Dinah: Genesis 34
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
This month, we’re starting with a story that rarely gets the attention or the framing it deserves: Dinah's story.
The Bible mentions Dinah as Jacob and Leah’s only daughter (Genesis 34). Her story is brief, disturbing, and deeply revealing.
The text tells us that Dinah “went out to visit the women of the land.” What follows is ambiguous in the original Hebrew and has sparked centuries of debate. Shechem, a local prince, “took her, lay with her, and defiled her.” Then, he professed love for her and asked to marry her.
But Dinah’s voice is absent.
Her feelings are never revealed to us. We don’t know if she consented. We don’t know if she was terrified or coerced or if she had any agency in what happened.
Instead, the narrative shifts to her brothers, Simeon and Levi, who react with violence, killing Shechem and all the males in his city. Their justification? That their sister should not “be treated as a prostitute.”
But Dinah is still silent.
She is spoken about and acted around but never speaks.
Her experience, like so many others throughout history, is filtered through the lens of male outrage, honor, and violence. What justice looks like for her, we’re never told.
During Sexual Assault Awareness Month, it’s crucial to remember the countless stories like Dinah’s, where women are silenced, erased, or only appear in the narrative to serve someone else’s agenda.
We honor survivors by telling the whole truth, by making space for voices that have been lost, and by asking harder questions about the stories we think we know.
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