The High Cost of Unguarded Gates Text: Genesis 34:1-7
Introduction: A World of Difference
We come this morning to a passage that is grim, sordid, and deeply unsettling. It is a story of foolishness, violation, rage, and the catastrophic failure of leadership. Our modern sensibilities, shaped as they are by the therapeutic sentimentalism of our age, recoil from such stories. We would prefer our Bible stories to be neat, tidy, and suitable for flannelgraph. But the Scriptures are not a collection of inspirational quotes for coffee mugs; they are a record of God's dealings with a rebellious and broken world, a world very much like our own. And in that record, God does not airbrush the sins of His saints. He puts them on full display, because in the failures of Jacob's house, we see our own failures, and we see the desperate need for the grace that would one day come through Jacob's line.
The events of Genesis 34 are a collision of two worlds, two covenants, two ways of life. On the one hand, we have the covenant family of Jacob, the bearer of the promise given to Abraham. They are to be a people set apart, a holy nation, a peculiar treasure. On the other hand, we have the Hivites of Shechem, the people of the land, Canaanites. They represent the world in its rebellion against God, a world that operates by its own lusts, its own power dynamics, and its own definitions of right and wrong. This is not a story about a tragic misunderstanding between two otherwise compatible cultures. This is a story about what happens when the people of God forget who they are and begin to play footsie with a world that is fundamentally at war with their God. It is a story about the high cost of unguarded gates, both the gates of a city and the gates of a household.
What we will see in these opening verses is a cascade of sin, where one sin sets the stage for the next. It begins with youthful carelessness, which opens the door to predatory lust. That lustful violence then provokes a father's feckless passivity, which in turn kindles the murderous rage of his sons. Each sin is a link in a chain, and it is a chain that will drag this family to the brink of destruction. This is not just an unfortunate episode; it is a profound lesson in covenantal identity, patriarchal responsibility, and the absolute necessity of maintaining the distinction that God has established between His people and the world.
The Text
Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. Then Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her and took her and lay with her and violated her. And he was deeply attracted to Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman and spoke to the heart of the young woman. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this girl as a wife.” Now Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter; but his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob kept silent until they came in. Then Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him. Now the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it; and the men were grieved, and they were very angry because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done.
(Genesis 34:1-7 LSB)
Careless Curiosity and Predatory Lust (vv. 1-2)
The tragedy begins, as so many do, with a seemingly small act of foolishness.
"Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land." (Genesis 34:1)
Dinah's name means "judged" or "vindicated," and this chapter will be a grim judgment on the house of Jacob. She is identified as Leah's daughter, a small but significant detail. In a household riven by the rivalry between Leah and Rachel, Dinah is the daughter of the unloved wife, which may partly explain the subsequent failure of her father to act decisively on her behalf. She "went out." This is the language of initiative. She was not sent; she went. And where did she go? "To see the daughters of the land." This was not a diplomatic mission. It was an act of idle curiosity, a desire to fraternize with the local Canaanite girls. But the people of God are called to be separate. Abraham had been adamant that Isaac not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Isaac gave the same charge to Jacob. This was not a matter of ethnic snobbery; it was a matter of covenantal fidelity. The Canaanites were idolaters, their culture was saturated with sexual immorality, and they were under the curse of God. For the daughter of the covenant to go seeking fellowship there was like a sheep wandering into a wolf den out of boredom.
This is the first failure of headship. Where was Jacob? A father is the gatekeeper of his household. He is responsible for what comes in and what goes out. Dinah's unchaperoned jaunt into a pagan city was a breakdown of patriarchal government. This is not to blame the victim for what is about to happen to her, but it is to say that her vulnerability was a direct result of a failure in the created order of her family.
"Then Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her and took her and lay with her and violated her." (Genesis 34:2)
The sequence of verbs here is brutal and direct: he saw, he took, he lay, he violated. This is the logic of unrestrained lust. Shechem is a "prince of the land," a man accustomed to getting what he wants. He operates by the pagan ethic of power. He sees something desirable, and he takes it. The text uses the word "violated" or "humbled" her. This was not a seduction; it was a rape. It was an act of violent, selfish conquest. This is what the world, stripped of its polite pretenses, does. It sees and it takes. This is the worldview that is diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview, which says that a man is to lay down his life for a woman, to honor and protect her. Shechem uses his strength to defile; a godly man uses his strength to defend.
Pagan "Love" and a Father's Silence (vv. 3-5)
What follows the assault is the world's attempt to sanitize its sin with sentimentality.
"And he was deeply attracted to Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman and spoke to the heart of the young woman. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, 'Get me this girl as a wife.'" (Genesis 34:3-4)
Notice the order. First, he violates her, and then he "loves" her. This is not love. This is possessive infatuation. This is the sentimental goo that our modern world calls love, a feeling that follows a selfish act. He "spoke to her heart," trying to comfort her after the fact. But you cannot comfort someone for a wound you yourself inflicted. This is the language of an abuser trying to manage his victim. And his solution is not repentance, but acquisition. "Get me this girl." She is still an object to him, a thing to be possessed. He wants to legitimize his crime through marriage, to make an honest woman of the one he has just dishonored. The world always thinks it can fix its sin by rearranging the externals, by making a deal, by signing a contract. But sin is not a business negotiation; it is an offense against a holy God that requires blood.
"Now Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter; but his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob kept silent until they came in." (Genesis 34:5)
Here is the second, and more grievous, failure of headship. Jacob hears that his daughter has been "defiled." This is a word freighted with covenantal significance. It means she has been rendered unclean, her honor and the honor of the family have been violated. And what is Jacob's response? Silence. He "kept silent." The Hebrew here means he was inactive, he did nothing. This is not the prudent silence of a man gathering facts. This is the paralytic silence of a man shirking his duty. His daughter has been raped, his family's honor has been trampled in the mud, and the patriarch, the head of the covenant household, does nothing. He waits for his sons. This is a complete abdication of his responsibility. A father's duty is to protect, to defend, to pursue justice for his own. Jacob's silence creates a vacuum of leadership, and as we will see, that vacuum will be filled by the hot-headed, sinful fury of his sons. When fathers become passive, when they become effeminate in their leadership, they invite chaos and violence into their homes.
Righteous Grief and Hot Anger (vv. 6-7)
While Jacob is silent, his sons are not. Their reaction is immediate and visceral.
"Then Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him. Now the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it; and the men were grieved, and they were very angry because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done." (Genesis 34:6-7)
While Jacob waits, Hamor, the pagan father, takes the initiative. He comes to negotiate a settlement for his son's crime. But as he arrives, the sons of Jacob return. Their response is twofold: they were "grieved, and they were very angry." The grief is righteous. Their sister has been brutalized. The anger is also, at its root, righteous. A great evil has been committed. The problem will not be the anger itself, but what they do with it. Anger at sin is not a sin; in fact, a lack of anger at sin is a sin. If you can look at the rape of a young woman and not feel a hot surge of anger, then your moral compass is broken.
And notice how their anger is framed. Shechem had done a "disgraceful thing in Israel." This is fascinating because, at this point, there is no nation of Israel. There is only the family of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. This phrase shows that the sons understood their corporate identity. An attack on one of them was an attack on all of them. An act of defilement against their sister was a "disgraceful thing," a folly, a moral outrage, against the entire covenant people. They understood that this was not a private affair. It was a public, covenantal matter. The phrase "for such a thing ought not to be done" is a declaration of an absolute moral standard. The world of the Hivites might see this as a negotiable offense, an unfortunate indiscretion that can be smoothed over with a bride price. But the sons of Jacob, for all their flaws, recognized that some things are objectively evil. They were right to be angry. Their tragedy, and the tragedy of this whole chapter, is that their righteous anger will curdle into sinful, deceitful, and murderous revenge, because the father who should have channeled that anger into the pursuit of true justice was sitting silently in his tent.