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44-447: The name is derived from Simeon , son of Jacob and Leah , patriarch of the Tribe of Simeon . The text of Genesis (29:33) argues that the name of Simeon refers to Leah's belief that God had heard that she was hated by Jacob, in the sense of not being as favoured as Rachel . כִּי־שָׁמַע יְהוָה כִּי־שְׂנוּאָה אָנֹכִי וַיִּתֶּן־לִי גַּם־אֶת־זֶה וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמֹו שִׁמְעֹון׃ Because

88-463: A beneficial influence upon her husband". Her brother Simeon promised to find a husband for her, but she did not wish to leave Shechem, fearing that, after her disgrace, no one would take her to wife. However, she was later married to Job . When she died, Simeon buried her in the land of Canaan . She is therefore referred to as "the Canaanitish woman" (Genesis 46:10). Joseph's wife Asenath (ib.)

132-458: A convention where sex and color are mingled together in the common rights of humanity, Dinah, and Burleigh , and Lucretia , and Frederick Douglas [sic], are all spiritually of one color and one sex, and all on a perfect footing of reciprocity. Most assuredly, Dinah was well posted up on the rights of woman, and with something of the ardor and the odor of her native Africa, she contended for her right to vote, to hold office, to practice medicine and

176-630: A derivation from the Hebrew root ( שְׁמַע ‎) šāma meaning 'to hear', 'to listen', and the verb ( אוֹנִי ‎) ʾōnī meaning 'my suffering'. At other times it is thought to derive from ( שָׁם ‎) šhām and ( עָוֺן ‎) ʿāvōn , meaning 'there is sin', which is argued to be a prophetic reference to Zimri 's sexual miscegenation with a Midianite woman, a type of relationship which rabbinical sources regard as sinful. Alternatively, Hitzig, W. R. Smith, Stade, and Kerber compared שִׁמְעוֹן Šīmə‘ōn to Arabic سِمع simˤ 'the offspring of

220-480: A description reflected a "late, post-exilic notion that the idolatrous gentiles are impure [and supports] the prohibition of intermarriage and intercourse with them." Such a supposed preoccupation with ethnic purity must therefore indicate a late date for Genesis in the 5th or 4th centuries BC, when the restored Jewish community in Jerusalem was similarly preoccupied with anti- Samaritan polemics. In Rofé's analysis,

264-495: A distinct tribe due to the scandal involving Zimri . The Blessing of Moses before his death had omitted the Tribe of Simeon because Jacob had castigated him Genesis 49:5-7 , and because of the terrible affair of Baal-peor . The text of the Torah states that the name of Simeon is in reference that God heard that Leah was unloved by Jacob and preferred her sister Rachel . This implies

308-536: A female, lest the maid-servants ( Bilhah and Zilpah ) be associated with more of the Israelite tribes than Rachel . Another midrash implicates Jacob in Dinah's misfortune: when he went to meet Esau , he locked Dinah in a box, for fear that Esau would wish to marry her, but God rebuked him in these words: "If thou hadst married off thy daughter in time she would not have been tempted to sin, and might, moreover, have exerted

352-461: A harlot? ' " (Genesis 34:31). When Jacob's family prepares to descend to Egypt, Genesis lists the 70 family members who went down together (Genesis 46:8–27). Dinah is specifically listed, in verse 15 ("These are the sons of Leah, that she bore to Jacob in Padan Aram, and Dinah his daughter."). Dovid Rosenfeld states that "That is it. The Torah does not tell us anything about what happened to her for

396-503: Is a fictional autobiography of the biblical Dinah. In Diamant's version, Dinah falls in love with Shalem, the Canaanite prince, and goes to bed with him in preparation for marriage. Simeon and Levi, Jacob's sons, instigate the discord between Jacob and the men of the King of Shechem out of fear for their own prosperity, even though Dinah tells them the truth. A fictionalized account of Dinah's life

440-400: Is argued to be a prophetic reference to Zimri 's sexual miscegenation with a Midianite woman, a type of relationship which rabbinical sources regard as sinful ( Jewish Encyclopedia ). Simeon (son of Jacob) Simeon ( Hebrew : שִׁמְעוֹן , Modern :   Šīmʾōn , Tiberian :   Šīmʾōn ) was the second of the six sons of Jacob and Leah , and the founder of

484-566: Is to be exactly translated and understood is the subject of scholarly controversy. Shechem asked his father to obtain Dinah for him, to be his wife. Hamor came to Jacob and asked for Dinah for his son: "Make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us; and the land shall be open to you." Shechem offered Jacob and his sons any bride-price they named. But "the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah"; they said they would accept

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528-451: The Book of Genesis , Dinah ( / ˈ d aɪ n ə / ; Hebrew : דִּינָה , Modern :   Dīna , Tiberian :   Dīnā , 'judged'; 'vindicated') was the seventh child and only daughter of Leah and Jacob . The episode of her violation by Shechem, son of a Canaanite or Hivite prince, and the subsequent vengeance of her brothers Simeon and Levi , commonly referred to as

572-464: The Book of Jubilees , Simeon was born on 21 Tevet , and according to the book of Genesis he had six sons. Although some classical rabbinical sources argue that the mother of his children, and his wife, was Bonah, one of the women from Shechem, other classical rabbinical sources argue that Simeon's wife (and the mother of his children) was Dinah , his sister , who had insisted on the marriage before she would be willing to leave Shechem's home (Shechem

616-555: The Israelite tribe, The Tribe of Simeon , according to the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible . Biblical scholars regard the tribe as having been part of the original Israelite confederation . The tribe is absent from the parts of the Bible. Some scholars think that Simeon was not originally regarded as a distinct tribe. However, many Biblical scholars believe that Simeon isn't regarded as

660-627: The Jahwist , to justify the presence of a sanctuary at Shechem; in comparison to the Elohist 's justification of the Shechem sanctuary, where the land is simply purchased by Jacob, and dedicated to El Elohe Israel (meaning El is the God of Israel , mighty is the God of Israel , or God, the God of Israel ). The Jahwist's account is viewed as a veiled slight against the sanctuary. Simeon's vengeance, and punishment in

704-507: The land of Israel are dispersed so that they would not be able to regroup and fight arbitrarily. According to the Midrash, Simeon and Levi were only 14 and 13 years old, respectively, at the time of the rape of Dinah. They possessed great moral zealousness (later, in the episode of the Golden Calf , the Tribe of Levi would demonstrate their absolute commitment to Moses' leadership by killing all

748-487: The "defilement" refers to interracial sex rather than rape. Midrashic literature contains a series of proposed explanations of the Bible by rabbis . It provides further hypotheses of the story of Dinah, suggesting answers to questions such as her offspring: Osnat a daughter from Shechem, and links to later incidents and characters. One midrash states that Dinah was conceived as a male in Leah's womb but miraculously changed to

792-659: The Hebrews a written history of their ancestors. This view—which has been held for the past several thousand years, although it is not explicitly mentioned in either the Hebrew or the Christian Bible —holds that Moses included this story primarily because it happened and he viewed it as significant. It foreshadows later happenings and prophecies further along in Genesis and the Torah dealing with

836-639: The LORD had heard that I was hated, he had therefore given me this son also: and she called his name Simeon. Implying a derivation from the Hebrew term shama on , meaning "he has heard"; this is a similar etymology as the Torah gives for the theophoric name Ishmael ("God has heard"; Genesis 16:11), on the basis of which it has been argued that the tribe of Simeon may originally have been an Ishmaelite group (Cheyne and Black, Encyclopaedia Biblica ). Alternatively, Hitzig, W. R. Smith, Stade, and Kerber compared שִׁמְעוֹן Šīmə‘ōn to Arabic سِمع simˤ "the offspring of

880-568: The apocryphal book Testament of Job , Dinah is said to have been Job's second wife after the death of his first wife , who is referred to as "Sitidos". In 19th-century America, "Dinah" became a generic name for an enslaved African woman. At the 1850 Woman's Rights Convention in New York, a speech by Sojourner Truth was reported on in the New York Herald , which used the name "Dinah" to symbolize black womanhood as represented by Truth: In

924-455: The blessing, are viewed by biblical scholars as aetiological postdictions which were designed to explain why, in the time of the author of the blessing (900-700BC), the tribe of Simeon was dwindling out of existence. The midrashic book of Jasher , argues that it was Simeon who deceived Hamor by insisting that the men of Shechem would need to be circumcised. It goes on to argue that Simeon was extremely strong, despite only being 14 years old, and

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968-446: The end of the war in 1865 The New York Times exhorted the newly liberated slaves to demonstrate that they had the moral values to use their freedom effectively, using the names " Sambo " and "Dinah" to represent male and female former slaves: "You are free Sambo, but you must work. Be virtuous too, oh Dinah!" The name Dinah was subsequently used for dolls and other images of black women. The novel The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

1012-460: The hyena and the female wolf"; as supports, Smith points to Arabic tribal names Simˤ "a subdivision of the defenders (the Medinites )" and Samˤān "a subdivision of Tamim ". In classical rabbinical sources , the name is sometimes interpreted as meaning "he who listens [to the words of God]" ( Genesis Rabbah 61:4), and at other times thought to derive from sham 'in , meaning "there is sin", which

1056-527: The hyena and the female wolf'; as supports, Smith points to Arabic tribal names Simˤ 'a subdivision of the defenders (the Medinites )' and Samˤān 'a subdivision of Tamim '. In the Torah's account of the rape of Dinah , wherein Dinah was raped (or in some versions, merely seduced) by a Canaanite named Shechem. Simeon and his brother Levi took violent revenge against the inhabitants of Shechem by tricking them into circumcising themselves and then killing them when they are weakened. The account dramatizes

1100-573: The land of Canaan. (According to another tradition, her child from her rape by Shechem was Asenath , the wife of Joseph , and she herself later married the prophet Job. ) The Tribe of Simeon received land within the territory of Judah and served as itinerant teachers in Israel, traveling from place to place to earn a living. In the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Levi received a few Cities of Refuge spread out over Israel, and relied for their sustenance on

1144-674: The law, and to wear the breeches with the best white man that walks upon God's earth. Lizzie McCloud, a slave on a Tennessee plantation during the American Civil War , recalled that Union soldiers called all enslaved women "Dinah". Describing her fear when the Union army arrived, she said: "We was so scared we run under the house and the Yankees called 'Come out Dinah' (didn't call none of us anything but Dinah). They said 'Dinah, we're fightin' to free you and get you out from under bondage'." After

1188-423: The offer if the men of the city agreed to be circumcised . So the men of Shechem were deceived, and were circumcised; and "on the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob and Leah, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came upon the city unawares, and killed all the males. They slew Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went away." And

1232-528: The palace unless Simeon agreed to marry her and remove her shame (according to Nachmanides , she only lived in his house and did not have sex with him). Therefore, Shaul is counted among Simeon's progeny, and he received a portion of land in Israel in the time of Joshua . The list of the names of the families of Israel in Egypt is repeated in Exodus 6:14–25 (including "Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman", verse 15). In

1276-512: The people involved in idol worship), but their anger was misdirected here. One midrash told how Jacob later tried to restrain their hot tempers by dividing their portions in the land of Israel, and neither had lands of their own. Therefore, Dinah's son by Shechem was counted among Simeon's progeny and received a portion of land in Israel, Dinah herself being "the Canaanite woman" mentioned among those who went down into Egypt with Jacob and his sons (Genesis 46:10). When she died, Simeon buried her in

1320-481: The priestly gifts that the Children of Israel gave them. In medieval rabbinic literature, there were efforts to justify the killing, not merely of Shechem and Hamor, but of all the townsmen. Maimonides argued that the killing was understandable because the townsmen had failed to uphold the seventh Noachide law ( denim ) to establish a criminal justice system. However, Nachmanides disagreed, partly because he viewed

1364-489: The rape of Dinah , is told in Genesis 34. Dinah is first mentioned in Genesis 30:21 as the daughter of Leah and Jacob, born to Leah after she bore six sons to Jacob. In Genesis 34, Dinah went out to visit the women of Shechem , where her people had made camp and where her father Jacob had purchased the land where he had pitched his tent. Shechem (son of Hamor, the prince of the land) then took her and raped her, but how this text

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1408-419: The rape of Dinah. The Torah lists the 70 members of Jacob's family who went down together into Egypt (Genesis 46:8–27). Simeon's children include "Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman" (verse 10). The medieval French rabbi Rashi hypothesized that this Shaul was Dinah's son by Shechem. He suggests that after the brothers killed all the men in the city, including Shechem and his father, Dinah refused to leave

1452-407: The remainder of her life, nor if she ever married and raised a family". Chapter 34 of the Book of Genesis deals primarily with the family of Abraham and his descendants, including Dinah, her father Jacob, and her brothers. The traditional view is that Moses wrote Genesis as well as almost all the rest of the Torah , doubtlessly using varied sources but synthesizing all of them together to give

1496-469: The seventh law as a positive commandment that was not punishable by death. Instead, Nachmanides said that the townsmen presumably violated other Noachide laws, such as idolatry or sexual immorality. Later, the Maharal reframed the issue—not as sin, but rather as a war. That is, he argued that Simeon and Levi acted lawfully insofar as they carried out a military operation as an act of vengeance or retribution for

1540-593: The sons of Jacob plundered whatever was in the city and in the field, "all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses". "Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, 'You have brought trouble on me by making me odious 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.' But they said, 'Should he treat our sister as

1584-491: The sons of Jacob. Kirsch argues that the narrative combines a Yahwist narrator describing a rape, and an Elohist speaker describing a seduction. On the other hand, another critical scholar, Alexander Rofé, assumes that the earlier authors would not have considered rape to be defilement in and of itself, and posits that the verb describing Dinah as "defiled" was added later (elsewhere in the Bible, only married or betrothed women are "defiled" by rape). He instead says that such

1628-440: The theme of tension between marriage within a group (endogamy) and marriage with outsiders (exogamy). Jacob castigates Simeon and Levi for this as their actions have placed the family in danger of a retaliatory strike by their neighbors. Later, in his final blessing , he condemns Simeon's descendants to become divided and scattered . Some Biblical scholars regard the account of the rape of Dinah as an aetiological myth, created by

1672-410: The two violent brothers. Source-critical scholars speculate that Genesis combines separate literary strands, with different values and concerns, and does not pre-date the 1st millennium BC as a unified account. Within Genesis 34 itself, they suggest two layers of narrative: an older account ascribing the killing of Shechem to Simeon and Levi alone, and a later addition (verses 27 to 29) involving all

1716-448: Was able to slaughter all the men of Shechem nearly single-handedly, only having assistance from his brother Levi , and captured 100 young women, marrying the one named "Bonah". The classical rabbinical sources argue that Simeon was very fearless, but also was particularly envious, and so had always been antagonistic and spiteful towards Joseph , owing to Joseph being Jacob's favourite son. The midrashic book of Jasher argues that Simeon

1760-435: Was her daughter by Shechem. Early Christian commentators such as Jerome likewise assign some of the responsibility to Dinah, in venturing out to visit the women of Shechem. This story was used to demonstrate the danger to women in the public sphere as contrasted with the relative security of remaining in private. On his deathbed, their father Jacob curses Simeon and Levi's "anger" (Genesis 49). Their tribal portions in

1804-431: Was her rapist/lover). Many of the rabbinical sources argue that Simeon died aged 120, roughly three years before the death of his brother Reuben , although Numbers Rabbah states that Simeon became the senior of the brothers after Reuben had died. A Samaritan tradition recorded in the late 19th century considered Neby Shem'on, a maqam near Kfar Saba , to be the burial place of Simeon. Rape of Dinah In

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1848-510: Was restored a week later. In the biblical Joseph narrative, when Joseph, having settled in Egypt , asks his brothers to bring Benjamin to him, he takes Simeon hostage to ensure that they return. According to classical rabbinical sources, Joseph chose Simeon to be the hostage because he was concerned that if Simeon was not separated from Levi, then Levi and Simeon might destroy Egypt together, since they had already destroyed Shechem. Another theory

1892-538: Was that Joseph singled out Simeon due to his taking a prominent role in Joseph's betrayal. According to the midrashic book of Jasher, Simeon was not willing to become a hostage, so Joseph sent 70 strong Egyptians to take Simeon by force, but Simeon had a very powerful voice, and so was able to scare off the Egyptians simply by shouting. The text states that Simeon was eventually subdued by Manasseh , and imprisoned. According to

1936-405: Was the one who proposed that the brothers should kill Joseph, and other classical sources argue that it was Simeon who threw Joseph into a pit, and became furious when he found out that Judah had sold Joseph rather than killed him. According to the classical sources, Simeon suffered divine punishment for this inhumanity, with his right hand withered, but this caused Simeon to repent, and so his hand

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