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I From Dinah to Cozbi Rape, Sex, and Foundational Moments We see that women have been the cause of great dissensions and much ruin to states, and have caused great damage to those who govern them. We have seen in the history of Rome that the outrage committed upon Lucretia deprived the Tarquins oftheir throne.... Aristotle mentions as one of the first causes of the ruin of tyrants the outrages committed by them upon the wives and daughters of others, either by violence or by seduction. -Machiavelli, Discourses, Book III, Chapter 26 Love and lust appear in biblical narratives as a fatal combination, at least for the female objects of such emotions. In fact, women are rarely if ever made to experience these sentiments in the Bible. When Amnon, son of David and heir to the throne, conceives an irrepressible passion for his halfsister , Tamar, she begs him to seek permission to marry her (2 Sam. 13). Tamar is fully aware of the hazardous consequences for herself if coerced into sex with her sibling. "To whom shall I carry my disgrace?" (2 Sam. 13:13). Who, indeed, is likely to sympathize with her plight? Rejecting her plea, he rapes her. Love turns to hate and Amnon sends her away to become a useless and unwanted member of her brother's household.1 Did she love him? No answer is forthcoming. When Shechem, heir to the wealth of the ruler of Hivite land, sees Dinah, his lust can be ostensiblyassuaged only through violence (Gen. 34). Lust, however, turns to love. But the suitor of Jacob's daughter is singularly unacceptable. He has to be killed; Dinah becomes a widow without ever having been married. To sustain membership in the family, the clan, and the community, an unmarried daughter, if the lessons of the two tales are to be applied literally , ought to stay at home and never stir even from her room. Otherwise, 34 Projections of Biblical Spheres of Women a visit to the bedside of a sick brother may result in a rape. An innocent outing to see local female friends may kindle the passion ofa local man and lead to a disaster. Dinah's behavior becomes a model of inappropriateness. Marriage outside the group of blood and faith, at least when contemplated along the line proposed by Genesis 34, is threatening to the solidarity of society. But such impressions may be misleading. Simply put, the story of Dinah and Shechem presents an unlikely chronology which begins with an apparent rape ofan unsuspecting woman and continues with a rapist who falls in love with his victim. The tale then proceeds to recount how this man asks his father to negotiate marriage with her family and how her family, represented by two elder brothers, embarks on marital negotiations with covert anger but open glee. It ends by narrating the onslaught which the victim's brothers lead on a group of prospective bridegrooms as the latter are recovering from an operation of circumcision. Numerous commentators have enlisted various theories to explain this bizarre tale.2 With hardly an exception they have all operated on the assumption that Genesis 34 reports a crisis generated by a rape, in the conventional, contemporary sense of the term.3 With this focus in mind, discussions have invariably revolved around the guilt or innocence, the indifference or concerns of the Israelite avengers.4 But this point of departure provides a false premise and shaky foundations. Analyzed within a larger socioeconomic context, the main hypothesis of this section is that Dinah's tale reflects a clash between two marital strategies, or ideologies, and specifically between arranged marriage and the so-called abduction marriage or bride theft. Only within this specific framework of marital alternatives, does Dinah's tale and its intricate presentation in Genesis 34 become intelligible as does the behavior of its protagonists. Beyond this scope, a further attempt is made to throw light on the mechanisms that turned friendships into feuds in an environment in which the institution of hospitality carried a clearly defined code of conduct. Genesis 34 has not come down in its original formulation. Its current state reflects a succession of revisions that convey editorial concerns rather than attempts to transmit accurately the original. It seems clear that the narrator who inserted Dinah's story into its present place had an agenda that went far beyond any interest in either "rape" or retaliation.5 In the present context, then, it is imperative to...

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