The uh-oh Surprise

Good morning. We're going to be proceeding into the chapter here briefly, though I'd like to give you just a few little heads up. One, as you might notice, we've made some changes and things, and you should have seen Roy leaping as he went, bounding up and hanging those things out. I was just amazed. I'm also telling you a joke. A little different arrangement and there's still some software bugs. You might have noticed a few things. Hopefully not too many bugs will crawl on our screen. Be patient with us. Maybe everything will go smoothly but if it doesn't you'll understand why. The other thing is we've had several people make note of some of the things that we're doing, kind of especially for this season.

Ben and Carol, is this the last day people are, okay, this is the last day for people to give toys, books, puzzles, et cetera, for the box in the coffee room. What we're going to be starting up for the trip that Bruce and I will be taking here is we'd mentioned previously collecting old MP3 players. Some people have said, well, a few things. Some have said, what's an MP3 player? And some people have said, I'd like to give one, but I don't have an old one.

One of the things that we've done is made arrangements to get low-cost MP3 players that are rugged and are sufficient for the need that we have, and that is Bruce and I will be heading over here in just a little over two months to Uganda. And one of the things, many things that we'll be doing is taking over these MP3 players on which we'll have loaded the entire New Testament in audio in Lugandan, which is the language that they speak in that area.

There are about three million people roughly who speak Lugandan, and close to half of them do not read. So the ability to have the New Testament here entirely in their language is a wonderful breakthrough. And the feedback we've gotten so far is that there's very little to none of it. there presently. So this will be a tremendous move into a population that currently doesn't have the Bible, the New Testament, especially in their own language, at least for those who cannot read.

Anyway, we will make some announcements about that. I think we found a way to get a number of rugged, useful MP3 players for about $10 and so want to have some kind of setup for designating for that. Okay, let's move on to our passage here. Hopefully the system will accommodate us. We want you to brace yourself this morning, okay? All right, so brace yourself for this chapter. I've had a few people in anticipation of this say, I'll be real interested, Vern, to see how you handle this chapter.

Some people would step around it, but anyway, it's quite a chapter. So, at any rate, Chapter 34, I have to warn you, does contain some pretty rough material. It's a tough chapter, and it describes the events that actually did, in fact, take place. They're real events, no question about that. And several points we can kind of be thankful there's not immense detail given. But nonetheless, what we do know and what is revealed of this real historical event is that it's just plain ugly.

What Jacob's daughter Dinah did was, let's call it unwise. What the son of Shechem's king, and your handout says prince, scratch that out, it should say king, Hamor, did to Dinah was just plain ugly. Finally, what Jacob's sons did to all the people of Shechem in retaliation was both really ugly and it was a very serious problem.

Now, one of the things I want to try to clarify here is we have a situation in this chapter where one of the key players, this Canaanite king's son, who is a prince, has the same name as the city. Shechem is his name, the city that he lives in is Shechem. So in order that you not be confused, oh boy, what am I going to do? In order that you not be confused, what I will try to do from this point forward is, as much as possible, use Shechem for this person, the son of the king or ruler, and restrict it to that and refer to the city of Shechem as the city. In general, I'll try to do that.

This chapter on the surface is spiritually vacuous. Why would I say such a thing? The reason is, of all the 50 chapters in Genesis, this one does not have God's name in it. God is not referred to in this entire chapter, 31 verses, at all. That's kind of unusual, isn't it? Nobody seems to care what God does or thinks in this chapter. Wow, that's in the Bible? Yeah. Beyond that, nobody does anything in this chapter because of what God said. Not even Jacob, to whom God spoke. And none of Jacob's family members involve God either at any point at all. From verse 1 to verse 31. Not at all.

This ugly chapter is, however, spiritually profitable. Why? All Scripture is inspired. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3.16 Genesis is one of those books that has a number of chapters, and we've seen some of them, that provide some really good bad examples. And that is precisely what we're going to see here. If that's the case, this chapter is the very best of them. at providing really good bad examples, okay? So let's draw out the really good stuff, the things that are profitable, beneficial from this really bad, really, really ugly chapter, okay?

All right, stop grimacing. Okay, here we go. Before we take one more step, I have to have one more caution about what I'm going to say. No, I'm not going to use any foul language. I'm not even going to talk about chickens, okay? All right. Before we take one more step, though, we need to bring up this point, okay? Do not kick yourself as you go through this chapter.

One of the things I'm going to be doing is you're going to see children who make some serious mistakes, young people. You're going to see parents who blow it big time. You're going to see grown and growing sons in Jacob's family who do awful things. And I'm going to be saying things to point out what they did wrong. My point in doing so is to show us the opportunity that we have.

My point is not When you say, ah, there's Jacob being a bad father or a bad parent, it's not the opportunity to turn your leg around and kick yourself and say, oh, I've been a bad parent. Oh, I've been a bad dad. I've been a bad mom. That's not the point. If you feel shame, shame on you. Oh, well. That is not my intent. We are also going to find people who have done awful things and people who are victims. It is not my intent to make either of them feel bad or feel guilty.

The point is to look at the opportunity by what's being missed. And thank the Lord for his mercy and his grace. And I can say that because I've raised three kids. And any parent can look back and say, oh boy, have I got a stack of things that I should have done differently, something I should have done, something I shouldn't have done, and combinations of the two.

That's not my point. Don't kick yourself, okay? The pews aren't built for that. Okay. What we are going to take a look at, and I won't pause at it now, but we will later, is talk about the opportunity that we have as believers with the motive of grace, That's why kicking yourself doesn't fit. The means of the Holy Spirit and the opportunity laying before us because of grace. We'll take a look at that in more detail later.

Here's Shechem. Shechem is this city that is, at this time, a fairly substantial city, enough to have a guy who calls himself not mayor, but king. and a son who gets titled a prince. And here is Shechem, just for orientation, here's the Sea of Galilee on the top or north end here, and the Dead Sea on the south end, and the Jordan River running between them. This city of Shechem by New Testament times was called Sychar.

That's where it shows up in John chapter 4, where Jesus talks to the woman at the well. And it's now called Nablus, so that's the name connection over time here. These blocks of stone were part of the gate structure during Jacob's time. So Jacob walked past these, very likely, along with the sons. Now, let's start into the chapter, verse by verse here.

So, Dinah did what? What did she do? Dinah, the daughter of Leah, we mentioned that there may possibly have been other daughters, but this is the only one that's named, is a young, apparently attractive teenage girl at this point in time. And what did she do?

She went out among the Canaanite girls to hang out. To hang out, that would be our modern term. Now, because of the culture of the time where any girl with parents that cared would only go out with a chaperone, an adult chaperone, one of the parents or both, or maybe an older brother or something of that sort, a young girl would not go out with the Canaanites and just go romp around town. So she either snuck out, that's one possibility, For the other one, Leah and Jacob just didn't care enough and somehow she knew it and she just wandered off and they didn't seem to mind.

They didn't give her the personal guidance and attention. And here's something else. Remember this? Leah was the wife who was unloved. It may well be. that Jacob thought, well, I don't really love her, so I don't care about the daughter either. Possibility. Wouldn't that be tough? It might have been tough to be Dinah.

Leah and Jacob were not watching her either, but somebody else was. Dinah, this young teen, catches the eye of a fellow by the name of Shechem, son of Hamor, the city's ruler, the city's king. So this Shechem is a prince. That's politically speaking, not morally. Okay. Shechem does what seems to us to be contradictory.

On the one hand, he lays with her and humbles her. And on the other hand, he was attracted to her and spoke to her heart. The numerical standard here says, by force, and some have even titled this event the Rape of Dinah. The language, however, is actually not necessarily that strong. It may have been that Shechem was aggressively seducing her, and that fits within the language of the passage. Either way, he was being aggressive, but one would be by force and the other would be by seduction. The fact that he spoke to her heart seems to actually, in my view, favor more that this was a seduction. In the Near East at this time, interestingly enough, many of the cultures had laws that allowed the taking of a wife by aggression. either by seduction or actually by force. If that took place, if that's how it happened, there were consequences.

Some of the consequences might be something like you're going to pay more for the bride price. In some of the cultures, and this was true of the Old Testament law later, you can get married, but you can't get divorced. Not at all. No provision for it. So those would be examples of some of the consequences that we built into this kind of thing.

So Sheka may have been pursuing and saying, I'll take this path because I really, really want this girl. And this way I can make sure it's locked in. So she catches his eye. And then Shechem told his father, who's the city's ruler, the king, Shechem here is the prince, get me this young girl for a wife. I want her. Oh boy, do I want her.

Besides that, I've already taken the step to assure that this is going to come to pass. Aside from being culturally allowed and even legal to proceed that way, Shechem likely assumed that I can take this route because my father's got clout around here. He's the king. He's got power. He's got money. He's got influence. I can do this. I can do this.

You can imagine Shechem thinking, I can pull this off because I really want this girl. So in the case where the young man had already lay with a prospective bride, by seduction or by force, either one, the families would kind of run to catch up with what had already taken place. And so the families were just kind of, oh boy, we've got to make this thing legal now that this has happened.

By whatever means, and the passage doesn't say by what means, but by whatever means, Jacob heard about this event. Now, it's very interesting. Wouldn't you think, wouldn't you think that Jacob would have just exploded or tried some way to contain himself? There is not the least evidence that this bothered him. Yeah. That's disturbing. There's not the least evidence that this bothered him.

So Shechem's father, the king, comes to make arrangements with Jacob in order to put this marriage together between Shechem and Dinah. One of the things that's revealed a little bit farther down in this passage is that Shechem is there as well. He either comes at the same time or shortly thereafter. And Jacob's sons come in from the field. And so far, yet Jacob hasn't said anything. At some point in the process, he may have pulled them aside, they may have found out some other way. But at some point in the process, they find out that this guy Shechem has laid with their sister, Dinah.

So now gets assembled this brother committee, committee of brothers, right? So now this committee of brothers begins to step into the negotiation. Now something very interesting happens here. It is similar to what we see with Laban and Rachel in earlier chapters and that is the brothers seem to take over the negotiations. But I've called it here a brother committee. That's probably a little soft. More like a pack of wolves. These guys come in. And they're going to negotiate, only their negotiation is not at all passive. Their negotiation is not at all, well, it's diplomatic, I suppose, on the surface, but it's sly. And it does not at all have truthful conversation in the negotiation. Their first response is that they are greatly grieved here. This is a loss for her.

And so their first response is this intense emotional response, grief. You grieve at a loss, don't you? And so that's their first immediate response. Imagine how this hit them. First of all, you come in from the field, you don't have any idea anything's going on. Then you get this news. And then you've got to sit there and negotiate all within minutes. These guys, you could imagine the degree to which they were wrestling with these intense emotions.

The first one that they had was a sense of loss, grieving for what had taken place. The next one is that they are very angry. Very angry. I'm amazed. Rather than exploding, they come across cool. to Shechem and his father. Real cool. At this point, the brothers in their emotional response are actually righteous and understandable. Wouldn't you feel some similar kind of sentiment inside? Grieving. Angry. Yeah, that's okay. It's what they did afterwards that's the problem, and it's a biggie. It's a serious problem.

I just would point out here, this is Israel, is the word that's used here, and specifically the term in Israel is used for the first time in the Bible, and of course in the book of Genesis. Why is this significant? At times, in Israel, it refers to the people of Israel, and at other times, it refers to the land that was promised to the people. Occasionally, both. Nonetheless, this is a significant passage.

This is used many, many times throughout the rest of Scripture on into the New Testament. The general pattern in the Bible is, among the nations, that is, the Gentiles, those who are not of Israel, in Israel, like we see begun here, and then in the New Testament, starting with the book of Acts and on into the New Testament letters, in Christ. So these are the general terms that you see used. Occasionally, in Israel gets switched to in Jacob, but still has a similar meaning.

Now, both Shechem and his father, the king, are present when they make and offer to pay the bride price. And what's real interesting is the typical thing with a bride price arrangement when everything is calm, the typical thing is to come and make some kind of an offer, a specific figure. This is what we're willing to pay. And maybe they negotiate from that, but they start with a particular number. What is very interesting here, they'll say, we'll pay whatever you like. It's almost like that Visa commercial, you know, priceless. Whatever you want. Name your price. They're not even seeming to negotiate on that point. So we'll pay whatever you want.

Now, in that culture, paying more for the bride, in this instance, meant a couple of things. One was when a couple had been intimate before the marriage, the bride price went up. You've got to pay more because you went and lay with her before the wedding instead of afterwards. So you're going to pay more.

That was one part of the culture. The other part of the culture was to pay more for an especially attractive bride and Shechem no doubt thought, this gal is it. This is one Hebrew hottie. And so he is really attracted to her. And so between the fact that he had already laid with her and the fact that she is really, really attractive as far as he's concerned, hey, name the price. It's up there.

Whatever price you ask, that's fine. We're happy with it. Shechem's father also offered that Jacob's family could be one with the people of the city. Essentially, you could be a citizen. You could join us, we'll join you, we'll be one big happy family here, and that's kind of an extra bonus. So he's saying, we'll pay whatever price you want, and you get citizenship free.

Hey, bingo. Hey, this sounds like a great deal, at least from the side of the offer. Now, the counteroffer. Now, Jacob's sons, interestingly as you read the account, as far as what's recorded, they don't even respond one word to the amount that they offer or the citizenship initially. Isn't that interesting? Here's these guys that say, hey, we'll pay anything you ask. They don't even respond to it. They said, here's the deal. Instead of that, here's our counteroffer. We don't care about the price.

They didn't say that exactly, but they certainly didn't express an interest in it. You've got to circumcise every single male in the city. That's what they said. As long as you do that, hey, we're happy. If you don't do that, we walk. That was just unthinkable. So on the other hand, hey, this is a really cheap deal. For a few days of pain, we get to have bride price zip. This will work out great.

So Shechem's father agrees to this one requirement. It would mean several days of pain for each one of the males in the city, young to old, except that this circumcision requirement is a complete deception on the part of Jacob's sons. Verse 13, it even says deception. Oh heavens, where did they learn deception?

They've never seen that before, right? So here they are. Here they are. They've been taught by the grandmaster. So what do they do? They pull off a deception. And do the guys buy it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they buy it. Shechem's father tells and sells. Oh, boy, he's a salesman. He sells the one circumcision requirement and all its benefits to the men of the city.

Hey man, we just got to go through a few days of pain here and then we're all good. We don't have to fork out any money. You guys won't have to have your taxes raised or anything like that. And this will be good. So they readily comply. Where do I start? Somewhere private, please. Okay? Okay. So, he talks about how this one act will open up social and economic bliss. They'll be one with us, we'll get the benefit of all their flocks, and this guy is wealthy, it'll be great! From here on out, it'll just be wonderful.

Let the pain begin. Three days later, oh, when the discomfort is about at its max, Three days later, now there's something else that's not stated in here, but comes out loud and clear. Shechem had laid with Jacob and Leah's daughter Dinah. Given an adult male circumcision, he's not going to do that for a while. So that's one thing that happens here.

By their agreeing to that, the brothers made sure The brothers made sure that he's not going to do anything for the next few days. Didina, right? Simeon and Levi, two of the brothers, they may have acted alone or they may have acted as leaders of a group. They make this covert assault, killing every male in the city.

Imagine them going in. I picture it here at nighttime. Picture them coming along and slapping one hand over the mouth with one move and the other move. Here comes the sword. And they included Shechem and his father. And then they take Dinah. Every male. Dead. Slaughtered. They also take every woman and every child captive. Got them. They're ours. We own them. They loot the city's goods and take the livestock and flocks for themselves. It's ours now. We got it.

In view of what horrible things these guys did, we might find ourselves amazed at Jacob's response. You see, Jacob has an eye problem. Not that kind. He's got an eye problem like this. You'll find on page two of your handout as well. Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble on me by making me odious. That sounds something like odorous, but I just thought he'd stink, I'm sure. among the inhabitants of the land among the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the termites and my men being my Men being few in number and they will gather together against me and attack me Okay, and I will be destroyed and I and my my my household got that This is more then Jacob says throughout the rest of the passage put together.

And what does he do? I, me, my. Oh, wow. This verse is the most of what he says. The only thing he cares about is not you've done this horrible injustice. You guys have done something awful. You guys have way overreacted. But what's this going to do to me is really all that matters. It's not about God. And notice something else. His last words in there, they will gather together against me and attack me and I will be destroyed. Oh yeah? What did God say about your descendants?

It will be innumerable. He didn't count upon God's promise. He didn't look at what anybody else was doing. It was all I, me, my, mine. The brothers have this one comeback. And there's some truth and justice in it, but it certainly doesn't justify what they did. Not even sort of.

This is Simeon and Levi's response here. What do they do? Their response to the wrong of Shechem against Dinah is to commit hundreds of wrongs. You did a wrong, so we're going to fix that by committing hundreds more. Simeon and Levi, certainly they could see the wrong that Shechem had done to their sister Dinah.

Totally blind to the hundreds of wrongs that they themselves just pulled off. and real tough to click on the undo icon on this one. You kill every man in the city. You hear the old adage, you know, two wrongs don't make a right. Hey, we're not talking that kind of arithmetic here, okay? Hundreds of wrongs do not make anything right. Now, on third page of your handout, we have some O's here. The first O is O Jacob. Jacob had shown favor to Rachel and her son Joseph. In the prior chapter, Joseph was the only son mentioned. The one son of his favorite wife, Rachel.

Since Dinah is the daughter of Leah, whom he doesn't love, it appears that he has shorted Dinah attention and affection too. She needs it. She needed it. She needed his affection and his attention. Before the events that took place here for a long time, Dinah needed to see Jacob love her mother. Dinah herself needed guidance and instruction and love and affection from Jacob. Appropriate fatherly affection.

You see, when Dinah went out among the daughters of the city, either because her parents didn't seem to care or because she was sneaking out in some kind of a rebellion, either way, she may have just thought, well, I'm just going to go out and have fun.

That's all. I'll come back in and it won't be any really big issue here. But Dinah placed herself in a situation, oh yes, let's grant her that maybe there was some feeling on her part that it was justified. And granted, she may well have been naive about the situation, ignorant. She was either forced to intimacy or seduced into intimacy. Who knows? Possibly some combination, I suppose.

But here's Jacob. He is told that his daughter has been humbled and Jacob says, nothing, zippo. His sons come into the negotiations over Dinah and Jacob says, nothing. His mouth is zipped. Jacob's sons say to Shechem and his father, oh yeah, you can become one with us.

As long as you're circumcised. Well, he should have had both hands up and talking. Nope. Keeps absolutely quiet from any record we have. Circumcision was a sign of God's covenant. Did they bring up God and the covenant in here? No. All they talked about was cut some skin off. God didn't enter the picture. This is ghastly. It wasn't to be just some purely physical sign. Do this and everything's cool with God. In this case, they didn't involve God or His covenant at all. Cut some skin off and then we're good, right?

Oh no. Abraham and Isaac both knew that mixing with these Canaanites would dilute God's promises. How can God give it to your descendants if your descendants are already here? And now these sons of Jacob. Oh yeah, they were right to be grieved and angry. We'll grant them that. But it certainly wasn't right to deceive, even if your father has taught you well. It wasn't right for Simeon and Levi to take all those lives and kidnap, rustle sheep and livestock.

There are going to be yet many consequences to this action. and that same kind of action as the chapters roll on here. We're going to see as this goes on that what they did here and acts just like it are going to come back to haunt them horrifically. It does have a price. We pointed out earlier the name of God doesn't show up anywhere in this chapter. You can verify that for yourself. By the way, if you find something, let me know.

Nobody talked about what God had promised, although He had promised it numerous times, to Jacob and Jacob's father and Jacob's grandfather. Nobody talked about God's faithfulness or God's protection, even though that had been very evident in just the chapter we studied last Sunday. Jacob had prayed in a prior chapter, a couple chapters back, to be delivered, that's the word that is used there, from his brother Esau. He didn't pray about this one at all.

He didn't say, Lord, boy, what should I do? How might this have turned out different? What opportunities were there? If Jacob had spoken to his family about the truth that he discovered, and the lessons that God had taught him about deception. And by the way, there's a really key point for parents here. Occasionally, Nancy and I, in talking with parents, will find somebody saying, oh, I can't tell my kids not to do that because I did it.

Don't fall for that, okay? Don't fall for that. If you are in a position to testify that this doesn't work, do so, okay? Don't hold silent. Don't close your mouth because you stumbled at one point in time. You are all the more qualified to speak. All the more qualified. Say something.

Now, what if Jacob had loved his family without the personal favoritism? Without the favoritism that says, I care so much for Leah, for the daughter. Well, no big deal. If Jacob had walked through this set of circumstances in faith, he might have said, you know, I've got a real problem here, but you know, I think God can handle it. I've got a real problem here, but I think the Lord will guide me through this. This is a serious, serious issue, but you know, I think I can depend on what God said. So what do we do with this? Coming back to this, I pointed this slide out earlier.

If we're walking in fellowship with the Lord in dependence upon His resources, and I say that as a question out of grace, not of law, He then can be my motive by grace. Grace is a motive. Mercy is a motive. He is also my means by the Holy Spirit. He's the one who's going to pull this off in the way God wants to make it happen. It doesn't depend on my resources, and boy is that good news. Then I have the opportunity. Motive means an opportunity. What an opportunity. What an opportunity Jacob had in front of him.

Oh yeah, it's easy to look at it and say, But even more, to look at the opportunity in front of them, and what opportunity we have in front of us. Because we do have the motive of grace, the means by the Holy Spirit, and the opportunity for the Lord to live His life through us, so that it's His accomplishment and not our own. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, We pray that you would graciously and mercifully draw our hearts, Lord, to the opportunities that lie in front of us. And you don't tell us to just do it of our own, but instead you offer the means by your Holy Spirit and you offer a motive by grace and by mercy. All we can do is be thankful and not compelled by guilt. but thankful for your marvelous grace, your amazing grace. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.