Gender Mismatch Midrash In Tanakh Commentary

(11) We must not spend time wondering how such a misfortune could have happened and what errors if any her parents had committed. We must remember that Dinah's nature was like that of a male who is in the habit of going out into the field; this is how she conducted herself. Our sages have explained that as a fetus Dinah grew in her mother's womb as a male child, and that it was Leah's prayer which led to her being born as a female (Berachot 60).

We learned in the mishna: One whose wife was pregnant and he said: May it be God’s will that my wife will give birth to a male child, it is a vain prayer. Is a prayer in that case ineffective? Rav Yosef raises an objection based on a baraita: It is stated: “And afterwards she bore a daughter, and called her name Dina” (Genesis 30:21). The Gemara asks: What is meant by the addition of the word: Afterwards? What does the verse seek to convey by emphasizing that after the birth of Zebulun she gave birth to Dina? Rav said: After Leah passed judgment on herself and said: Twelve tribes are destined to descend from Jacob, six came from me and four from the maidservants, that is ten, and if this fetus is male, my sister Rachel will not even be the equivalent of one the maidservants; immediately the fetus was transformed into a daughter, as it is stated: And she called her name Dina; meaning she named her after her judgment [din].

(1) Now Dinah, the daughter whom Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land. (2) Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, chief of the country, saw her, and took her and lay with her and disgraced her. (3) Being strongly drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob, and in love with the maiden, he spoke to the maiden tenderly.

(3) Now Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons—he was his “child of old age” and he had made him an ornamented tunic.

(18) She was wearing an ornamented tunic, in such garments.-—His attendant took her outside and barred the door after her.

(7) “Joseph, seventeen years old…” – and you say he was a youth? It is because he would perform the actions of a youth – he would groom his eyes, lift his heels, and curl his hair.

The continuation of that verse states: “And Potiphar, an officer [seris] of Pharaoh’s, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the hand of the Ishmaelites, who had brought him down there” (Genesis 39:1). Rav says: He purchased the handsome Joseph for himself, for the intended purpose of homosexual intercourse, but was unable to fulfill his desires

(11) Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. (12) He turned this way and that and when he saw that there was no man, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

(5) He used to say: A brute is not sin-fearing, nor is an ignorant person pious; nor can a timid person learn, nor can an impatient person teach; nor will someone who engages too much in business become wise. In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.

(8) Boaz said to Ruth, "Have you not heard, daughter?" Don’t go to glean in another field. Don’t go elsewhere, but stay here close to my girls.