In the experiences of Dinah (Genesis 34) and of Tamar (2 Samuel 13) the Hebrew Bible records two instances in which a young, unmarried woman was violated and subsequently the man who had violated her was killed. Mary Anna Bader addresses the broader parallels between the two accounts, observing that the women are daughters of patriarchs, Jacob and David, and that, contrary to modern expectations, it is not the women's fathers but their maternal brothers who killed the violators. Previously the two histories have been paired in just two essays, by Yair Zaikovith (1985) and David Noel Freedman (1990); a full study of these two accounts examining their affinities and diction is new.
Synopses of the two accounts may be useful at this point. Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. Shechem saw her and violated her. He desired to marry her, and his father Hamor, the local ruler, went with him to Jacob and his sons to seek to arrange this. Jacob's sons, angered because their sister had been violated, feigned agreement, requiring Shechem and all the men of the city to be circumcised. Shechem and Hamor persuaded the men to agree, urging that by intermarrying they would own Israel's possessions. When the men were recovering from their circumcisions, however, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's maternal brothers, slew Shechem and Hamor and took Dinah from the city; the other brothers killed the rest of the men in the city. The account concludes with Jacob rebuking his sons for endangering the entire extended family by exposing them to reprisal from the regional peoples, and his sons countering that they could not allow their sister to be used as a whore.
Tamar, the daughter of David and Maacah (cf. 2 Samuel 3:3 and 2 Samuel 13:1), was beautiful. Her half-brother Amnon desired her, and his cousin Jonadab devised a ruse for trapping her: Amnon told his father that he was ill and asked that his sister Tamar be sent to him to bake bread for him to strengthen him. Innocently David and Tamar complied, but Amnon declared his desire for Tamar when they were alone. She pleaded with him to ask their father for her and repeatedly she resisted Amnon, but he was stronger and overpowered and violated her. Afterwards, his lust changed to hatred and he had his servant send her out of the house. Distraught, Tamar encountered her brother Absalom, who was angered. David also was angry, but evidently did not punish Amnon. Two years later Absalom arranged the death of Amnon to punish him for having violated their sister.
The main contribution of Bader's volume is its first chapter, her analysis of three terms critical not only to analysis of the two biblical accounts which are the focus of the book, but to the broader subject indicated in its main title, namely the nature of sexual violation and the responses to it as indicated in the Hebrew Bible. Bader argues convincingly that ‘anah is well translated ‘violate, dishonour.’ While the word's meanings include rape, as in the case of Tamar, it evidently also includes illicit sexual congress, even when consensual, as in Deut. 22:24. The thirteen passages using this verb in contexts involving sexual relations with a woman are analyzed by Bader; in only eight does the word mean ‘rape’: Deut. 22:28-29; Judges 19:24, 20:5; 2 Samuel 13:12, 14, 22, 32; Lam. 5:11. Bader convincingly analyzes Deut. 22:28-29 as concerning rape, refuting the views of Freedman and Lyn Bechtel on this score (p. 12). Other instances of this verb include Ezekiel's declaration that men have ‘violated’ women by having intercourse with them during their menses (Ezek. 22:10-11). Significantly, because of the range of ways that sexual intercourse can constitute ‘violation’, the term by itself does not imply rape and thus does not indicate whether Dinah consented to the violation or was a victim of force.
The point is timely for, since 1982, biblical scholarship has ‘challenged’ the ‘more traditional interpretation of Gen 34 as an instance of rape’ (p. 10). Bechtel and Ralph W. Klein in particular have held that, because Dinah was interested in meeting the women of the land (Gen. 34:1), she must have been ‘receptive’ to Shechem the Hivite. Bader astutely doubts that this is ‘either a logical or a textually based conclusion’ (p. 11, n. 8). Commendably, she holds to the evidence and concludes that the text appears ambiguous on the issue of whether Dinah was raped or a willing partner.
The other two Hebrew terms Bader analyzes systematically are nebalah, which Bader deems ‘heinous offence,’ and cherpah, which she renders ‘disgrace.’ Other lexical comparisons are included throughout the book. For instance, an intriguing dictional parallel is adduced by Bader between the account in Judges 19 and the account of Tamar: The Benjaminite householder ‘overpowered’ his concubine and ‘made her go out’ to the lecherous men of the city whose gang-rape caused the woman's death, and Amnon is reported to have ‘overpowered’ Tamar and then, after raping her, had his servant ‘make her go out’ of his house (vv. 11, 18; pp. 20–21).
The volume's other two chapters analyse the two biblical accounts, first establishing a fitting English translation and then giving ‘narrative close readings’ focused on rhetoric and characterization (p. 81). A specific focus is to examine how the narrators developed the characters (p. 85). Bader engages much pertinent scholarship including the work of Robert Alter, Mieke Bal, James Barr, Adele Berlin, Shimon Bar Efrat, Phyllis Trible, and Gordon Wenham. The strength of these two chapters is their careful textual notes: each chapter opens with Bader's translation of the account, abundantly annotated to show Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and numerous other variants and their implications. For instance, the order of words in Gen. 34:13 may be more correct in the Syriac than in the Masoretic text (p. 88), and a possible omission in 2 Samuel 13:21 (concerning David's motivation) may be due to eye-skip (p. 129).
A notable aspect of Bader's analysis is her attention to how word-echo can nuance meaning. For instance, she shows how the same term for ‘strong’ is used first in the statement that Amnon was stronger than Tamar (v. 14) and then reprised when Absalom commands his servants to be strong (v. 28) and slay Amnon (pp. 158–59). Implicitly, the echoed word suggests the justice of Absalom's retribution.
Throughout the volume, Bader holds that the two biblical accounts indicate ‘different family dynamics than the legal material of the H[ebrew] B[ible] would suggest’ (p. 75). The biblical authors devoted ‘inordinate time, space, and detail’ to the actions and motives of the sons, in Bader's view, but ‘not … much time or energy’ to ‘explaining the fathers' reactions’ (p. 85, see also p. 171). The two accounts perhaps ‘cast doubt’ on the honour of Jacob and David, ‘significant doubt’ on their abilities to manage their families (pp. 177–78). It would be interesting to draw on the many other passages in Genesis which treat Jacob (Bader draws on one such passage, pp. 65–66) and also the passages in Samuel which treat David to see if the overall presentations of these men clarifies their actions in the two chapters under discussion.
Hebrew narrative is laconic, and the order of actions and selection of details recounted are always significant. Often Bader is sensitive to this, as when she notes how each woman is initially presented. In a monographic study of the two passages, however, one expects more of such analysis. For instance, the fact that Hamor had sexual relations with Dinah (v. 2) before he is said to have loved her (v. 3) and desired to marry her (v. 3) is a morally disordered sequence deserving comment; it is surely a case of rhetoric indicating character. Similarly, although Bader presents as positive the fact that Hamor was ‘cooperative with his son’ (p. 108), she neglects to note that this cooperation occurred only because he shared his son's immorality. Even if one wishes to prescind from moral comment and simply state that Hamor shared his son's inculturation, which was at odds with the ‘socio-religious norms’ (e.g., p. 35) of Jacob's household, the point would have been worth making: to be cooperative in what is wrong is not a virtue.
Because the subject of biblical women who were violated is easily exploited for ideological ends, it is important to note that Bader has conducted her study fairly. Just treatment of men is shown, for instance, in her accurately identifying the behaviour of Potiphar's wife as ‘sexually harassing Joseph’ (p. 18). Only a few passages are marred by an uncritical use of modern jargon. Referring to a sentence that mentions only women as ‘gynecocentric’ and to another that makes a man the grammatical subject as ‘androcentric’ (pp. 90, 91) adds very little. In what sense were Jacob and his sons ‘vying for control of the young woman’ (p. 121)? It seems instead that Jacob considered Dinah to have taken herself out of his control and he had decided it would be dangerous to his entire household to try to recover her (Gen. 34:30).
More analysis of the presentation of the women in the narratives would be welcome, both in the chapters on their histories and in the chapter of conclusions. Certainly Bader's study with its provision of well-annotated texts can facilitate further research on the accounts and the women in them. A dictional element apt for study is the use of the word ‘daughter’: Bader notes that Dinah's brothers refer to her as ‘our daughter’ and that Hamor refers to her as ‘your [plural] daughter’ when speaking to Jacob and his sons (pp. 120–22). Does the Hebrew Bible have comparable uses of the word ‘daughter’ to describe a woman's relationship to her brothers? Further, it would be useful to consider the absence from the narratives of the mothers, Leah and Maacah. Where Bader treats ‘the gaps’ in the biblical accounts, they are always construed as concerning details of the actions of those whose actions are described (e.g., p. 101).
Also, a critical contrast between the actions of Dinah and Tamar warrants consideration: Dinah of her own free will chose to go outside her community to visit the women of the land, and, whatever her intention, it was her own action which made it possible for a foreign prince to violate her. The two laws Bader adduces in her first chapter pertain to the presumed guilt of a woman who does not cry out when accosted in the city and the presumed innocence of a woman who was accosted in the country, for perhaps she cried out but no one was there to hear her (Deut.22:23-27; in either case the man is guilty). These laws imply that a prudent woman would not go alone outside her community. Certainly later commentators found Dinah's walking abroad alone a significant error on Dinah's part (e.g., Albert the Great, Comm. Daniel 13.7). In contrast, Tamar was within her own extended household, bringing bread to her half-brother at the request of her father, and the prince who violated her was her own half-brother, who ignored her pleas and physically forced her. Dinah was at least imprudent in putting herself beyond the hearing of those in her household who could protect her, while Tamar had cause to think she was safe.
Moving beyond the biblical text, the reception of the histories of these women also invites analysis. An intriguing parallel between Tamar and Christ is perhaps suggested in Lorenzo Lotto's choir at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo (1524-1530). Types of Christ in this extensive iconographic program include Susanna and Judith as well as Jonah and David. Although to date I know of no text explicating Tamar as a type of Christ, at Bergamo Tamar and Absalom are depicted within a prominent, entirely typological section of the choir, making it quite possible that Tamar bringing bread to Amnon is a type of Christ about to be betrayed by Judas who had partaken of the bread of the Last Supper.
Of lasting use in Bader's well-indexed study are her analysis of critical terms pertaining to violation/dishonour, heinous offence, and disgrace, for they help elucidate not only the understanding in the Hebrew Bible of rape itself but also the broader topic of sexual violation. Bader's well-annotated texts and the gathering together of pertinent scholarship will also stimulate further research on Tamar, Dinah, and other biblical women.
