The Sons of Isaac (36 page)

Then Shechem spoke. “Please let me have her as my wife. I will give whatever you ask. No matter how much dowry, or what gifts you demand, I will pay it … only let me have her as my wife.”

Dinah’s brothers had come into the tent and had heard all that was said. They saw that the young prince was handsome. His eyes were hazel, his hair clean and shaped to his head with a slight curl that at times hid the gold headband that showed he was the prince. His hands were covered with rings; they had no callouses from well digging and shearing sheep. Immediately they hated him. “Where is our sister now?” they demanded.

“She is at my home in the city,” the prince said, looking at them for the first time.

The brothers whispered together and then Levi spoke. “I suppose you have had your way with her.”

“She loves me and gave herself to me freely. I want to make her my wife and will pay any price.”

This made the brothers furious. They again whispered together and Simeon said, “It’s obvious he has raped our sister and is forcefully holding her prisoner in his rooms. He has disgraced the skirt of our father and the head of our mother, but we must move carefully. They are obviously a powerful family.”

They came back and sat beside their father, facing Hamor and Shechem. “We can’t possibly give you our sister since you are not circumcised. It would be a great disgrace for our sister to marry such a man.”

Shechem’s face fell. “What can we do?”

Hamor looked at Jacob. “My son really loves your daughter. She has given herself to him willingly.”

There was a moment of silence. Jacob could tell his sons were barely hiding their hostility under smiles that were too polite and gestures that were deceptively casual. “Of course,” Simeon said, “if you would consent as a people to be circumcised …”

“Then we could intermarry with you and become one family,” Levi added.

“If not,” Simeon continued, “we will take our sister by force and be on our way.” The last words were said with such hostility Jacob was afraid that Hamor and Shechem would be turned away. To his surprise, they seemed not to have noticed.

“My son is very popular with our people,” the king said. “I’m sure if he goes before the council and presents such a plan, they will all be willing to do whatever is necessary.”

*  *  *

Shechem and Hamor convinced the council. “These people have flocks and herds,” Shechem said. “They have already dug a well with fresh, clear water. If we can get them to stay, and we intermarry, it won’t be long until all that they have will be ours.”

The men agreed. Jacob’s sons came and went through the city, circumcising every man, including Hamor and Shechem.

Jacob felt the matter was settled. He had not expected the grown men of the city to agree so readily to being circumcised. He did feel a bit uneasy that the young prince had gone about things in such a high-handed way. Granted he had said she loved him and had given herself to him willingly. But that was not the way such things should be done. The joining of families and producing children was a matter of greater importance than the chance attraction of two young people. He wished he could see Dinah and be sure she had not been forcefully raped.

*  *  *

All seemed to have gone well. The men of Shechem had been circumcised, and plans for a marriage feast were being made. It was only necessary for them to wait until the men of Shechem were healed. Three days had passed when all of Jacob’s bright hopes came to a tragic and sudden end. In the midst of what had been a sunny, quiet day, shocking news reached Jacob.

It was Joseph who came with the news. He was breathless from running and his eyes were wide with the horror of what he had seen. At first Jacob could not make sense of what he was being told. “Levi and Simeon,” Joseph said, “have killed all the men of Shechem.”

“What do you mean ‘killed all the men of Shechem’?” Jacob tried to appear calm while his heart was pounding and his knees felt weak. At mention of Levi and Simeon, he feared the worst. For some time he had noticed a brash cruelty exhibited by these sons of Leah, and it had disturbed him. He had felt that sooner or later some tragedy would take place, and they would be at the center of it.

“They have been over in Shechem all morning wielding their swords and killing every man they could find,” Joseph said.

Jacob struggled to comprehend what he was hearing. “Why would they do such a thing? How could they even manage it?”

“This is the third day since the men have been circumcised,” Joseph said, “and they are so sore they can’t fight. They went to rescue Dinah but they became so angry …”

“How do you know all this?”

“I heard them planning. Then they strapped on their swords and started out for Shechem. They are coming now all bloodied, but they have Dinah.”

Jacob was frantic with alarm. How could his sons do such a thing when it was so important to build good relationships with the local people? He stood and, with a show of calm he didn’t feel, walked to the tent door.

“There, see.” Joseph pointed to a crowd of women advancing from the city gates of Shechem all screaming, beating their breasts, and throwing stones at two tall young men Jacob recognized as Simeon and Levi.

Even from this distance, Jacob could see that they were streaked and matted with blood. As they came closer it was obvious that they were hustling Dinah along between them. “Go get Leah,” he told Joseph, and then braced himself to confront his sons.

Simeon and Levi seemed drunk with the power they had wielded. They flung Dinah down on the ground before Jacob. “There,” they said, “we have brought our sister home where she belongs. She is defiled, ruined; no man will have her now, and it is all the fault of that evil prince.”

When they said this, Dinah let out a cry and covered her face with her hands. Her garments were soaked with blood and her hair loose and caked with dirt and blood. “He loved me,” she wailed and again sank down covering her face.

“She has disgraced us,” they said. “We came to rescue her and she clung to him shamelessly so that we had to tear her from him. That’s why she’s all bloody.”

Leah arrived, her eyes pinched and questioning, her mouth gaping until she covered it with trembling hands. She looked first at one and then the other of her sons and finally down at Dinah. “I thought you had been killed!” she screamed as she rushed forward and clung to Simeon.

“It were better if they had been killed before they brought us to this evil day,” Jacob said as he glared at their grinning, blood-streaked faces.

“What happened? Where have you been?” Leah begged.

“You told us to go to Shechem and get our sister and we did,” Levi said proudly.

Dinah jumped up screaming and beating her fists on her brothers. “You pulled him from my arms and killed him. You killed the prince and he loved me.”

Simeon drew back his hand and slapped her across the face. “Slut, whore, you encouraged him,” he shouted.

Leah grabbed his upraised hand and pled with him to be patient. “Your sister is in shock; she is grieving.”

Jacob had seen enough. He had grasped the whole picture of what had happened and he was horrified. “Leah,” he said with a catch in his voice, “take your daughter and comfort her.” He then turned to Levi and Simeon. “You have fouled our camp. You have sullied our good name. From now on we will be despised and hated among the people of this land. We are just a small band of men with our flocks and herds, and we can’t stand against the hostility of all these people.”

For the first time Levi and Simeon realized what they had done. They hung their heads and Levi threw up his arm to cover his eyes so he would not have to see the anger of his father. “Punish us any way you like,” Simeon said boldly. “We have saved the women and children of Shechem to be our slaves and we have rounded up their cattle.”

“Where are the other sons of Leah?” Jacob asked. “Have they taken part in this slaughter also?”

“Right now they are looting and gathering up the treasures of Shechem.”

Jacob groaned and pulled at his beard in frustration. He walked back and forth trying to determine what punishment to mete out against these murderous sons. “You should be killed,” he said. “An eye for an eye, a life for a life.”

“No, no, not my sons.” Leah had come back just in time to hear Jacob’s statement. She clung to both of the young men, shielding them from Jacob’s wrath. “They are the sons of promise, Elohim’s gift to father Abraham,” she screamed.

Jacob groaned again and ran his fingers down his cheeks. “Go from my sight. I can’t trust myself to mete out justice.”

“Punishment,” Leah said. “What is their punishment to be?”

Jacob paused a moment and studied his two sons. “The greatest punishment will come in the future when they will find they are no longer the leaders. Reuben will be first and then Judah, and Levi and Simeon will be placed at the end. Wherever they are mentioned in the annals of our family, this terrible deed will cling to their names like a plague and they can never erase it.”

He had barely gotten the words out when he heard a great chorus of weeping and wailing and shrieking that seemed to come from the region of the great tree. It was the women and children of Shechem who had followed Levi and Simeon. They were in a veritable orgy of grief. They were terrified. Their men had all been killed and their homes vandalized. They had no place to go.

Jacob covered his eyes and fervently wished it would all vanish. Who would feed these women? What would they do with them? “Slaves,” Levi and Simeon had said. “We are the ones who will be the slaves,” he muttered. “They are helpless. Their old women and children will be nothing but a burden.”

*  *  *

Jacob went inside his tent and knelt with his face to the ground and prayed, “What shall I do? My own flesh and blood have done this evil thing. We will be hated and feared. How can we ever settle here?” There was silence. He felt all alone. The skies were shut against him. Elohim of Abraham and Isaac could not bear to look on any of them. They were all evil and flawed. Not worthy of the blessing.
I am no longer Israel, God’s glorious prince, as I had thought, but just Jacob.
Sons born of a Jacob can never be anything but a disappointment.

He straightened up and sat back on his heels while he thought about all that had happened and wondered if Elohim would ever speak to him again.

All that night he struggled with the terrible realization that his sons were hopelessly evil. The sons he hoped to present to Isaac as the sons of Elohim’s promise were not worthy of his attention or blessing. He couldn’t see how they would ever be any different, and there were so many of them.

In the stillness of the early morning, after the moon had set and the stars were fading, a wonderful thing happened. A cool spring breeze sprang up and Jacob became aware of the now familiar voice of Elohim speaking to him. “Move on to Bethel now and settle there,” Jacob was told. “Build an altar and worship the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”

As the sun came up, Jacob was no longer confused. It was clear that they must destroy the idols, cleanse themselves, put on fresh clothing, and prepare to journey to Bethel. He must take them all to Bethel, where he had first encountered the God of Abraham and Isaac. At Bethel they would build an altar and repent of the evil each one had harbored openly or secretly.

He thought of all the things that he had ignored just to have peace in his family. He had not disciplined his sons. He had left that to his wives. Worse yet, he had known for some time that Rachel had been the one who had stolen Laban’s idols and then lied about it. She desperately wanted another child, and when his prayers had been of no avail, she had brazenly brought out her little idols and set them up where everyone coming into her tent could see them.

He felt no better, but he knew what they must do. They would go back to Bethel and start over again, this time with Elohim and only Elohim as their God.

The camp was strangely quiet. No one had come to disturb him. He went to the tent door and lifted the flap to let in the morning sun. To his utter amazement, he saw a huge pile of jewelry, trinkets, chests of gold, ornate belts, jeweled swords, and garments of fine Egyptian linen all piled in a heap. It was the loot his sons had gathered from the houses of Shechem.

He knew immediately what must be done. His sons would have to divide up the treasure among the women and send them back to their homes in Shechem. They must not keep one bead or wedge of gold. There must be no benefit from the massacre. How the women would manage in the city without their husbands and fathers, he could not imagine.

He found his sons were too ashamed to face him. Neither did they want to go back to the village and see the devastation they had brought about, but Jacob made them go. They saw the broken wine jugs, the scattered grain, broken grindstones, and torn cushions and mats. Worst of all were the bodies of the men lying just where they had fallen. “You must dig graves for them,” Jacob commanded.

When these things were accomplished, Jacob called them all together. “We can never go back to the innocence of yesterday. We must go on. We must somehow go up to Bethel where I first encountered the God of Abraham and Isaac, but we cannot go as we are. We have found that each of us has failed. Elohim has seen all the evil we have done, even the thoughts that are hidden, and He is not pleased.”

Suddenly there was a shrill cry as Leah covered her face and wept bitterly. Dinah hurried to her mother and tried to comfort her, while her sons one after the other found their eyes stinging with tears. “It is me and my sons, my sons that I was so proud of, and my beautiful daughter who have brought this disgrace to our family. I cannot bear it. It is too much,” Leah wailed, rocking back and forth in her grief.

Jacob was moved as he saw the pride of Leah crumble. She had never thought of herself and her children as being anything but perfect. What a blow it was to her. How difficult to see her dreams of glory crushed by her own children.

He glanced at Rachel and saw that she was astonished to see her sister so humbled. His dear, beautiful Rachel with her one son was the only untarnished part of his family. Joseph would never be guilty of such unbridled cruelty. “Could it be,” he wondered, “that after all I am the guilty one? I have never loved Leah or her children.”