I think I am safe using the word fear to describe Jacob’s prognostication that Simeon and Levi…had brought ruin on him by making him a foul odor among the inhabitants of the land, that the Canaanites and the Perizzites…would join forces against him and attack him, and both he and his family would be destroyed!^[1]  It was not a prophecy; it did not come to pass.  It was a rational appraisal of the likely response of men born of Adam (then Noah).  And it was a righteous expectation of the law God gave Noah and his sons after the flood (Genesis 9:5, 6 NET).

For your lifeblood I will surely exact punishment, from every living creature I will exact punishment.  From each person I will exact punishment for the life of the individual since the man was his relative.  Whoever sheds human blood, by other humans must his blood be shed; for in God’s image God has made humankind.

Simeon and Levi had perpetrated the kind of violence that brought the flood in the first place (Genesis 6:11-13 NET).

The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence.^[2]  God saw the earth, and indeed it was ruined, for all living creatures on the earth were sinful.  So God said to Noah, “I have decided that all living creatures must die, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.  Now I am about to destroy them and the earth.”

It is a fearful thing to contemplate a God with the power and the will for such destruction (Genesis 6:5-7 NET).

But the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth.  Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time.  The Lord regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and he was highly offended.  So the Lord said, “I will wipe humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – everything from humankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.”

But if I take the Lord’s reasons and offense seriously, his relative tolerance of human evil after the flood is just as fearful a thing if in a different way (Genesis 8:21, 22 NET).

I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, even though the inclination of their minds is evil from childhood on.  I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done.  While the earth continues to exist, planting time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.

And thus the law: Whoever sheds human blood, by other humans must his blood be shed.^[3]

Though Simeon’s and Levi’s die hard antics seem more like justice for Dinah to my religious mind (compared to David’s inaction regarding Tamar, or Jacob’s silence), the most likely outcome for Dinah did not look good.  Both the evil of men and the righteousness of God’s law conspired to catch her up in the violent retribution due Simeon and Levi, or she might have become like one of the slave women her brothers took from Shechem.  But Jacob, Dinah, Simeon, Levi and all of their family found favor (or, grace) in the sight of the Lord.^[4]

I have appropriated what the Bible said about Noah to Jacob, Dinah, Simeon, Levi and all of their family.  This would have been unthinkable to my religious mind.  It assumed that Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord because Noah was a godly man; he was blameless among his contemporaries.  He walked with God.^[5]  Now I am more and more convinced that my religious mind had the cart before the horse.  Noah was a godly man, blameless among his contemporaries, and walked with God because Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.  In that light it is not much of a stretch to see the similarity here.

Then God said to Jacob, “Go up at once to Bethel and live there.  Make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”^[6]  This was God’s solution despite the fact that Simeon and Levi at least (and perhaps at most) should have died according to his own law.  I am not accusing God of wrongdoing.  He never bound Himself to law when it came to showing favor or mercy.  I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy,^[7] He said to Moses.  And when Paul analyzed the Gospel that my religious mind was so intent on converting to a new law, he reiterated that point and added, So then, it does not depend on human desire or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.^[8]

So Jacob told his household and all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have among you.  Purify yourselves and change your clothes.  Let us go up at once to Bethel.  Then I will make an altar there to God, who responded to me in my time of distress and has been with me wherever I went.”^[9]

When I see it in this context the Gospel of Jesus Christ mitigates my fear concerning God’s “tolerance” of human evil after the flood.  The Gospel does not belong, and is perverted and misunderstood, in the world created by religious minds.  Where it belongs, where it becomes the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe^[10] is in the real world of human sin.  I was surprised, given my religious prejudices, that Abel Ferrara and Zoë Lund had walked this ground before me in the movie she wrote and he directed “Bad Lieutenant” (1992), starring Harvey Keitel in the title role.

Bad LT was not merely a bad cop, he was a hardcore sinner, without natural affection.  Bad LT’s decadence was so demoralizing I cried out loud, “Why am I watching this?”  About that time one of the ‘B’ stories came to the forefront when Bad LT overheard a nun’s confession.

The nun had been raped on the altar in her church.  She seemed to react like any other woman might react while being raped.  She was a bit less modest in the examination room than I might have expected, but nothing so extreme that I did anything but note the fact.  Her confession, however, was totally unexpected.  A curious thing happens when someone actually believes she has been forgiven by the Sovereign God and that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.^[11]

“Those boys,” she said, “those sad raging boys.  They came to me as the needy do.  And like many of the needy they were rude.  Like all the needy they took.  And like all the needy they needed.  Father, I knew them.  They learn in our school and they play in our school yard and they are good boys….Jesus turned water to wine.  I ought to have turned bitter semen into fertile sperm, hatred to love, and maybe to have saved their souls.  [Bad LT exited then and did not hear the rest of her confession.]  They did not love me, but I ought to have loved them, for Jesus loved those who were vile to Him.  And never again shall I encounter two boys whose prayer was more poignant, more legible, more anguished.”

Later Bad LT came to speak to the nun as she prayed, first prostrate then on her knees, in church.  “Listen to me, Sister,” he said, “listen to me good.  The other cops will just put these guys through the system.  They’re juveniles.  They’ll walk.  But I’ll beat the system and do justice, real justice for you.”

“I have already forgiven them,” she replied.

“Come on, Lady.  These guys put out cigarette butts on your – Get with the program.  How could you—how could you forgive these motherfu—these, these guys?  Excuse me.  How could you?  Deep down inside don’t you want them to pay for what they did to you?  Don’t you want this crime avenged?”

“I’ve forgiven them.”

“But – do you have the right?  You’re not the only woman in the world.  You’re not even the only nun. You’re forgiveness will leave blood in its wake.  What if these guys do this to other nuns?  Other virgins? Old women who’ll die from the shock?  Do you have the right to let these boys go free?  Can you bear the burden, Sister?”

“Talk to Jesus,” she said.  “Pray.  You do believe in God, don’t you? that Jesus Christ died for your sins?”

The nun left Bad LT alone in the church.  He moaned and cried out from the floor.  Then he had a vision of Jesus.  First, he blamed Jesus for His perceived absence in Bad LT’s wretched life.  But eventually he begged for forgiveness and direction.  Suddenly Bad LT became the repentant thief on the cross.  Like the thief he had only hours to live.  Unlike the thief he was free to do one more thing.  His choice, to pass on some of the mercy the Lord and the nun had shown him, was at least as interesting as David’s choices concerning his sons Amnon and Absalom.

Jacob’s household and all who were with him gave Jacob all the foreign gods that were in their possession and the rings that were in their ears.  Jacob buried them under the oak near Shechem and they started on their journey.  The surrounding cities were afraid (chittâh;^[12] Septuagint: φόβος^[13]) of God, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.^[14]  The note in the NET reads: “Heb ‘and the fear of God was upon the cities which were round about them.’ The expression ‘fear of God’ apparently refers (1) to a fear of God (objective genitive; God is the object of their fear). (2) But it could mean ‘fear from God,’ that is, fear which God placed in them (cf. NRSV “a terror from God”). Another option (3) is that the divine name is used as a superlative here, referring to ‘tremendous fear’ (cf. NEB ‘were panic-stricken’; NASB ‘a great terror’).”