The Sons of Isaac(102)

Jacob was frantic with alarm. How could his sons do such a thing when it was so important to build good relationships with the local people? He stood and, with a show of calm he didn’t feel, walked to the tent door.

“There, see.” Joseph pointed to a crowd of women advancing from the city gates of Shechem all screaming, beating their breasts, and throwing stones at two tall young men Jacob recognized as Simeon and Levi.

Even from this distance, Jacob could see that they were streaked and matted with blood. As they came closer it was obvious that they were hustling Dinah along between them. “Go get Leah,” he told Joseph, and then braced himself to confront his sons.

Simeon and Levi seemed drunk with the power they had wielded. They flung Dinah down on the ground before Jacob. “There,” they said, “we have brought our sister home where she belongs. She is defiled, ruined; no man will have her now, and it is all the fault of that evil prince.”

When they said this, Dinah let out a cry and covered her face with her hands. Her garments were soaked with blood and her hair loose and caked with dirt and blood. “He loved me,” she wailed and again sank down covering her face.

“She has disgraced us,” they said. “We came to rescue her and she clung to him shamelessly so that we had to tear her from him. That’s why she’s all bloody.”

Leah arrived, her eyes pinched and questioning, her mouth gaping until she covered it with trembling hands. She looked first at one and then the other of her sons and finally down at Dinah. “I thought you had been killed!” she screamed as she rushed forward and clung to Simeon.

“It were better if they had been killed before they brought us to this evil day,” Jacob said as he glared at their grinning, blood-streaked faces.

“What happened? Where have you been?” Leah begged.

“You told us to go to Shechem and get our sister and we did,” Levi said proudly.

Dinah jumped up screaming and beating her fists on her brothers. “You pulled him from my arms and killed him. You killed the prince and he loved me.”

Simeon drew back his hand and slapped her across the face. “Slut, whore, you encouraged him,” he shouted.

Leah grabbed his upraised hand and pled with him to be patient. “Your sister is in shock; she is grieving.”

Jacob had seen enough. He had grasped the whole picture of what had happened and he was horrified. “Leah,” he said with a catch in his voice, “take your daughter and comfort her.” He then turned to Levi and Simeon. “You have fouled our camp. You have sullied our good name. From now on we will be despised and hated among the people of this land. We are just a small band of men with our flocks and herds, and we can’t stand against the hostility of all these people.”

For the first time Levi and Simeon realized what they had done. They hung their heads and Levi threw up his arm to cover his eyes so he would not have to see the anger of his father. “Punish us any way you like,” Simeon said boldly. “We have saved the women and children of Shechem to be our slaves and we have rounded up their cattle.”

“Where are the other sons of Leah?” Jacob asked. “Have they taken part in this slaughter also?”

“Right now they are looting and gathering up the treasures of Shechem.”

Jacob groaned and pulled at his beard in frustration. He walked back and forth trying to determine what punishment to mete out against these murderous sons. “You should be killed,” he said. “An eye for an eye, a life for a life.”

“No, no, not my sons.” Leah had come back just in time to hear Jacob’s statement. She clung to both of the young men, shielding them from Jacob’s wrath. “They are the sons of promise, Elohim’s gift to father Abraham,” she screamed.

Jacob groaned again and ran his fingers down his cheeks. “Go from my sight. I can’t trust myself to mete out justice.”

“Punishment,” Leah said. “What is their punishment to be?”

Jacob paused a moment and studied his two sons. “The greatest punishment will come in the future when they will find they are no longer the leaders. Reuben will be first and then Judah, and Levi and Simeon will be placed at the end. Wherever they are mentioned in the annals of our family, this terrible deed will cling to their names like a plague and they can never erase it.”

He had barely gotten the words out when he heard a great chorus of weeping and wailing and shrieking that seemed to come from the region of the great tree. It was the women and children of Shechem who had followed Levi and Simeon. They were in a veritable orgy of grief. They were terrified. Their men had all been killed and their homes vandalized. They had no place to go.