No Longer Quivering
Rashi’s Commentaries
Rashi(an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) was the “father of commentary” who lived from 1040-1105 and worked on the midrash, the extra-biblical texts that sought to fill in the gaps in other Jewish writings. He wrote the first and definitive commentary on the Old Testament and his is the most published, making all other Rabbinical commentaries that followed his own essentially commentaries on his original work as well.
Rashi dislikes Leah and therefore Dinah, claiming that they are both yatzaneet (“outgoing”). Though he says that “to go out” was a phrase that only applied to men, he says that Leah and Dinah both sinned by usurping the right “to go out.” (Perhaps this is the case in extra-biblical texts, but a simple search for the word yatzah as it appears in Genesis 34:1 can be found in other references that have nothing to do with men exclusively and are applied to women and nations and animals, etc.) He develops his hatred of Leah based upon Genesis 30:14-21, claiming that Leah schemed, deceived, and used mandrakes like a sorceress would use a spell when she arranges with Rachel to exchange mandrakes (love-apples) for a rare night with Jacob. From my understanding of Scripture, Leah is blessed with several children thereafter, but Rashi seems to ignore this. (Perhaps his wife burned the mandrakes on the evening before he wrote his commentary on this section in Genesis, and his own Rabbi wouldn’t grant him a get?)
He also goes on to elaborate on his opinions about Dinah after establishing that he thought Leah was no good so no good could come of the evil Dinah as a consequence. Genesis 34:1 says that Dinah goes out to see the daughters of the land, but we are not told whether her activity is either good or bad. It is clear that Scripture does not define “going out” as evil, and Isaac chose Rebecca from the “daughters of the land,” the same term used in Genesis 34:1. I easily performed a search through an online lexicon for all of the individual words and phrases in the verse, and none of them bear an exclusively limited connotation and often connote pleasant and virtuous references. (I’m just floored that they borrowed all this from the Midrash. I should have known.)
I have only been told in general terms from homeschoolers that Gothard teaches that Dinah brought on her own sin, but Gothard keeps his materials very private. I am not able to quote from Gothard directly but I can make reference to Vision Forum followers who are among the next generation of aberrant groups to follow Gothard. They have said in many places that this act of wandering and going out is like the feet of the “strange woman” of Proverbs, the harlot (zuwr ishshah: to be strange, estranged, harlot; woman). They specifically quote Proverbs 7:11 which states “She is loud and stubborn; her feet (regel) abide (shakan) not in her house (bayith)”
Josephus does state that Dinah went out to attend a festival which would have been a pagan event and may have put herself at risk by going alone, but this is also not told to us in Scripture specifically. The Book of Judith in the Apocrypha states that Dinah went out to see the finery of the linens of the daughters of the land. (Does this also mean that going out to see the linens made by the people in the place to where they’d just moved constitutes a desire or consent to be raped?) Josepheus and Dinah may be right in some historical interest, but as Christians, we are not taught that we can build doctrine on things that are not abundantly clear. We also cannot use these unclear passages for doctrinal interests when we are told other facts in Scripture that are more clear. What we are told is that she is taken by Shechem (lä·kakh’: to take, get, fetch, lay hold of, seize, receive, acquire, buy, bring, marry, take a wife, snatch, take away). We are also told that Shechem laid with her (shakab: to lie down with in sexual relations) and he defiled her (`anah: to afflict, oppress, mishandle, humble, be afflicted, be bowed down). What we are told has a far heavier weight of significance than those things which we infer with our own eisegesis.
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