Free The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible by Jonathan Kirsch

“So your son defiles our sister,” he demanded, “and now he wants to
marry
her?”
    Hamor deigned a glance at Levi, and the slightest smirk crossed his face. And then he spoke to Levi’s father.
    “You are strangers in our land, and you live among us on a plot of ground that was once mine,” Hamor said with a delicacy that did not conceal the unspoken barb. “But if your daughter marries my son—if you give your daughters to our men, and you take our daughters for your men—then you will no longer be strangers. You will be one with us.”
    Jacob did not mistake the meaning of Hamor’s invitation, but Levi persisted in taunting the chieftain.
    “Perhaps there is something else we can do to your daughters beside marrying them,” the young man hissed. “Perhaps your son will have an idea of what I mean.”
    Hamor once again replied to Levi by addressing himself to Jacob.
    “If you marry with us, you can live among us as if you were native-born and not merely strangers,” Hamor said. “The land shall be open to you, and you can move freely from place to place, you can sell your crops and your wares, you can buy land wherever you like.”
    And the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father with guile, and spoke, because he had defiled Dinah their sister, and said unto them: “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one that is uncircumcised; for that were a reproach unto us.”
    — GENESIS 34:13–14    
     
    Now Shechem himself spoke up, and Jacob’s sons seemed to tense at the very sound of the young man’s voice, anxious and urgent.
    “Just do me the favor of letting me have your daughter, and I will pay any dowry that you ask,” Shechem said to Jacob and his sons. “No matter how great the price, I will pay it—if you will only give her to me to be my wife!”
    Simeon stepped forward, face to face with Shechem, who seemed to flinch at the fury in the young man’s face.
    “So you are willing to pay for what you did to our sister,” Simeon shouted, “as if she were a whore?”
    But Levi put himself between Simeon and Shechem, a hand on each man’s shoulder, and he began to speak slowly, even sweetly.
    “What my brother means to say is that we cannot do what you ask, as much as we might want to,” said Levi. “We cannot give our sister in marriage to one who is not circumcised—it is the law of our people, and to do otherwise would be unthinkable.”
    Shechem seemed confused by Levi’s words, and he glanced at his father. Simeon, too, was incredulous at what his brother was saying, as if he wondered if his brother had gone suddenly mad.
    “Among these people,” Hamor explained, “it is the custom of the men to cut off the foreskin.”
    “Cut off the foreskin?” asked Shechem, incredulous and a bit frightened. “How do you do such a thing?”
    “Why, I suppose with a knife,” said Hamor with a slight smile. “A sharp one, I hope.”
    Father and son looked at Jacob, who only nodded solemnly in assent.
    “Only on this condition will we consent unto you: if ye will be as we are, that every male of you be circumcised; then will we give our daughters unto you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people.”
    — GENESIS 34:15–16    
“But if ye will not hearken unto us, to be circumcised; then we will take our daughter, and we will be gone.” And their words pleased Hamor, and Shechem Hamor’s son
.
    — GENESIS 34:17–18    
     
    “So we will give you our sister for your wife,” Levi continued in per-feet seriousness, “but only if you are circumcised when you take her to the marriage bed.”
    Shechem looked dubious and slightly ill, which seemed to amuse Jacob and only encouraged Levi.
    “I’ll do it,” Shechem said grimly.
    “Please don’t misunderstand me,” Levi continued. “Not only you but every man among your people must be circumcised, too. Only then will we give our women to be your wives,