s daughter. 8. And Hemor spoke to them: The soul of my son Sichem has a longing for your daughter: give her him to wife: 9. And let us contract marriages one with another: give us your daughters, and take our daughters. 10. And dwell with us: the land is at your command, till it, and trade, and possess it. 11. Sichem also said to her father, and to her brethren: Let me find favour in your sight, and whatsoever you shall appoint I will give: 12. Increase the dowry, and ask gifts, and I will gladly give what you shall demand: only give me this damsel to wife. 13. The sons of Jacob answered Sichem and his father deceitfully, being enraged at the deflowering of their sister: 14. We cannot do what you demand, nor give our sister to one that is uncircumcised: which with us is unlawful and abominable. 15. But in this we may be allied with you, if you will be like us, and all the male sex among you be circumcised: 16. Then will we mutually give and take your daughters, and ours: and we will dwell with you, and will be one people: 17. But if you will not be circumcised, we will take our daughter and depart. 18. Their offer pleased Hemor, and Sichem his son: 19. And the young man made no delay, but forthwith fulfilled what was required: for he loved the damsel exceedingly, and he was the greatest man in all his father’s house. 20. And going into the gate of the city, they spoke to the people: 21. These men are peaceable, and willing to dwell with us: let them trade in the land, and till it, being large and wide, and wanting tillers: we shall take their daughters for wives, and give them ours. 22. One thing only is an obstacle to so great a good: that we must circumcise our males, imitating the manner of the nation. 23. And their substance, and cattle, and all that they possess, will be ours: only in this let us condescend, and by dwelling together we shall make one people. 24. And they all agreed, and all the males were circumcised. 25. And behold the third day, when the pain of the wound was greatest: two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, the brothers of Dina, taking their swords, entered boldly into the city: and killing all the males, 26. They slew also Hemor and Sichem, and took away their sister Dina out of Sichem’s house. 27. And when they were gone out, the other sons of Jacob came upon the slain: and plundered the city in revenge of the rape. 28. And they took their sheep, and herds, and asses, wasting all they had in their houses and in the fields. 29. And their little ones and wives they took captive. 30. And when they had boldly perpetrated these things, Jacob said to Simeon and Levi: You have troubled me, and made me hateful to the Chanaanites and Pherezites, the inhabitants of this land. We are few: they will gather themselves together and kill me: and both I and my house shall be destroyed. 31. They answered: Should they abuse our sister as a harlot?
defences of the walls, whose first virtue and consummation of victory is not to be seen,” as Sulpicius relates, Dialogue 9.
Dina. Dina was, when she was ravished, about fifteen years old.
1. And Dina went out. Her going out was the occasion of Dina’s fall. For it belongs to women to keep at home, and there to occupy themselves in spinning, weaving and embroidery. The ancients did this, and for that reason at weddings, when the bride was led with solemn rite from her father’s house to the bridegroom’s, a decked distaff with spindle and thread presently accompanied her among the Romans, as Brissonius teaches from Plutarch and Pliny in his work On the Rite of Weddings. Moreover Pliny, book 8, chapter 48, assigns the cause and origin of this rite, when he says: “That the wool with the spindle and thread of Tanaquil, who was also called Caecilia, remained in the temple of Sancus, M. Varro is the authority, and that the royal wavy robe made by her, which Servius Tullius had worn, remained in the temple of Fortune; and thence it came about that a decked distaff with spindle and thread accompanies maidens who are being married.” Dina, because in idleness she laid aside the distaff, went out and ruined herself and the Sichemites. Of the household duties of women I have spoken at Titus 2:5. Rightly did Martial sing of Laevina, chaste and austere, but a wanderer: While now she trusts herself to Lucrinus, now to Avernus, etc., She fell into the flames, and, having followed a youth and left her husband, came a Penelope, departed a Helen.
We see the same daily, alas, in maidens who go out to walk with young men. That Dina was fifteen years old is clear from the fact that she was born almost at the same time as Joseph, as is clear from Genesis 30:21 and 24. But Joseph, sold a little after this, was sixteen years old, as is clear from chapter 37, verse 2.
Again, this is clear from the fact that Simeon and Levi were then about twenty years old, as I shall presently say; and these were five years older than Dina and Joseph. Therefore this ravishing of Dina and the destruction of Sichem happened about nine years after the departure of Jacob from Haran and his arrival in Chanaan, when Jacob was in the 106th year of his age, that is, one year before the death of Rachel and the birth of Benjamin, of which in the next chapter, verse 18.
To see the women. In Hebrew banot, that is, daughters, namely virgins of her own age of that region, who then in great number and adorned had gathered for a solemn feast, if we believe Josephus; this was Dina’s curiosity, which she paid for by her ravishing and so infamous a violation. For, as Tertullian says: “The exposure of a good virgin is the suffering of violation.”
Morally, let virgins here learn how they ought to flee the eyes of men, that they may desire neither to see nor to be seen. Prudently, therefore, St. Martin: “A woman,” he says, “should keep herself within the Sophronius relates in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 171, of a certain virgin who, fleeing a lover, lest she should scandalize him, withdrew into the desert, and lived there for seventeen years; and for this flight she received a double privilege from God: first, that though she saw everyone, she was herself seen by no one; second, that though she had taken a little oil with her into the desert, and ate of it continually, it was nevertheless not diminished.
The same author, chapter 60, relates a wonderful example of a nun who, fleeing a lover, when she had asked him by messengers why he so pursued her and what he most loved in her, and he had answered that he was captivated by her eyes, soon sent him her eyes, dug out, that he might be satisfied with them. At which the young man, astonished, turned his desire into penitence and compunction, and, renouncing his allurements, embraced the monastic life. Do you want more recent examples? Hear.