Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 33-35.

I was recently listening to a video discussion about the age of marriage for women in the Old Testament.  In doing so they talked about different Hebrew words for girl, young woman, virgin, etc..  One of the words they talked about was “yaldah”.  They said this referred to a girl who was old enough to have some independence, but not yet old enough to be married (they said typically 8 years old to 12 years old).   The reason I bring this up is that they also said that “yaldah” was one of the words used in this passage to describe Dinah.  I could not find any supporting evidence for this claim when I looked it up today.  All of the references I could find said that “yaldah” refers to a girl/young woman of close to, or early marriageable age.  The sources I found put Dinah’s age at 14-16.  If the claim from that video I watches is correct. it puts a completely different understanding on what happened to Dinah, and to her brothers’ response to it.  I had always thought of Dinah as being 16-20 when Shechem raped her.  From that perspective, her brothers’ response was understandable, but seems a bit more about them being disrespected than about concern for their sister.  On the other hand, if Dinah was only 14, or even younger, then what Shechem did to her was reprehensible, and the fact that the people of the town found it acceptable makes them reprehensible.  It puts into context what God said to Abraham in chapter fifteen about the sins of the Amorites not yet being complete.

I find it interesting that it is after the incident at Shechem, when Jacob goes to Bethel and gets his entire family to dedicate themselves to the God of Abraham and Isaac to the exclusion of all other gods, that the writer tells us that God came and officially changed his name from Jacob to Israel.  Before that the name change was given to Jacob by a “man” about whose identity the writer is ambiguous.  God here confirms the name change given to Jacob.  He has striven once more with man (this time through the actions of his sons) and won.  Jacob is not a deceiver, he is one who strives with God.  I want to note that does not mean strives against God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.