NOTES for Gen 34:1-31

The story of Leah and Shechem is ugly, to put it mildly. Very mildly, because what is actually present here is treachery of a kind one does not often meet. Distrust and fear rule Jacob's kinsmen here; that is obvious. Just as obvious is the contrast between Jacob himself and those same kinsmen. And that is understandable: one thing is a particular person, another is a people, a tribe, a human community. The spiritual level of a chief or leader is one thing; the spiritual condition of a people, especially on average, is another. Above all because spirituality "on average" simply does not exist. It is always personal and bound to the person. Collectivism and spirituality, spirituality and mass consciousness, are incompatible. To live a normal, full spiritual life, one must stop being part of the crowd, the mass, the "people" as the crowd or mass understands it.

And working with a crowd, a mass, a people as a whole, if we are speaking specifically about spiritual work, is impossible. Such work is always, by definition, done one person at a time. Personally. God worked with Jacob for several decades, and He managed to accomplish something. Quite a lot, in fact; it is enough to compare the Jacob who left his father's house with the Jacob who returned to it. But the others were living their ordinary lives, without changing much. Jacob was enough for them: the leader about whom they were sure that he had been given to them by God. And so it was, until decisions had to be made quickly and by themselves, relying only on their own experience.

That was when the collective psyche came into play. The collective unconscious, with its unacknowledged and often ghostly fears, and with reflexive cruelty as a reaction to those ghostly fears. Cruelty, naturally, covered with respectable explanations that were in fact rather doubtful: judging by the biblical story, things were serious between the young people, whatever had happened at their first meeting. The result is known: instead of peace, hostility; instead of family happiness, bloodshed. And Jacob can do nothing about it; everything has already been done without him. That is how the history of the people of God went: leaders appointed by God at the head, and the mass of the people no different from any other. Until, finally, in the time of the exile, in Babylon, a people-community took shape; but that is another story.