Oh… 😞 the incident with Dinah…ugh.
Remember how I mentioned that Dinah was probably the little princess of the family? She has 11 big doting brothers. Well, the little princess is a teenager now (probably), and like all clueless teen girls thinks she needs to get out there and see what the big wide world is all about. Bad idea.
I kinda imagine Shechem singing that old Ritchie Valens song but instead of “Donna” it was “Oh… Dinah, oh… Dinah… I had girl… Dinah was her name. Since she left me… I’ve never been the same…”
(If you do ministry to teens, I dare you to parody that whole song based on this story and use it as a lesson to help teens avoid the pitfalls of promiscuity.)
The Dinah narrative carries on the theme of deceit and trickery with both the men of Shechem thinking to cheat Israel out of their wealth and Dinah’s brothers convincing all the men in town to be circumcised but then attacking and killing them while they are incapacitated.
For the record, Jacob does not approve.
If you’re following the original reading plan, today is Saturday. We’ve waded through some pretty big and rather theologically weighty narratives this week. So rather than a long post today, I thought I’d share an epic bit of early internet history. This was one of the first “viral” things on YouTube when YouTube was still an online curiosity.
This video was created by a couple of guys who got their hands on a new software called “auto-tune.” It turns speech into music. They had a show called “Auto-Tune The News” where they would find interesting news clips and make songs out of them. I remember when this happened. And, honestly, it’s the perfect summary of the Dinah story.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you…
Have a plummy weekend.
To The Reader 