Date: 8 Sep 2024, 9.30 am
Speaker: Ps Luwin Wong Sermon Text: Genesis 32:1–33:20
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TRANSCRIPT
This is what the city of Kolkata looked like on Wednesday night. At the stroke of 9pm, residents and public landmarks in the city switched off their lights for one hour, symbolic for the fact that darkness has overshadowed in the city in the wake of a brutal rape and murder of a female doctor in a hospital that transpired on August 9.
It was done as well to show solidarity with a protest march where thousands – comprising of students, working professionals, homemakers and even the homeless - marched the streets of Kolkata at midnight, candles in hand, to “Reclaim the Night” – a march which historically symbolized the right of women to walk the streets safely at any time, even at night.
On August 17, a week after the tragedy had occurred, India’s medical workers, doctors and nurses and healthcare staff held a nationwide strike. For 24 hours, all non-essential services in hospitals across the country were shut down. Why?
Because an outrageous thing has happened to a doctor in India, and a sobering response was necessary.
On Tuesday, the legislature of West Bengal, where the crime took place, passed an Anti-Rape Bill, mandating life-imprisonment or the death penalty for rape convictions. How did such a consequential piece of legislation pass so swiftly and decisively? Because an outrageous thing has taken place in the state, and strong leadership was needed.
Our text this morning likewise opens with an outrageous act.
It opens like this:
GEN 34:1-4 1 Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. 2 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. Shechem, the prince of the land saw Dinah, he seized her, and he lay with her, and just to make it clear that it was non-consensual, the author adds that he humiliated her.
This outrageous deed is described very briefly, in one mere sentence. But we can be certain that though the words used were minimal, it in no wise minimizes the ordeal that Dinah suffered.
But it does indicate to us the point of the story. A single verse to introduce the scene, a single verse to describe the sin. The rest of the 34 verses is spent narrating how the various implicated parties responded to what had happened.
This indicates to us, therefore, that the narrative is not to be read as a discourse on the depravity of sexual sin, but rather, calls upon us to focus on the responses, or lack thereof, to such an outrageous thing.
That is how the author describes the defiling of Dinah.
Here’s what happens next.
GEN 34:3-4 3 And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. 4 So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this girl for my wife.”
Well, it so happened that after capturing and assaulting Dinah, Shechem found himself rather captured by Dinah. His soul, his whole being, was drawn to her. He loved her, and spoke kindly to her. And he called his father to ask for her hand in marriage.
You know the saying about how “if you love someone, you let them go. If they return they were always yours, if they don’t, they were never were”?
Well, Shechem’s love for Dinah is not a liberating, giving kind of love. It’s a controlling, needing love. Because he did not free her. He did not let her return home. Dinah, remains captive in Shechem’s house.
But this request does set up the meeting between Hamor and his son Shechem with Jacob and his sons.
But before we head there, here’s a question. How did the opening verses of the story make you feel? Imagine Dinah was your daughter, your own flesh and blood, how do you feel hearing these opening verses? How do you think you would respond at the thought of Shechem and at the sight of Shechem coming to your house?
How do you think Jacob would have responded?
Here is how.
GEN 31:5-6 5 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. 6 And Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him. Jacob held his peace. Meaning to say, he said nothing. He did not act. He did not offer either a visible or an audible or a tangible response to the news that his daughter Dinah had been defiled.
You would expect that some indignation and anger would be appropriate here, as we see with Dinah’s brothers.
GEN 31:7 7 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.
Some response, some anger in the face of evil, some outrage at an outrageous sin.
But no. Jacob simply held his peace. In fact, in the narrative we do not hear him utter even a single syllable to Hamor or Shechem, the man who had violated his daughter.
The only time we hear Jacob speak comes at the end of the chapter, and it was not to respond to the defiling of Dinah but to lament that his sons responded the way they did.
GEN 34:30-31 30 Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.” 31 But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?”
Jacob had a point, his sons went overboard and have put the family at risk of retaliation; in harm’s way. But his sons had a point too: “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?”
In other words, is not a response required? Are you going to act like nothing outrageous happened to Dinah?
Friends, evil, wrong-doing, sin, demands a response. It should not be ignored, nor abided with, nor simply accepted.
As Dr Martin Luther King, who led America in the fight against the evil of racism and died for the cause, once said:
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
Or as Elie Wiesel, who endured first-hand the horrific evils of the Holocaust as a prisoner at both Auschwitz and Buchenwald, said in his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize:
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
Or as William Wilberforce, whose faith in Christ sustained him in a decades long struggle to end the evils of slavery in the UK, wrote:
“Let it not be said that I was silent when they needed me.”
The word of God likewise urges us to do good by seeking justice and correcting oppression.
ISAIAH 1:17 17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.
Christians are not those who purse our lips and fold our arms and wring our hands in the face of evil and injustice. We must act, we must respond, it is the will of God.
Apart from this, there are many other reasons as to why evil cannot be met with dispassionate silence. Our text today offers us two:
Reason number 1: Because evil is Insatiable.
Evil is never satisfied. Evil grows, it always wants more. It is always threatening to overcome you, to overwhelm you, to consume you.
Here is how the conversation went:
GEN 34:8-12 8 But Hamor spoke with them, saying, “The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife. 9 Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. 10 You shall dwell with us, and the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it, and get property in it.”
Notice what the end game is for Hamor. Not just that Dinah would be given to his son, but that Israel would dwell in their midst, as fellow Canaanites. He is seeking to blur the distinction between Israel and Canaan.
“Let us intermarry, dwell in our land, be one of us, and one with us.”
Hamor has an ulterior motive underlying this marriage proposal. Shechem might have wanted only Dinah, but Hamor wanted all of Israel.
Listen to what he says to his own people.
GEN 34:20-23 20 So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of their city and spoke to the men of their city, saying, 21 “These men are at peace with us; let them dwell in the land and trade in it, for behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives, and let us give them our daughters. 22 Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us to become one people—when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised. 23 Will not their livestock, their property and all their beasts be ours?
“Will not their livestock, their property and all their beasts be ours?” Hamor’s intent isn’t so much to form a partnership with Israel as it is for a merger and acquisition of Israel.
It is not in the nature of evil to let up or to give up. It will not be satisfied nor be satiated. It seeks to control, it seeks to consume.
I mean, they weren’t even willing to return Dinah to Jacob when they went over to their home for the marriage proposal. All they wanted was more and more from them. Evil always desires more from us, more of us. Till it consumes all of us.
That is the first reason for why evil cannot be met with dispassionate silence – because evil is insatiable. If we do not respond, it grows in response to our passivity.
The second reason is this: Because if the right people do not respond, then the wrong people will.
Let us return to the case of the Indian doctor.
Why did the West Bengal Assembly pass their new Anti-Rape law which mandated harsher punishment for the crime? Why was it important for the legislature to act so swiftly and decisively?
Because the brutal death of the doctor has created a fracture in society – a facture made evident by the strikes and the protests and marches. And that fracture is pain point that demands attention. It created a vacuum that demands to be filled.
And it will be filled, one way or another. That fracture can be filled either by justice or by anger. It can be remedied either by the authorities or the mob. The cure can be based on principles or built off emotions.
A mass protest can turn into mob violence at the drop of a hat. When we use the term “mob justice” we mean to describe “injustice”. Because mob justice is an oxymoron. It’s rarely just. It’s hate-filled, anger-driven, revenge-motivated violence that inevitably transgresses the boundaries of justice.
That is what will happen when those who are responsible for enacting and executing justice appear to be doing nothing about injustice.
If the right people do not respond to evil, then the wrong people will.
11 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. 12 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.”
This is Shechem’s offer to Jacob and his sons for Dinah. Ask anything you want for her.
The sons of Jacob gladly took up that offer.
GEN 34:13-17 13 The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah. 14 They said to them, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us. 15 Only on this condition will we agree with you—that you will become as we are by every male among you being circumcised. 16 Then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become one people. 17 But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter, and we will be gone.”
“Here's our condition” say the sons of Jacob, “be circumcised, every male among you”. What happens if they get circumcised?
16 Then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become one people.
The sons of Jacob are offering circumcision as a means of assimilation, of integration, of amalgamation with the Canaanites, when circumcision is the sign which marks out Israel as God’s chosen people amongst the nations of the world. It is sign of distinction, of separation, of differentiation.
In other words, the sons of Jacob are inverting the purpose of circumcision, and thereby profaning the sign of the covenant that God has given to Israel.
And Jacob says nothing of it.
And not just that. The narrator tells us that the sons of Jacob spoke deceitfully. Because their intention was never to use circumcision as a means of assimilation, but as a scheme for retaliation.
Which again, runs counter to the nature of the sign. Circumcision was a sign of a covenant of grace, created to save. They have profaned it by turning it into a plan for revenge, designed to destroy.
Let’s see.
GEN 34:18-19, 24 18 Their words pleased Hamor and Hamor’s son Shechem. 19 And the young man did not delay to do the thing, because he delighted in Jacob’s daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his father’s house.
24 And all who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city.
GEN 34:25-29 25 On the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males. 26 They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and went away. 27 The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city, because they had defiled their sister. 28 They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys, and whatever was in the city and in the field. 29 All their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered.
This response, my friends, is an operation of the long arm of Justice but of the overreach of Vengeance. This is disproportionate retaliation, enabled by deceit.
What Simeon and Levi did to the city of Shechem, including the capture of the women and children, was not undertaken to satisfy the demands of justice, but to quench the fire of their anger.
And as a result of their violent revenge, Simeon and Levi were cursed by Jacob when the time came for him to bless his sons.
GEN 49:5-7 5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers;weapons of violence are their swords. 6 Let my soul come not into their council;O my glory, be not joined to their company.For in their anger they killed men,and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen. 7 Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce,and their wrath, for it is cruel!I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.
Yes, Simeon and Levi sinned with their deceit and disproportionate retaliation, but this transpired in part because Jacob as the Patriarch of family, the Father of Dinah and her brothers, said nothing, did nothing, and offered no appropriate response and direction when he ought to have done.
What we have learnt thus far is this: An outrageous sin cannot be met with dispassionate silence, as Jacob did, nor should it be met with deceitful and disproportionate severity, as Jacob’s sons did.
If this is the case, the main point has thus far been framed in the negative. That is, we are only told what we are not supposed to do.
Those who are responsible for acting justly cannot be unresponsive to evil, and our response must be deceitful and disproportionate.
But what then must we do? What is the right response? What is the positive application?
It is to surrender evil and injustice to the Saviour.
An Outrageous Sin…
Cannot be met with dispassionate Silence…
Nor be met with disproportional Severity…
But be surrendered to our Saviour.
One might think that the positive and right response to evil is to mete out proportional punishment.
Lex Talionis – an eye for an eye.
But as Mahatma Ghandi once put it, “An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world will be blind”.
In cases of personal injury, while the Old Testament does employ the principle of Lex Talionis, the counsel of the New Testament is not to exact proportional revenge, or to retaliate in kind towards our enemies, but to surrender our victimhood to the Saviour.
MATTHEW 5:38-39 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
It’s not proportional retaliation, but non-retaliation.
In the 2018 movie, titled Paul, The Apostle of Christ, there was a scene where the Christian community heard about Paul’s imprisonment and impending death sentence, and several young men hatched a plan to rescue him by killing the guards and breaking Paul out of prison.
“They are killing us”, they reasoned, “so killing them is only fair, and just”.
The elders in the Christian community had to restrain them by reminding them of Jesus’ teaching of non-retaliation. This way of living seems unjust, it feels unfair, until and unless, the cross of Christ comes into view and dominates your vision of life.
There on the hill of Calvary, we see justice done, we witness the wrath of God satisfied, and if his wrath is satisfied, what more ours? There we find our sins forgiven, we behold God’s love for his enemies, and the reason to love our own, and to forgive those who sinned against us.
The Cross of Christ stands as a guarantee that God will not turn a blind eye to evil and injustice. It serves as a reminder that loving, self-sacrificing forgiveness is the response of God to the evil in the world. It stands as a reminder that we called to bear our cross and to follow our crucified Saviour.
To turn the other cheek is not to forsake the demands of justice, but to surrender it to our Saviour, the righteous judge of God.
We can leave it to him, we can trust him to avenge and to exact justice, even if we don’t see it presently.
So writes the Psalmist in Psalm 94.
Psalm 94:1-10 1 O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth! 2 Rise up, O judge of the earth; repay to the proud what they deserve! 3 O Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult? 4 They pour out their arrogant words; all the evildoers boast. 5 They crush your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage. 6 They kill the widow and the sojourner, and murder the fatherless; 7 and they say, “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive.” 8 Understand, O dullest of the people! Fools, when will you be wise? 9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? 10 He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke?
So trust in God to avenge us. When we leave it to him, it liberates us from seeking revenge and to pursue a Spirit-filled, Christ-like nature of peace and love instead.
ROMANS 12:16-21 16 Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Never be wise in your own sight. That is, never presume you know how to act justly and righteously in the face of evil. Never assume you are wise enough to know where the boundaries of justice lies. So often, we are led by emotions, rather than guided by reason.
Which is why James cautions that “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God”. Our anger, more often than not, leads us away from righteousness rather than guide us along its paths.
And when we seek vengeance for ourselves, instead of surrendering it to God, we run the risk of becoming the very thing we sought to destroy, and find our own souls destroyed by evil in our quest to destroy the evil we see in others.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
In their misguided zeal to quench evil, they became evil themselves.
But that is about personal offenses, personal victimization, and persona; injustice.
What about systemic evil? Racism, oppression, and social injustice? What does it mean to surrender it God? We can take a leaf from those who have gone before us, from men such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his struggle against Nazi Germany, from William Wilberforce, against Slavery in the UK, from Martin Luther King, against Racism in the US. All these men were inspired by their faith, and the treaded with circumspection, without violence, with prayerful trust that God the just will establish justice his way, even if it seems timid and slow and foolish the eyes of the world.
Trust in the wisdom and the justice and sovereignty of God, so that we will neither ignore evil nor be overcome by it.
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