Dinah

Dinah is the daughter of Jacob by Leah, named once at her birth and then carried into the long narrative of Genesis 34, where her violation by Shechem becomes the trigger for the slaughter of a Canaanite city by her brothers Simeon and Levi.

Birth and Naming

Dinah's birth is reported in a single line within Leah's bearing-list: "And afterward she bore a daughter, and named her Dinah" (Gen 30:21). She is the only daughter of Leah named among Jacob's children at the births.

The Outrage at Shechem

The whole of Genesis 34 is given to the episode that follows. Dinah goes out "to see the daughters of the land" (Gen 34:1), and Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, "the prince of the land," seizes her: "he took her, and plowed her, and violated her" (Gen 34:2). His soul then attaches to her, and he asks his father Hamor to obtain her as wife (Gen 34:3-4).

Jacob hears that Shechem "had defiled Dinah his daughter" but holds his peace until his sons return from the field (Gen 34:5). When they come in, "the men were grieved, and they were very angry, because he had wrought depravity in Israel in plowing Jacob's daughter; which thing ought not to be done" (Gen 34:7).

The Negotiation and the Demand for Circumcision

Hamor proposes a treaty of intermarriage and shared land — "And you⁺ will dwell with us: and the land will be before you⁺; dwell and trade in it, and get possessions in it" (Gen 34:10) — and Shechem offers any dowry the family will name (Gen 34:11-12). The sons of Jacob answer with guile: they cannot give their sister to an uncircumcised man, but if every male in the city is circumcised, "then we will give our daughters to you⁺, and we will take your⁺ daughters to us, and we will dwell with you⁺, and we will become one people" (Gen 34:16). Hamor and Shechem persuade their city — "Will not their cattle and their substance and all their beasts be ours?" (Gen 34:23) — and the men of the city consent and are circumcised (Gen 34:24).

The Slaughter

On the third day, while the men of the city are in pain, two of Dinah's brothers act: "Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took each man his sword, and came upon the city unawares, and slew all the males. And they slew Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went forth" (Gen 34:25-26). The remaining sons of Jacob come behind to plunder, "because they had defiled their sister" (Gen 34:27), taking flocks, herds, donkeys, wealth, little ones, and wives (Gen 34:28-29).

Jacob and the Brothers' Reply

Jacob's response is alarm at the political fallout — that he is being made to stink among the Canaanites and Perizzites, and being few in number he and his house will be destroyed (Gen 34:30). The brothers' answer closes the chapter and stands as the last word on the matter: "Should he deal with our sister as with a whore?" (Gen 34:31). Dinah herself is named at the start of the chapter, recovered out of Shechem's house at its center, and unspoken at its end — the narrative weight rests on the brothers' question.