Genesis 34:1-31

When we operate outside of God’s design for our lives, three consequences can happen, but the gospel of Jesus Christ can bring healing in each of these areas of brokenness. 

Outline

  • First, Disgrace | Recognize the disgrace of survivors (34:1-12)
    • Passions produce disgrace (34:1-4
    • Passivity feeds disgrace (34:5-7
    • Politics deepen disgrace  (34:8-12
  • Second, Deception | Resist the deception of the moment (34:13-24)
  • Third, Destruction | Recover from the destruction (34:25-31)

Christ Connections

  • Shechem’s violation of Dinah is the seed of the serpent trying to destroy the seed of promise. This is the dragon seeking to destroy the child of the woman. Shechem’s father is not just trying to tempt Jacob and his family but trying to adopt them. In this way, Hamor is imaging his father, the devil (John 8:44). When Satan offers the three wilderness temptations to Jesus (Matt 4:1- 11), he is not just trying to deceive the son of Jacob but trying to adopt him. In both cases, the serpent offers a shortcut to the promised land if they will abandon God’s design. When Hamor attempts to graft Israel into their people, it is actually an attempt by Satan to stop the promises of God by destroying the line of the Messiah.
  • This passage shows us one of the many ways that Jesus lives out God’s design when others have turned away from it. Jesus comes as a new and better Jacob who encounters a Samaritan woman with a similar story at Jacob’s well in John 4. Jesus responds to her broken situation not with the passivity of Jacob or the vengeful power of his sons, instead, Jesus meets her in her mess with a promise. A promise that she can have living water, a promise that he is greater than their father Jacob, a promise that he can offer eternal life.

Applications

  • For those carrying the wounds of abuse in your past, your situation is similar to Dinah’s. The first trauma happened when they abused you, but, like Dinah, the second trauma can continue to happen when those who should protect you are instead passive. Even in your darkest moments, cling to the hope that we have in Jesus.
  • It is easy to look at a passage like this and think: there are lots of ways I’m tempted to sin against God, but this isn’t one of them. But we can see ourselves in this passage, this tribe wants to mark their flesh so they can receive the benefits of God’s promise without the commitments of genuine faith. In a Bible belt culture, people are tempted in the same way. The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart—we are tempted to use God for our gain.
  • 1 in 6 men and 1 in 4 women experience abuse at some point in their lives. Confronting the crisis of abuse is one of the defining issues of our cultural moment, we can’t respond to this injustice with passivity like Jacob did. There will always be excuses to justify our inaction. There will always be reasons to put our interests over the interests of survivors. There will always be reasons to protect institutions instead of protecting people. But we must not walk in the way of Jaco. The trauma is too great, the stakes are too high, the spiritual warfare is too significant, our churches must be doing all they can to be safe for survivors and safe from abuse.