Absalom told his sister to hold her peace. Many survivors have heard some version of that sentence from family or church, and some have heard it in the silence of pulpits that never open 2 Samuel 13. This guide asks how to face the Bible’s stories of rape and violence when they touch our own wounds. Here is its answer: Scripture tells these stories plainly, so the church can face them plainly. Survivors are owed honest reading, a God who is not made the author of their harm, and real people ready to help. You can work through it alone over a few sittings or with a small group over two or three meetings. Its central practice is a way of reading for the person each story forgets.
These passages describe sexual violence. If reading them stirs up something from your own life, you can stop at any point. The National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) is free and confidential at 1-800-656-4673. If a partner or someone in your home is hurting you, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. If you find yourself thinking about ending your life, call or text 988. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
Before the group meets
Quonekuia Day, who teaches Hebrew and Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has led a Bible study on these texts at her own church. Her first advice concerns timing. Tell people ahead of time what the topic will be, because “not everybody’s ready to hear the topic. Not everybody’s in the same position emotionally. Some people wanna forget and they never wanna remember.” People should be able to “make a choice whether they wanna attend that Bible study.”
If you lead a group, announce the subject at least a week in advance. Have the name of a trained counselor or a local rape crisis program in hand before the first meeting, and say out loud that it is there. No one will be asked about their own history. Every question below can be answered from the text alone, and anyone may pass, step out, or simply listen. A group that does this well may hear very little personal sharing, and that is fine. What matters is that nobody feels pressed.
Day names what makes the subject urgent. When pastors avoid these chapters and do not prepare people to deal with trauma, she says, “we erroneously communicate that that issue is too big for God.” She describes where that leaves a survivor: “So you go home, you cry silently.” If you want, write one private sentence about what you were taught, or not taught, about these passages. It helps you separate what you bring to the text from what the text says.
Tamar: a woman who speaks and is told to be quiet
Read 2 Samuel 13:1-22 twice: once to follow what happens, once to watch Tamar.
Tamar has a voice. She refuses Amnon with clear moral language: “Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly” (2 Samuel 13:12). Day draws attention to the lawful path Tamar offers, asking him to speak to the king. The narrator then makes the act unmistakable: “Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her” (2 Samuel 13:14). The text names the use of strength against a refusal.
Then watch what happens to her voice. Tamar grieves in public. She “put ashes on her head, and rent her garment of divers colours that was on her, and laid her hand on her head, and went on crying” (2 Samuel 13:19). Absalom answers her lament with a request for silence: “but hold now thy peace, my sister: he is thy brother; regard not this thing” (2 Samuel 13:20). Her father is “very wroth” (2 Samuel 13:21), and the narrative records no action from him on her behalf. The chapter leaves her where it found her grief: she “remained desolate in her brother Absalom’s house” (2 Samuel 13:20).
This is narrative, and it shows Absalom’s counsel and David’s inaction without endorsing them. The narrator also declines to comfort Tamar or tie her grief up neatly. Her desolation is allowed to stand.
For discussion: Tamar is heard refusing, then told to hold her peace. What does the narrative let us see about the difference between being heard and being helped?
Dinah: a story told around her
Read Genesis 34. Dinah “went out to see the daughters of the land” (Genesis 34:1), and Shechem, the prince of that country, “took her, and lay with her, and defiled her” (Genesis 34:2).
Readers who take the text seriously disagree about what happened here, and both readings deserve a fair hearing. The first reading sees a rape followed by an attempt to secure the victim through marriage. It points to the verbs of verse 2, which pile up seizure and violation; to the brothers’ charge that Shechem “wrought folly in Israel” (Genesis 34:7), the same kind of language Tamar uses to refuse Amnon; and to the detail that the brothers later take Dinah out of Shechem’s house (Genesis 34:26), which suggests she was being held there. The second reading sees a sexual encounter outside proper custom, wrong but perhaps not forced. It points to verse 3: “And his soul clave unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel” (Genesis 34:3). More literally, Shechem spoke to her heart. On this view, his love and his offer of marriage soften how the narrator wants us to see verse 2.
One observation holds under either reading. Dinah never speaks. Shechem negotiates over her, her father waits, and her brothers deceive and slaughter the men of the city. Jacob then complains about his standing among the neighbors. The brothers close the chapter asking, “Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?” (Genesis 34:31). It is the nearest anyone comes to asking about her, and the question concerns the family’s honor.
Day lists this chapter among those she wishes churches would open: “Can someone talk about Genesis chapter 34”. She does not walk through it in her conversation with Lisa Fields, so the readings above are for you to test against the text. Survivors sometimes recognize the pattern, though. Everyone around them reacts loudly, and no one asks what happened to them or what they need.
For discussion: Put verses 2 and 3 side by side. Which reading better fits the way the narrator frames the whole chapter, including verses 7 and 26? What would a response centered on Dinah have looked like?
The Levite’s concubine: a silence meant to be heard
Read Judges 19, and give yourself permission to stop. This is the most violent of the three. The men of Gibeah demand the Levite. He forces his concubine out to them instead, and they “abused her all the night until the morning” (Judges 19:25).
Like Dinah, the woman never speaks. Day reads this as deliberate: “the women not speaking in the text is for us to hear them speaking.” She continues, “No woman would not be just horrified at this moment.” Of the men’s choice to throw her out, she says, “It really shows you that they have devalued the woman.”
Day also explains why such a chapter is in Scripture. The book of Judges, she says, moves from one level of evil to the next until the reader sees how badly these people need God. The book names its own diagnosis: “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).
That explanation accounts for the book’s arc. It does not answer for her. A reader can understand exactly why Judges 19 sits where it does and still be left with a woman who was given up, abused all night and never named. If the chapter becomes only an illustration of social collapse, she is used a second time, now as a teaching example. The people inside the story seem to have felt this. Those who see what was done say, “consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds” (Judges 19:30). That line describes their reaction and is not a command to us. Still, it shows them refusing to move on quickly.
For discussion: Is the “no king in Israel” explanation enough? What does it help you understand about this chapter, and what does it leave unanswered about this woman?
Where was God?
Day is candid that this question keeps many preachers away. Someone will ask why God did not protect them as a child who could not fight back. She observes, “because we are afraid to talk about where was God, we don’t talk about it at all, but they’re thinking about it.”
She offers a distinction that hurting people often lose: “That because things are allowed does not mean that God approves and that God is absent. It just means that the world is evil.” She adds, “God gets a lot of blame for the evil of humanity.” Allowing, approving and being absent are three different claims. Merging them makes God either the author of the harm or a bystander to it.
Test that distinction against Scripture’s own complaints. The psalmist says, “How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). Another psalm opens, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). These prayers do not accept the distinction calmly. They speak to God as though he were absent. A reader might conclude that Day’s point goes against the grain of Scripture. A closer reading suggests something else. The lament psalms describe how God’s absence feels, and they say it to God. Only someone who still believes God is there to be addressed can pray that way. Day’s distinction and the psalmist’s cry can stand together. One names what is true about God’s relation to evil. The other gives permission to say that it does not feel true yet.
The psalmist also says “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart” (Psalm 34:18). That verse speaks of God’s nearness. It sets no timetable for brokenness to end, and nothing in these texts promises that every wound will be explained. Lament, prayer, trusted people and trained counselors belong together here. Seeking therapy is not a failure of faith.
For discussion: Day separates God allowing something from God approving it or being absent. Read Psalm 13 alongside her words. Where does her distinction help, and where do you need the psalm’s honesty instead?
A practice: reading for the person the story forgets
Day’s main counsel to preachers is to read these texts “from the vantage point of everyone in the story,” not only the powerful man. This practice turns that counsel into something you can do. It works alone or in a group and never requires talking about yourself.
- Choose one of the three passages. Tamar’s story is the gentlest place to start, because she speaks.
- Make two short lists. In the first, write every action the text gives to the men. In the second, write every word, action or feeling the text gives to the woman.
- Compare the lists. Note where her experience is recorded, where it is missing, and who speaks for her or over her.
- Find the narrator’s own judgments. In 2 Samuel 13, notice “force,” “folly” and “desolate.” In Genesis 34, notice “defiled.”
- Write one honest sentence that says what happened to her was wrong. Day says, “There’s nothing like someone saying that what happened to you is wrong, it should not have been, it was evil.” You are practicing saying it about a woman in Scripture. Whether you ever say it about anyone else is your choice.
As an optional private step, read Tamar’s grief in 2 Samuel 13:19 and Psalm 13 again, and write a few lines of lament addressed to God. Lament does not have to resolve. You can keep what you write, tear it up, or bring it to a counselor or pastor you trust.
What the church owes
Day insists that churches can begin small. “You don’t have to do everything,” she says, and a preacher may start by naming the wrong as part of a larger message. The minimum is firm: have help ready before the subject is raised, and tell the congregation it is ready. She describes a church that says, “We’re gonna walk you through the healing process.” That is a promise to stay with people. It makes no claim about how long healing takes.
For discussion: If your church taught one of these passages next month, what would need to be in place beforehand so that people carrying these wounds were not left alone afterward? And where do you still hear Absalom’s “hold now thy peace” in families or congregations today?
If you are carrying one of these wounds, nothing here asks you to explain it, forgive on a deadline, or stay near someone who harmed you. The Bible does not look away from Tamar, Dinah or the woman in Gibeah, and the God of those pages did not do this to you. When you are ready, the next step can be small: one call to a hotline, one conversation with a counselor, one trusted person who will listen without hurrying you.