Devotionals by Jill Briscoe

He arrived just as Jacob’s sons were coming in from the fields. They were shocked and furious that their sister had been raped. Shechem had done a disgraceful thing against Jacob’s family, a thing that should never have been done. - Genesis 34:7

Dinah was young and daring and wanted to see how the women in the rest of the world lived (Genesis 34:1). She went to the annual Canaanite festival of nature worship even though this was forbidden for an Israelite. Dinah, so young and naive, roamed around the festival awestruck, no doubt, by the town girls’ oriental garments.

Then Prince Shechem “saw her.” Saw means “lusted after,” for the text says that immediately after seeing her, “he took her and raped her” (Genesis 34:2). After that, he “tried to win her affection” (Genesis 34:3), but his lust had already done the damage.

The sons of Jacob were furious and plotted their revenge (Genesis 34:24-29). Simeon and Levi, “two of a kind—men of violence,” were the main culprits and earned Jacob’s curse when he was dying (Genesis 49:5-7).

We are not told any more about Dinah. We do know that when Simeon and Levi came to do their dirty work, Dinah was rescued from Shechem’s house while her brothers killed all the men in the town (Genesis 34:25-26). Dinah had let curiosity lead her into disaster, and the little escapade caused suffering and death to many.

There is a Dinah in all of us. Suspicious that God is withholding fun and happiness from us, we go to the party either in our heads or in actual fact, just to see what the world has to offer and if it’s really as bad as some “narrow-minded” Christians say it is. Such curiosity ends up bringing trouble to everyone and disgrace to God.

For Further Study: Genesis 34:1-31

Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.

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