The Hidden Gem in Ki Tisa

Ever see something in the Bible that just appears out of nowhere and seems to make no sense whatsoever in context?

It’s a common occurrence – like the prohibition against boiling a kid in it’s mother’s milk right after the Passover instructions, which seems absolutely unrelated until we read in the Ras Shamra texts about the spring Canaanite fertility ritual involving, you guessed it, the boiling of a baby goat in the milk of it’s mother. Well, we have one of these instances in Exodus 31 after the setting apart of Betsal’el and Oholiab as the creative overseers of the creation of the wilderness Tabernacle. All of a sudden, without transition, BAM, we have the Sabbath reinforced. What’s more, we are going to see the exact same thing happen at the beginning of the next portion, albeit in reverse as the Sabbath prohibitions are made before Moses relays God’s instructions to the Israelites.

What the heck?

God has just laid out all of the work to be done and the men He wants to place over it, and then He mentions the Sabbath prohibitions – but why here of all places?

Very simple really – you see, the construction of the Tabernacle was incredibly important and allowed God to travel and dwell “in the midst” of the children of Israel while still being set apart, having his ultimate level of kedushah (holiness) respected through separation and restrictions on the part of those who approach Him. The Tabernacle, and later the Temple, were incredibly important – so important that God Himself laid out the regulations for the construction of both the former and the latter (I Chron 28:19 specifically states that the plans for the Temple were given by God to David, in writing through His Spirit). But there was something greater than the Tabernacle and Temple – and that something is the Sabbath.

That something is relationship. Despite how incredibly important the dwelling place of God in the midst of His people is – the Sabbath, that time outside of time where we stop achieving and meet with Him, is even more important. After all, what good does it do us to build a place for Him to dwell in our midst if we are not going to set apart time for Him that is inherently different from all other times? More pointedly, why build a palace for a King if we are not prepared to celebrate His rest, the Ancient Near Eastern way of expressing the entronement of a god or king? Continuing to build, although it would seem good in our western achievement-oriented view of the virtuous life, would be to refuse to acknowledge the Kingship of the King of kings who was indeed enthroned over His creation on the seventh day, the first entity declared holy – and in fact the only thing declared holy in all of Genesis.

The placement of the Sabbath commandments after the instructions for Betsal’el and Oholiab was deliberate – it served the purpose of telling the people of Israel that not even the building of a dwelling place for God was greater than ceasing from our labors in order to set apart time for Him. There would be more than enough time to build, is part of what He was declaring, more than enough time to achieve – it was and is an act of faith to set aside our labors one day in seven, not simply to rest up so as to work even harder on the other six as Philo claimed, when countering the Greco-Roman distaste of supposed Jewish “laziness.”

The message is all the more poignant for us in modern times – if even the building of the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, was to be suspended for the Sabbath – how do we place our own endeavors higher?

Sadly, here in exile, we often have little choice and employers, like Pharaoh in Egypt, can force us to work on the Sabbath day- especially young people newly entering the workforce, it’s all part of the curses that we all live under until the return of Messiah. That being said, most folks do have a choice and when we do, it is incumbent upon us to cease from the achievements that can be put off for another day. The gem of Torah Portion Ki Tisa is a release even from what we consider to be holy works, achievements that we would justify in His Name. We do not have to constantly do, there is provided for our benefit a day where we can simply exist.

“So What About Christmas and Easter?” – From my rewrite of The Bridge: Crossing Over Into the Fullness of Covenant Life

A plea for civility and clear heads – it seems that no matter how clearly or politely or lovingly I present this material, emotions run high. People get defensive, they put words in my mouth and they misrepresent not only what I am saying – but also my reasons for saying it as they freely speculate on my motivations. I am a really straightforward person and my motivations are to correct MY error. I am not insulting anyone, or disparaging anyone’s character – I am setting the record straight about what I was teaching and about what happened when I actually dug deep into history and archaeology. This is not a subject that should drive people apart, or result in slander or the undermining of someone’s character. There should be no untouchable subjects if we are to truly call ourselves Bereans and if we are going to continually strive to represent the Gospel honestly – not only when preaching the Gospel, but in everything else we teach and do. If we cannot love one another and deal with each other with integrity, then we have a problem greater than Church holidays.

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I rewrote The Bridge, as you might know, because of one paragraph in one chapter and then one thing led to another and all of a sudden it was 20,000 words longer. I had written in a few very popular urban legends that I found were without merit concerning the advent (no pun intended) of Christmas and Easter. I had assumed that the people who taught me had researched it, which was ridiculous because I didn’t research it and why should I expect from them what I hadn’t done myself? We all placed our trust in the people who went before us – a common human thing to do. After proving through massive archaeological evidence that there never was an Ishtar Sunday and that her cult never practiced human sacrifice (really, almost no one did in antiquity, come to find out and Rome formally outlawed it in 97 BCE), and that she was never associated with eggs or rabbits – I was forced to re-examine everything. So, after spending massive hours and a lot of money on learning about actual ANE paganism, I had to remove the book from the market and get rid of the urban legends that largely originated during the European Catholic-Protestant wars. I have to be honest – I couldn’t sleep because it had me so upset. First, I will give you an excerpt from the chapter about Sabbath, then one from the section on Sukkot and following those is the chapter that was responsible for the rewrite in the first place. I apologize for not doing my homework – for not being a true Berean. I apologize for doing what was easy instead of what was right, and I am really sorry for not just sticking with promoting the Feasts and the Sabbath – because they are enough.

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(Sidebar: something happened in the fourth century that was incredibly tragic. Between the Councils of Nicaea in 325 CE and Constantinople in 381 CE, Rome did what Rome always did best – they formally legislated, and clearly controlled through that legislation, what it meant to be a Christian and what it meant to be a Jew because for a long time everyone was meeting in the synagogues on Sabbath and Christianity was considered a valid expression of Judaism. Rome defined both religions – and we still live with under those definitions without even knowing why. You could not keep any of the Torah and remain a Christian, and you could no longer accept Yeshua as Messiah and remain a Jew. Church Fathers Jerome and Augustine both wrote during this time, voicing their approval for the marginalizing of all those who were still ‘in between’ – living like Jews while worshiping Yeshua.)[1]

[1] Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ is an excellent treatise on this subject

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Do you want to know why Christmas was first celebrated? I know the rumors but let me give it to you straight – I want you to imagine the Believers in Yeshua, separated from their Jewish brothers by an increasing legal and emotional abyss, wanting to celebrate and honor not living and dead Roman Emperors (as Roman law required) but instead their Messiah in a way that was perfectly culturally acceptable in the Roman Empire. Instead of honoring Imperial Cult birthdays (Augustus was known as the Savior of the World in the Roman Empire) they wanted to honor Yeshua, the true Savior of the World. So they, without any knowledge of the importance of the Feasts and having lost all Hebraic understanding of what they were reading, really miscalculated. They came up with December 25^thbased solely upon the theory that Yeshua was conceived and died on the same day (Passover), which was a shame because God had already instituted a Feast that recognized the birth of Yeshua – the Feast of Sukkot (some people believe He was born on Passover). They created an illegitimate holiday because they had been stripped of the real celebration through Roman law. As with so many things, they had great intentions, but it was tragically unnecessary.

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Remember I told you about Deuteronomy 12:32, forbidding us to add and subtract from God’s Laws like the Pharisees did? Well, we’ve done it too, or at least we’ve inherited what others did and lived by it much like the Orthodox Jews of today inherited many of the same laws of the Pharisees. I look at what they do, not with contempt but with the realization that they inherited things just the same as we did, and they haven’t ditched their traditions any more than Christians have.

In fact, right now I want to make something very clear. I do not have anything but positive feelings about Jews and Christians, and I have to give credit where credit is due. Observant Jews care more deeply about obeying God than anyone on earth, there is a zealousness that I deeply admire and it touches my heart. Their dedication to family is simply amazing, and their passion for the Scriptures is incredible. Everything I have shared with you about the Feasts was possible only because they never abandoned God.

Do you want to know why the Jews survived the Black Death that devastated Christians throughout the world? Christians were not washing their hands in those days (or bathing), but the Jews were. I mean that seriously. (The American Indians were very upset about it when colonists started to arrive from Europe. They were clean people and the Europeans were not.) It became so evident that Jews were not dying of plague that people began accusing the Jews of witchcraft – of actually starting the plague through sorcery! It was their laws, however, far in excess of what was written that we follow as good hygiene practices today (I have to add, however, that this was not done for hygiene purposes but for holiness). So it is a good idea to wash hands, but as far as anyone calling ritual hand washing an actual commandment of God, that is not Biblical. For the record, they were not simply washing their hands, but they also recited a prayer as they did it, and had to do it according to a specific ritual which is also practiced today. Here is the prayer:

“Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with Thy commandments and has commanded us concerning the washing of the hands.”

Now there is no commandment to do this in Scripture, so this can only be justified as a commandment of the Oral Torah. We see something very similar with the prayer spoken while lighting the Sabbath candles. Is lighting candles before the Sabbath terrible? Of course not, but it also isn’t a Biblical commandment.

How about Christianity? There are more people being cared for around the world because of everyday Christians than I could write about in a thousand books – orphanages built and maintained, sex slaves rescued from the streets, hospitals built, abused women and children sheltered, drug addicts counseled. The list of good works just goes on and on – the weightier matters of Torah, all done in the name of Jesus. And right now as I am writing this, I weep for my brothers and sisters and their children in the Middle East and Africa who are daily being slaughtered by ISIS for refusing to deny our Master Yeshua, whether they call Him Jesus, Isa, Yesu, or any other variation.

Each faith sadly also has a legacy of adding to the commandments of God their own traditions and judging people based on them. Each faith added and subtracted as they saw fit.

Christmas and Easter are on the top of that list for Christians. The verses preceding Deut 12:32 are very sobering verses indeed. And I ask you to consider them carefully, because Christmas is a tradition, not a commandment of God, and Easter is a tradition, not a commandment of God – just like ritual hand washing. We should never judge, nor hate another person based on their nonconformance to our traditions because if we do, we will do violence to one another (even if it is only in our hearts) as some of the Pharisee leaders plotted to do violence to Yeshua because He challenged the traditions that they enforced as authoritative laws.

Deut 12:28-32 Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee forever, when thou doest that which is good and right in the sight of the Lord thy God.

When the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land;

Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.

Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.

What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

First verse, He reiterates that His commandments are forever. Then He warned the Israelites not to find out about anything related to the heathen worship of the nations they were going to destroy and do it in order to worship Him. He called every single unique thing they did for their gods an abomination. It’s His absolute harshest word for the things He hates. Then He says, in a nutshell, that His Laws are good as they are and have no need to be added to or subtracted from.

(Note: everything legitimate about the worship of our King was also practiced by heathens and so we cannot say that everything they did for their gods was inherently evil – many of their practices boiled down to cultural expressions of honor like the anointing of the feet of a king or god with perfumed oil. What we do not dare do is take something directly from pagan practices that is not in the Scriptures and ‘reclaim’ it for God.)

Passover is enough

Unleavened Bread is enough

First Fruits is enough

Shavuot is enough

Yom Teruah is enough

Sukkot is enough

Shemini Atzeret is enough.

Easter replaced the Spring Feasts and so we lost sight of God’s prophetic plan and calendar, leaving us blind and unable to explain or even truly understand what Yeshua did and fulfilled. It left us unable to explain to our Jewish brothers and sisters why Yeshua is not an idolater and a blasphemer, but instead their Messiah.

Christmas replaced the Fall Feasts, and so we became blind there as well to what He will do and fulfill. The end will largely come upon the Church like a thief because we have not been aware of the times and seasons.

I am not going to rehash what you can find on the internet, some of which is true but so much of which is unsubstantiated and falsified that it takes too much precious time for the average person to sort out the lies from the facts. We have inherited holidays that are full of European traditions, some of questionable origin. The world celebrates these holidays in the same manner as Christians do, and each year more and more Bible believing Christians are giving them up. I can’t remember the last time I saw the world trying to celebrate any of the Biblical Feasts, which is a sobering reality check – the world never wants to participate in anything that is actually holy.

To me, knowing the history of the fourth century CE – that Rome forcibly legislated the removal of Christians out of the synagogues and Torah keepers out of the assemblies of Messiah – Christians celebrating Christmas and Easter seem very much like children celebrating the consequences of having a broken home. Without the Christians, the Jews lost their Messiah and without the Jews, the Christians lost their inheritance. It’s like a child celebrating the absence of a parent who wasn’t even a bad parent. Christmas and Easter happened because of a broken home, and that grieves me – it doesn’t make me want to celebrate. At one point all believers in Yeshua were called Nazarene Jews, for hundreds of years – Rome robbed us of a stable home life.

I understand not wanting to abandon those holidays because of the memories associated with them and because of the fear of family disapproval. Yes, it will happen, people won’t understand – and they will judge you for not keeping their traditions, but that is what they are – traditions. When we judge people by traditions and value the traditions more than we value the truth, we become like the people who conspired to kill Yeshua.

Traditions blind. Whereas people do not get angry if you break a commandment, they will get angry if you question their tradition because to break a tradition is to challenge someone’s life choices, while to break a commandment is to challenge God. People will take it personally, and this is why we have to choose whom we will serve. I speak from heartache and experience on this.

No one is telling you to ditch your memories or to feel guilty about having enjoyed precious hours as a family, just to put those memories into proper perspective. It was always difficult for everyone coming into Covenant to leave some aspects of their cultures behind in order to follow YHVH exclusively, in fact it was so difficult that when Moses delayed in coming back down from the mountain, the people demanded that Aaron, Moses’ own brother, make them a golden calf that they could worship – as they had undoubtedly learned in Egypt. And this is what Aaron did –

Ex 32:4-5 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.

It wasn’t just that Aaron made something attached to that abominable Egyptian heathenism, but He set up a feast on a day never commanded and said it was too, in the Hebrew, YHVH. YHVH was so angry that He threatened to kill them all, saying that they had corrupted themselves. This was a very serious betrayal, an act of National treason. considering what YHVH had done for them.

But isn’t that what Christmas is? When we detach ourselves from the emotional aspects of the holiday, from our fond memories, didn’t our forefathers simply announce their own ‘feast to YHVH’ while ignoring His Feasts – and all because Moses, or in this case the Laws of God, were no longer there for them?

I can’t force you to give up those holidays. I can’t even force you to want to give them up. I do ask you very bluntly, what does YHVH deserve from us in terms of loyalty? Is it to keep His Feasts His way, or to do things our way and expect Him to approve? Do we truly honor Him when we do what we want when we want? The Scriptures, from front to back, say no.

Nation of Priests IV: The Initiation of a Nation

So on Sunday I was preparing for Context for Kids Episode #19, Terumah, when I saw something in the text that I hadn’t seen before. Of course, that’s how it goes when you study Ancient Near Eastern context. A bit of random context will pop into your mind in an unexpected place. It changed what I decided to teach, and then a sinus infection popped up and now I am trying to get rid of my sniffles so that I can record without grossing everyone out.

Greco-Roman times saw the rise in popularity (but not the origins) of what were called “mystery” religions, Mithraism being the most famous, but there were many other non-exclusive voluntary mystery associations in the ancient world (meaning they didn’t compete with each other, you could belong to none, one or many). They were, more than anything, simply clubs designed for the purpose of keeping this or that deity happy and the cosmos, therefore, functioning better. We get our word “mystery” from the Greek “mysterion” – not simply meaning something that we do not know, like the identity of the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel, but instead a divine secret or relationship that one is initiated into and therefore available only to initiates. We see it used twenty-seven times in the First Century Writings, as well as twenty-five times in the late date LXX (Septuagint) books – Daniel, Enoch, Sirach, and the other wisdom and apocryphal books that came to be within the 500 – 600 years before Messiah when Babylonian and Assyrian influences were at their peak and which were then translated into Greek in the few centuries before Messiah.

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, (1)

Here we see Paul very clearly using mystery religion language – something that would have been very familiar to his audience, but then he does something interesting, he shares it with them as though they were all elite initiates. He is telling them something that is a mysterion, in an open letter, something that would probably never have occurred in an actual mysterion.

Of course, all Ancient Near Eastern religions were, to some extent, mysterious. Laymen simply did not know what went on within the cult of the major Temples. Priests were initiated into esoteric knowledge and a special relationship which was quite easy to keep a secret because so very few people were literate – as was the case in Egypt. In many ANE cultures (Mesopotamia and Syria in particular), even kings were illiterate (2) and therefore relied on the integrity of their priests and scribes (not to be confused with first century Jewish scribes). Kings didn’t necessarily need to read, evidently! They had people for that! They could write down their secrets and it didn’t even matter in those days because, first, they kept them within the Temples where no one else could get to them and second, almost no one could read. Fortunately, in the ANE, they often recorded them on baked tablets which have been uncovered and have given us volumes of information within the last 100 to 150 years – completely changing what we thought we knew and relegating much “common knowledge” to the status of urban legends. It’s an exciting time to be alive and studying such things.

So what made the Hebrew religion different? Why did I write this under the heading of “A Nation of Priests?” Very simply put, initiates to a mystery religion were privy to knowledge that normal people couldn’t and didn’t know. Not only does one, in a mystery cult, have to be initiated into the mystery, but they often have to be initiated into greater mysteries at higher levels. Mormonism and Masonry are two excellent examples of modern mysterion. They won’t tell outsiders much of anything, and the knowledge that the higher ups have is not the same as what they are teaching newcomers.

Judaism, on the other hand, as well as Christianity, are decidedly not mysterion religions. Well, of course there are some aberrant cults under the umbrella of Judeo-Christian religion but in general you can learn everything you want about them from the outside. There are no mysterion, no divine secrets for initiates. In Romans 11, Paul is speaking in metaphoric language – comparing the believers to mysterion insiders because as we see in the Torah – God had Moses spell out the details of what would be going on within the Tabernacle to everyone. Unlike every other religion on earth at that time, the knowledge of the workings of the Temple were not reserved for the literal priests – in that way, everyone in the nation was treated as though they were priests and privy to what would be esoteric knowledge in other cultures.

Do you see now why it was a commandment for Torah to be read, out loud, once every seven years to everyone? NO SECRETS.

The Israelites knew that God wasn’t actually eating the sacrifice or the shewbread as pagan gods were thought to do – because He told them exactly what was happening. They knew there was no idol in the Holy of Holies because He told them so. They knew there were no secret incantations because they were told what the priests were in there doing – and the priests did the majority of their work in full view of the people. The workings of the Tabernacle/Temple were not shrouded in mystery – God was treating the nation like priests in allowing them the knowledge of the inner workings of His Divine Palace, the Tabernacle.

Because of this, there are thousands of books about YHVH, His worship, His Tabernacle/Temple and His Word and we are left with almost nothing concrete about the Mithras cult. YHVH doesn’t play around with initiation into mysterion – you can know what you are getting into when you enter into covenant with Him. You don’t keep going up in levels and all of a sudden discover something horrible. This isn’t the induction into a frat house where they blindfold you and humiliate you – as they did in the Mithras cult.

“For other initiatory rites we depend primarily on the fresco scenes in the mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere. These depict usually a triad of figures: the initiates, small, naked, humiliated; and two initiators, one behind and the other in front of the initiates, manipulating the instruments of initiations.” (3)

Through the Scriptures, we can know more information about YHVH than we could adequately explore in a lifetime. But in a mysterion like Mithraism, we are limited to external references by non-cult members to their worshiping in caves or rooms decorated to look like caves, we know that they had no bishops or centralized authority but were simply local groups, we know that Roman Mithras sprang full grown from a rock that served as his mother, we know he killed a bull, we know that he dressed like a Persian even though he had almost nothing else in common with the Persian Mithras, and we know that he ate said bull with Sol, the Sun God (despite the fact that he was also presumably Sol himself ) while sitting on the hide of the bull. (3) We know his festival was celebrated in October. (4) The problem is that, unlike the Bible, which spelled things out for the benefit of the layman, giving him a sort of honorary priestly status, we have no existing writings from any person who was a Mithraicist about Mithraism. Either they never survived or people took this mysterion thing pretty seriously – mysterion is for insiders, not outsiders! What we think we know, is just that, we think we know it. We can look at artwork and excavated Mithraeum (meeting places) and make educated assumptions. We can look at the very few inscriptions and see that this or that person was an initiate. This informational vacuum has resulted in a great many modern myths having sprung up.

What happened in the Mithras cave stayed in the Mithras cave.

What happened in the Temple, on the other hand, was completely above-board and knowable to anyone. God didn’t want there to be any mistaking His worship for any of the mysterion, He wanted it known exactly what was going on with no room for whisperings of secret rituals. He wanted people thousands of years later to still have access to that information.

This is a really quick article on some of the aspects of the Mithraic mysterion by Roger Beck, who is probably the world’s most balanced expert. Although I disagree with him in his assessment of the meaning of Judaic sacrifice as well as “Christian” baptism (which of course isn’t Christian at all but Jewish) his emphasis is on Roman studies and that is where he needs to be evaluated and considered an expert. He is very methodical. I encourage you to take a look at the other links I have provided below, the Mithraism article in particular is incredibly well documented and can give some direction on deeper study with some legitimate sources. Beck has also written a book about Mithraism – The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun. It is very scholarly, not an easy read but the articles I have provided below are very good. Mystery religions are a valuable study in showing us how different the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is than the other gods in the Ancient Near East and First Century.

(1) The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2001). (Ro 11:25–26). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

(2) Amanda H Podany, Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East, p 71

(3) Roger Beck, Mithraism

(4) Stephen Hijmans, Usener’s Christmas: A Contribution to the Modern Construct of Late Antique Solar Syncretism

Mishpatim in Context: Selling your daughter into slavery? What does Ex 22:16-17 tell us about the “rape” of Dinah in Genesis

Edit: This and 34 other really tough questions about the Scriptures are answered in my latest book Context for Adults: Sexuality, Social Identity and Kinship Relations in the Bible, available through Amazon – just click on the purple book on my right hand menu bar.

Well, this is an awkward situation – I just can’t find the book that I am basing this teaching on but I will give it as a reference anyway. I guess it’s time to finish organizing and get the books out of piles in every room of the house. I do not recommend this entire book – when you get anthologies they are a mixed bag, but enough of it is absolutely excellent – especially the chapters that I am going to be pulling from today. I had been wanting to teach on the “rape” of Dinah because of how I was reading the text in light of the Law (both Torah and ANE), for some time, but until I found a scholar who agreed with me I held back.

Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, Bernard M Levinson and Victor H Matthews, Ed. – notably the chapters Virginity in the Bible by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, and Honor and Shame in Gender Related Legal Situations in the Bible by Victor H Matthews.

First of all, we come to the seemingly disturbing law in Ex 21:7-11 but the situation is not exactly how it appears. All throughout ANE (Ancient Near Eastern) law, we see provisions made for the “selling” of an impoverished girl for the purposes of getting her married off. Stay with me here – it isn’t as terrible as it sounds.

Marriage was a contract in those days – the father of the bride was paid a bride price and he, in turn, provided the girl with a dowry for her protection should she be divorced or widowed. Fathers could not always afford a dowry, and if they were in severe financial straits they might agree to “sell” their young daughter to another family, as a legal daughter, for perhaps half of the typical bride price. This gave him the money to pay off debts, perhaps keeping the entire family from being sold into slavery, or perhaps just from starvation, and gave her new family one of two options:

(1) The new family could thereby obtain a less expensive marriage later on for their son (or the father if he was a widower), without having to pay the full bride price (because she is now legally family), OR

(2) The new family could arrange another marriage for her as though she was their own daughter, while charging the full bride price from her prospective husband’s family, thus turning a profit.

So she was sold, but not for the purposes of being a slave – it was for the purpose of getting her married off honorably. An unmarried poor girl was in danger of oppression in ancient times, and it was incumbent upon the father to see her provided for and in a secure situation before his death. A poor unmarried girl who was orphaned was likely to end up in prostitution.

Now you see the reason why, in verse 7, that she “doesn’t go out the way that male servants do.” It isn’t the same situation at all. If she displeases her new master “who has engaged her to himself,” then he has to allow her father or a close relative to purchase her back for what was paid for her. He can’t sell her away to foreigners as a slave, and he has backed out on their engagement so he has dishonored her. In verse 9, if he has engaged her to his son, he must continue to treat her as though she was his own daughter. If another wife was taken later (which in those days was done in case of barrenness), he still had all of the legal obligations that he would owe to any wife – he still must feed her, protect her, clothe and house her and he must continue to try to give her children – those were the absolute rights of a wife in that culture.

Now, as for Dinah in Genesis 34 – she was not raped. We can discern this from the language used to describe the encounter.

Ex 22:16 If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. 17 If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins.

First of all, Dinah did something scandalous and dangerous in ancient times – she went away from her family on her own, exposing the entire clan to risk and shame (starting in verse 1).

Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land.

This was incredibly foolhardy for a virtuous young virgin among a strange people. She had lived a sheltered life, always protected by her family. She had undoubtedly never been alone with any man in her life who wasn’t related to her or in servitude to her family.

And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her.

This sounds really worse than it was. In ancient times, if a man spotted a beautiful young virgin unattended – well, it wasn’t much different then than it is now. He didn’t seize her, the same word yikkah, is used for Lamech, the sons of God, Abraham, Nahor and others taking wives. Shechem seduced Dinah, and as the text will intimate later, they eloped. Humiliated is such a value laden term – really a more ANE way of expressing this would be that he saw her out alone, he charmed her, they eloped and consummated the marriage – thus shaming her before her family. For a young woman to go out alone and elope without the consent of her male relatives was excruciatingly shameful both to herself and her family. That was the culture. Dinah was too young and inexperienced to be out on her own.

And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this girl for my wife.”

This isn’t a cold-blooded, lust-driven rapist – this is a man who speaks kindly to her and is now going to follow ANE law and pay as much of a bride-price as the father wants in order to make things right, knowing that the father has the right to refuse to allow him to keep her. This is the only way to bring honor back into the situation that two young people have messed up – a ransom must be paid to restore the honor of Jacob’s family.

Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter Dinah. But his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob held his peace until they came. And Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him. The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing must not be done.

“Lying” with is the word sekab and it carries with it no connotations of forced sex. Their sister was seduced, and not raped.

Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and whatever you say to me I will give. Ask me for as great a bride price and gift as you will, and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman to be my wife.”

“Let me find favor in your eyes” – this is honor/shame language. Shechem is honoring Jacob by reasserting his control over the situation and acknowledging that Jacob has all the power over his own daughter.

Of course, we know what happened – Levi and Simeon agreed if only the entire clan would become circumcised. Three days later when they were still weak and recovering, they killed all of the men of the village and removed their sister from Shechem’s house (verse 26).

They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and went away

Of course, Jacob was furious! But why? If this had been an actual rape, payment would not be enough. Rape was an incredibly serious crime throughout the ANE – except during times of war (of course Torah expressly forbids wartime rape). Seduction, however, was a crime that both Dinah and Shechem bore the shame of – Shechem for subverting patriarchal authority and Dinah for venturing away from the protection of her family and putting the entire family’s honor at risk. Jacob had the absolute right in the ancient world to control the sexuality of his daughter – a daughter who controlled her own sexuality was acting like a whore, being that whores were the only women in the ancient world (prior to the New Roman Woman) who controlled their own sex lives. And here we see that Dinah was already in Shechem’s home – this wasn’t a girl who was raped and went home crying about it.

This explains why, when Jacob rebuked the brothers, they protested (verse 31):

But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?”

By subverting patriarchal authority and seducing Dinah, Shechem was treating her as though she was a woman who could indeed make her own decisions about her sexuality. He truly was, therefore, in Ancient Near Eastern eyes, treating their sister like a whore.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2001). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.