Sermon Archive

“A Cautionary Tale”

Genesis 33:18-34:31
Bob DeGray
November 11, 2007

Key Sentence

Be cautious - there are many foolish paths for those who will not discern God’s way.

Outline

I. Be cautious about living too close to the culture (Genesis 33:18 - 34:4)
II. Be cautious about passivity in the face of sin (Genesis 34:5-12)
III. Be cautious about consumerising faith’s commitment. (Genesis 34:13-24)
IV. Be cautious about taking vengeance out of God’s hands (Genesis 34:25-31)

Message

Have you heard the phrase ‘A Cautionary Tale’? It’s a description of stories and accounts that seek to convey moral truth. The story of King Midas and the Golden Touch is a cautionary tale against excessive greed. It’s ‘a narrative with a moral message warning of the consequences of certain actions or character flaws.’ By that definition the Bible is filled with cautionary tales, warnings about the consequences of certain actions or character flaws, intended to teach us how not to behave.

Genesis 34 is a single story with several cautionary warnings. Following the breakthrough last week: Jacob’s encounter with God, his brokenness, his limp, his rescue, you’d expect Jacob to do well as he enters the promised land. But he does terribly, and his family does too. Everyone in this chapter acts foolishly and humanly rather than following God’s ways. It’s discouraging, but it does teach us that we need to be cautious: there are many foolish paths for those who will not discern God’s way.

There are four warnings in this troubling text. The first says ‘be cautious about living too close to the culture.’ We all need to hear this: If you’re a parent raising children, you’ve got to struggle with ‘how much exposure to our culture am I going to allow? What will strengthen my children? What will tempt them? How are we going to handle and discuss this separation?’

If you’re a young person, you’ve got to ask and answer the same question, because there are dangers, real dangers, in any culture, and maybe especially in ours. The choices you make for where you go and what you do and who you do it with will impact the rest of your life.

I. Be cautious about living too close to the culture (Genesis 33:18 - 34:4)

Genesis 33:18 to 34:4. After Jacob came from Paddan Aram, he arrived safely at the city of Shechem in Canaan and camped within sight of the city. ¹⁹For a hundred pieces of silver, he bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, the plot of ground where he pitched his tent.

^34:1Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. ²When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and violated her. ³His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her. ⁴And Shechem said to his father Hamor, "Get me this girl as my wife."

Last week Jacob wrestled with God and was broken. He was given the new name ‘Israel’. He encountered Esau and found him to be welcoming rather than hostile. But Jacob did not go with Esau to Edom. Instead he stayed at Succoth for a while and then, verse 18, “he arrived safely at the city of Shechem in Canaan and camped within sight of the city.” He probably should have gone directly back to Bethel. He’d made a vow to do so, and we’ll see in chapter 35 that God holds him to that vow.

Shechem is a detour, made worse when he camps within sight of the city. The last time this happened it was Abraham’s nephew Lot who camped within sight of Sodom - Jacob ought to know the results were disastrous. Jacob is too close to the culture. The characteristic sins of Canaan, were bound to impact Jacob’s family.

He compounds the problem by trying to settle down. Verse 19: “For a hundred pieces of silver, he bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, the plot of ground where he pitched his tent.” The only other property bought in Canaan was a burial ground Abraham bought for his wife and himself. That foreshadowed permanence, which God had promised, but which Jacob now tries to get by human means. I’ll just buy Canaan. That wasn’t the way the plan was supposed to work, and in buying this land Jacob exposed his riches to Hamor and the people of Shechem. Worse, he seems to be trusting his riches and possessions rather than God.

Trying to settle down, Jacob stays in Shechem too long, probably ten years. Dinah, one of the later children born in Haran, has grown to marriageable age, fifteen or so, and she’s making choices to get too close to the culture. Genesis 34:1 “Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land.”

Apparently un-chaperoned, she went into the city to be seen, to hang out with the girls. We already know the lives of Canaanite women were far from godly. That’s one reason Abraham and Isaac sent their sons to get wives in Haran. But Dinah seeks these women out, despite the fact that with them she was far from safe. The sexual orientation of Canaanite idolatry meant the constraints of marriage were little regarded. Dinah and her father both show foolish lack of caution in that culture.

And choices have consequences. Verse 2: “When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and violated her.” In that culture, Shechem, the son of the ruler, might feel he had a right to any woman who sashayed by. But the Scriptures, and most cultures, strictly forbid violating a woman against her will. Shechem is dead wrong in what he does. There should be moral outrage over it, even though Jacob and Dinah kinda set themselves up for it.

Shechem’s lust for Dinah is followed by emotional attachment. Verse 3: “His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her. And Shechem said to his father Hamor, "Get me this girl as my wife."” He’s trying to do the right thing. Hebrew law will say they’re supposed to marry. But he’s driven by emotion, not obedience when he tells his father to ‘take’ this girl for him.

So the first warning is, don’t get too close to the culture. You may be Jacob: you think security lies in having a piece of the culture: property, insurance, investment, financial stability. You’ve lost sight of the fact that you are supposed to be a pilgrim, with a promised home yet to come, not one who settles down in this world.

Worse, you may be Jacob the parent, responsible for people not mature enough to know their boundaries. You’ve got to settle far enough from the dangers to protect them, not just yourself. For example: do you often watch DVD’s or go to movies you won’t let your teens see? What are you saying? That this crummy content is okay for me but not you? You’re supposed to model proper distance. Second example: I had a father of teen boys tell me he had no safeguards on their computers because his sons would never go places like that on-line. That’s naive parenting.

Or, you could be Dinah. Young people, there is peril in walking too close to the edge. How you dress, where you go, who you hang out with, how you behave toward them, all these play into how vulnerable you are in a dangerous culture. Sexual stuff, addictions and plain dangers are all around. You want a cautionary tale: six kids, none of them old enough to drive, sneaking out at night, stealing a Jeep Cherokee and broadsiding a train at 120 miles an hour. The four in the back, who’d made only half the bad choices, were the ones who died. You have to be cautious.

II. Be cautious about passivity in the face of sin (Genesis 34:5-12)

The second warning is related to the first: be cautious about being passive in the face of sin. Chapter 34, verses 5-12: When Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled, his sons were in the fields with his livestock; so he kept quiet about it until they came home. ⁶Then Shechem's father Hamor went out to talk with Jacob. ⁷Now Jacob's sons had come in from the fields as soon as they heard what had happened. They were filled with grief and fury, because Shechem had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter--a thing that should not be done.

⁸But Hamor said to them, "My son Shechem has his heart set on your daughter. Please give her to him as his wife. ⁹Intermarry with us; give us your daughters and take our daughters for yourselves. ¹⁰You can settle among us; the land is open to you. Live in it, trade in it, and acquire property in it."

¹¹Then Shechem said to Dinah's father and brothers, "Let me find favor in your eyes, and I will give you whatever you ask. ¹²Make the price for the bride and the gift I am to bring as great as you like, and I'll pay whatever you ask me. Only give me the girl as my wife."

The key sentence is the first one: “When Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled, his sons were in the fields with his livestock; so he kept quiet about it until they came home.” Jacob, Jacob, what are you doing? You’re being passive. Your daughter has been violated. You ought to be outraged. Not out of control, but outraged. The author depicts a sharp contrast between Hamor, Shechem’s father, who is actively involved, and Jacob who says nothing until the end of the chapter.

He shows a second contrast by the reaction of Jacob’s sons, filled with grief and anger because Shechem had done a disgraceful thing. Notice the wording a disgraceful thing in Israel. The author knows that if Jacob had been wearing his new name tag he’d have responded with grief and anger. The sons, here, identify themselves as Israel, those who persevere with God. Jacob identifies with his old name.

As Hamor begins to negotiate, Jacob, who should have been the family’ pillar and guide, allows his sons to handle it. Hamor and Shechem, ignoring the immorality of Shechem’s acts, pursue this as if it was a happy marriage offer: “My son Shechem has his heart set on your daughter. Please give her to him as his wife.”

But Hamor has a larger issue in mind: “Intermarry with us; give us your daughters and take our daughters for yourselves. You can settle among us; the land is open to you. Live in it, trade in it, and acquire property in it." Hamor wants to assimilate these rich new neighbors and get them to make further investments.

He’s asking for exactly what Abraham and Isaac had gone out of their way to avoid: intermarriage. It was to avoiding marrying Canaanite girls that Abraham sent his servant to Haran. It was to avoid such marriages that Jacob was sent. And when Esau made such marriages, it was a stench in his mother’s nostrils. Hamor is asking the family to violate what had been one of it’s most dearly held principles.

Jacob is passive in the face of this sin and despite the critical importance of this situation for his family. You’ll ask me ‘what should Jacob have done?’ It’s a good question, and I’ll try to give my answer shortly. But it’s clear what Jacob shouldn’t have done: he shouldn’t have abdicated moral authority and leadership in his family.

This is not new in Genesis: Lot did it; Noah even did it; Isaac essentially did it, and Abraham came close. Later fathers will make the same error: Eli the priest, father of Hophni and Phineas; David the father of Absalom, and others.

Fathers, husbands and elders are called to lead. To abandon that role, silent in the face of sin is grave error. Yet we are often passive fathers. We convince ourselves our children won’t listen to us anyway or need to learn from their own experiences, so we let them sin. Or we see sin around them: dangerous behaviors, cruelty, sexual sin, abuse, addiction; and we don’t warn, don’t rescue, we don’t get outraged when we should.

Within the last year a young woman I was talking to said that in her circle of friends dating was a code word for having a sexual relationship. That’s outrageous. Give me the privilege of being angry that such things should be so. Let’s not be passive in the face of sin. Wise in dealing with it, yes; passive, no.

III. Be cautious about consumerising faith’s commitment. (Genesis 34:13-24)

The third warning here is against consumerising faith’s commitment. I hope it will become clear what I mean by that in a minute. It’s verses 13 to 24: Because their sister Dinah had been defiled, Jacob's sons replied deceitfully as they spoke to Shechem and his father Hamor. ¹⁴They said to them, "We can't do such a thing; we can't give our sister to a man who is not circumcised. That would be a disgrace to us. ¹⁵We will give our consent to you on one condition only: that you become like us by circumcising all your males. ¹⁶Then we will give you our daughters and take your daughters for ourselves. We'll settle among you and become one people with you. ¹⁷But if you will not agree to be circumcised, we'll take our sister and go."

¹⁸Their proposal seemed good to Hamor and his son Shechem. ¹⁹The young man, who was the most honored of all his father's household, lost no time in doing what they said, because he was delighted with Jacob's daughter. ²⁰So Hamor and his son Shechem went to the gate of their city to speak to their fellow townsmen.

²¹"These men are friendly toward us," they said. "Let them live in our land and trade in it; the land has plenty of room for them. We can marry their daughters and they can marry ours. ²²But the men will consent to live with us as one people only on the condition that our males be circumcised, as they themselves are. ²³Won't their livestock, their property and all their animals become ours? So let us give our consent to them, and they will settle among us." ²⁴All the men who went out of the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male in the city was circumcised.

What a surprise! Jacob’s sons act deceitfully. Do you see the word? Same word Isaac had used of Jacob. Is it any surprise that the children of this father should share his characteristic weaknesses? No. These boys have an evil scheme; really evil scheme.

But their initial approach, in my opinion, almost gets it right. They say ‘you must be circumcised.’ And to say that to Shechem, not to the town but to the individual, was probably the right thing to do. The trouble is they require the identifying sign without requiring the heart commitment. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant relationship between God and his people. But God isn’t even mentioned by these boys. God isn’t even mentioned in this chapter. He’s way offstage.

What kind of foolishness is it that seeks outward behavior with no heart reality? It’s faith watered down to self interest. That’s exactly how Shechem and his father sell it to the men of the city: ‘We’ve got plenty of room. We can marry their daughters, they can marry ours, and all they require is that our men be circumcised like they are. If we do this their property will become ours.’ Oh yea, there’s economic advantage to this circumcision thing. It’s not an issue of God or faith or worship or covenant, because Jacob’s boys never said it was. It’s been reduced to selfishness.

We need to watch out for this as individuals, surely, but also in our churches. I’ve spoken many times about the prosperity Gospel: get with God, give to God - or to a certain church or preacher - and you’re gonna get prosperity. Commitment? Sacrifice? Service? Suffering? Nah - it’s all about prosperity. I’ve also spoken many times about Joel Osteen, whose teaching is mix of prosperity Gospel and pop psychology. His latest book is ‘Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential’. That’s all it’s about. Any little bits of Scripture are just sound bites.

And it’s spreading. As I was driving to the church camp out, I heard a song by Point of Grace called “How You Live”. It says “Wake up to the sunlight with your windows open. Don’t hold in your anger or leave things unspoken. Wear your red dress, use your good dishes. Make a big mess and make lots of wishes. And have what you want, but want what you have. And don’t spend your life looking back.”

The chorus says “Turn up the music, Turn it up loud, Take a few chances and let it all out. ‘Cause you won’t regret it, Looking back from where you’ve been. ‘Cause it’s not who you knew And it’s not what you did. It’s how you live.” I thought who you knew made all the difference? Knowing Jesus is the difference. Where’s God in this song? Oh here he is, down at the end: “And make peace with God, and make peace with yourself. ‘Cause in the end, there’s nobody else.” Nobody but yourself - that’s the message of this song. Be nice and a little wild because that’ll make you happy.

When we water down the faith we lose it. Circumcision without covenant commitment is just painful day surgery. Christianity without sin and a Savior is just sanitized self centeredness. I think if Jacob and his sons had worked this out God’s way they would have looked for covenant faith in Shechem. That’s what Exodus 12:48 seems to require. That’s what we see in Rahab and Ruth, foreigners who came into the covenant community. If Shechem had repented of his sin and embraced Israel’s God, that might have been God’s solution. But Jacob’s boys didn’t ask it, and Hamor didn’t offer, and it was reduced to a test of who could out-deceive the other.

IV. Be cautious about taking vengeance out of God’s hands (Genesis 34:25-31)

Jacob’s boys win that contest. The fourth caution here is against taking revenge out of God’s hands. Verses 25 to 31: Three days later, while all of them were still in pain, two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and attacked the unsuspecting city, killing every male. ²⁶They put Hamor and his son Shechem to the sword and took Dinah from Shechem's house and left.

²⁷The sons of Jacob came upon the dead bodies and looted the city where their sister had been defiled. ²⁸They seized their flocks and herds and donkeys and everything else of theirs in the city and out in the fields. ²⁹They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses.

³⁰Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, "You have brought trouble on me by making me a stench to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed." ³¹But they replied, "Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?"

Simeon and Levi are Dinah’s brothers; all three have Jacob and Leah as parents. This may explain why they’re especially outraged. And it becomes clear here that Shechem is actually holding Dinah in his home, hostage, possibly for further misuse. But even given all that, Simeon and Levi have sin by taking this matter out of God’s hands and taking revenge themselves. God did not ask for their help. He’s already shown in Genesis that he is able to punish and correct in many ways, from the destruction of Sodom to the infertility of the people of Gerar when Rebekah was held there. No doubt God could have punished this sin in an appropriate fashion.

Four hundred years later this kind of violence against a Canaanite town would become part of God’s plan - but at that time the sins of the Canaanites will have been filled up.

Right now these young men are taking vengeance reserved for God. How do I know? Not by what Jacob says here, which is weak and self serving: you’ve made us a stench in their nostrils; they outnumber us; we could be in bad trouble.

But we also have Jacob’s prophecy at the end of his life. Genesis 49:5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers— their swords are weapons of violence. ⁶Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. ⁷Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel.”

So Judah becomes the head of the line of promise: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet.” Simeon and Levi lose their leadership because of their violence. God does want men to take revenge in their own hands. Paul will teach, “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.”

So Simeon and Levi have made themselves a stench in God’s eyes, and they have made Jacob a stench in the eyes of the Canaanites, and yet the author of Genesis gives them the last word: ‘should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?’ The moral outrage that passive Jacob lacked was the right response: it just shouldn’t have been expressed in violence and bloodshed.

One analog in our own day is abortion: we should be morally outraged over abortion and other right to life issues, But it should be impossible to name even one time when a Christian took revenge by violence against those supporting such sins. It’s not an option for us.

So what have we said? Be cautious - there are many foolish paths. God may be calling you today to caution in the area of closeness to the culture. I’ve said before, you don’t want to build a bunch of fences - that’s legalism. But you don’t want to go too close to the edge, because you will fall. Parents, don’t be like Jacob. Heed the dangers. Young people, don’t be like Dinah - don’t put yourself in a dangerous place.

Second, caution in the area of passivity. Jacob is so passive. Parents: be engaged in the lives of their children: you’ve got to have their backs; warn them and even rescue them. Don’t assume they are just going to learn from their mistakes.

Third, caution in watering down the faith. Where is God and covenant commitment to him in this text? We cannot, as families or as a church, tolerate a self rewarding feel good Christianity that has no sin and no Savior and no substance in the lives of people.

Finally, revenge belongs to God. We express our outrage in words, in prayer, in tough love toward sinners, but not in violence.

Jacob should have known better. He should have done better. He will do better next week as we finish this series. But this chapter is a cautionary tale. Choices have consequences, and bad choices even by believers have bad consequences. Let’s listen to the voice of wisdom and cling to the path of God.