son of Hamor Gen 34:2-26.
Shechem (Heb. Shekem, “shoulder” or “saw”; as a personal name it appears in Pal. and Sudar. inscriptions; Gr. Suchem). 1. Canaanite fortified city located in central Palestine, in the vicinity of the place where Abraham set up his 1st camp and erected his 1st altar to God after arriving in Canaan (Gen 12:6, 7). Some Egyptian texts refer to a military campaign led by Pharaoh Sesostris III (1880-1840 BC) against Shechem, who appears as Skmm in the text, which must have taken place during Abraham’s stay in Canaan. Jacob settled in the vicinity of Shechem after returning from Padan-aram, and bought a piece of land where Joseph was buried 1106 later (Gen 33:18, 19; Jos 24:32). While Jacob was in the place, his sons Simeon and Levi killed the male population of the city in revenge because one of them dishonored his sister Dinah (Gen 34: 25-29). His father condemned this act, but, fearful of reprisals from neighboring towns, he moved to another part of the country (34:30; 35:3, 5; 49:5-7). Not long afterward, however, Jacob’s sons seem to have concluded that it was possible to return to the region, since they herded his father’s flocks near Shechem (37:12, 13). 473. Mount Balâtâh, ancient Shechem, in the middle of the pass between Mount Gerizim (on the left) and Mount Ebal (on the right). During the Israelites’ invasion of Canaan (c 1400 BC), Shechem is not cited among the cities conquered, but they may have held a large gathering on the slopes of Mounts Ebal and Gerizim (Jos 8:30, 33). ), where Shechem was located, would reveal that the city was friendly towards the Israelites, or that it was so frightened by the victories of the Hebrews that it did not dare to disturb them. One of the Amarna Letters,* written by the king of Jerusalem a few years later, states that Shechem (listed as Shakmi) had been given to the Habirus, by whose name the Hebrews were possibly designated.* When the country among the Israelite tribes, it seems that Shechem belonged to Manasseh, but it was very close to the border with Ephraim (17:7). Later it was designated as the residence of the Kohathite Levites and also became a city of refuge (20:7; 21:21). Joshua gave his farewell address while the nation was assembled at Shechem (24:1). In the period of the judges, Shechem had a temple dedicated to Baal-berith (Jdg 8:33; 9:4). The city was the residence of Abimelech, a son of Gideon and his concubine. After the death of his father, Abimelech, with the support of the Shechemites, rose to the rank of king, but later his fellow citizens turned against him, for which he retaliated and destroyed the city (9:1 -7, 23-57). Shechem regained its importance at the time of the kings. There the 10 tribes of Israel rejected Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, and crowned Jeroboam in his place (1Ki 12:1-19). The new king fortified the city and used it for a time as his capital (v 25). It later lost its importance when Samaria, just 11 km northwest of Shechem, became the country’s capital. Ostraca inscriptions discovered in Samaria mention that Shechem paid taxes to the royal treasury, and the prophet Jeremiah tells us that it was still inhabited after the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah (Jer 41:5). During the Hellenistic period it became the main city of the Samaritans. John Hyrcanus took it. Flavius Vespasian spent a night in Shechem during the Jewish wars, and when the city was rebuilt after the war, it was named Flavia Neapolis (New City of Flavius) in his honor. The last part of this name is preserved today as Nâblus, the name of the city today. It has a full population of mostly Muslims, but with a small Samaritan community of about 250 people. The Shechem of the OT was located at the eastern exit of the narrow valley formed by the mountains Ebal and Gerizim, in a place that today bears the name of Balâtâh. Neápolis or Nablus, the successor of Siquem, is located at a height of 570 m above sea level, and occupies 1107 part of the slopes of the 2 adjacent mountains mentioned. Tell Balâtâh was excavated by a German expedition under the direction of E. Sellin and G. Welter in 1913, 1914, 1926, 1928, 1931 and 1934, and, with some interruptions, from 1956 to 1973 by an American expedition under the direction by G. Ernest Wright. The 1st expedition carried out its task in a not very scientific and rather haphazard manner. It exposed parts of the city’s strong fortifications (including the wall seen in fig 370), the northwestern gate, and a large structure believed to be the temple of Baal-berit. In front of the temple there was an altar and the fragment of a large standing stone (matstsebâh) with its pedestal, perhaps the remains of the column erected by Joshua (Jos 24:26) and mentioned again in connection with the coronation of Abimelech (Jdg 9 :6). The excavators were lucky enough to find 2 cuneiform tablets and an inscription written in the Proto-Semitic alphabet. The North American expedition unearthed the eastern gate in the old city wall (fig 474), and in other areas it exposed the different levels of occupation, 24 in total, and unraveled the archaeological history of the place, which can be divided into 5 periods important, with some potholes between them: 1. A small village from the Chalcolithic period. 2. A Middle Bronze Age city-state, existing between 1900 and 1550 BC, and possibly destroyed by the Egyptians_3 A Late Bronze Age city-state, possibly existing between 1450 and 1250 , when Abimelech destroyed it (Jdg_9). 4. An Iron Age fortified city, AD 1000-724, which fell to the Assyrians but survived for a time as a village after this catastrophe. 5. A fortified city from the time of Alexander the Great, which was last destroyed by John Hireano in 107 BC Map VI, D-3. Bib.: ANET 230, 489; FJ-AJ xi.8.6; xiii.9.1; FJ-GJ iv.8.1. 2. Son of Love, a Hivite prince from the city of Shechem. He fell in love with Dinah, daughter of Jacob, dishonored her and took her to her house. Since he wanted to marry her, he agreed to undergo the rite of circumcision along with all the male inhabitants of Shechem, a condition imposed by Dinah’s brothers in order to give her consent to her wedding. . When the victims were indisposed as a result of this operation, Simeon and Levi treacherously attacked the city and killed all the men of Shechem, including the young prince (Gen 33:18-34:31). 3. Tower (Heb. migdal Shekem) or fortress located in the region of Shechem. But possibly it was not part of the city of this name (Jdg 9:46-49). It has sometimes been identified with Khirbet en-Natsrallah, near the village of Sâlim, 5 km east of Balâtâh, the true location of ancient Shechem; and at other times with Tell Sufar, at the western outlet of the valley formed by Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. Map XVI, D-3. Bib.: G. Ernest Wright, Shechem, the Biography of a Biblical City (New York, 1965). 4. Son of Gilead and main ancestor of a tribal family, that of the Shechemites* (Num 26:31; Jos 17:2). 5. Son of Semida, of the tribe of Manasseh (1Ch 7:19). 474. Excavation of the eastern gate of ancient Shechem.
Source: Evangelical Bible Dictionary
name of a man and of a city. 1. Son of Jamor, the Hivite, who raped Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, for which he was killed by Simeon and Levi, brothers of the offended woman, Gn 34, 2. 2. Son of Gilead and grandson of Manasseh, father of the Shechemite clan, Numbers 26, 31; Jos 17, 2. 3. Son of Semidá, descendant of Manasseh, 1 Cro 7, 19. 4. Very old city with a long history, whose name is derived from the Hebrew Sekem, which means shoulder, hillside. Located in the mountains of Ephraim, on the slopes of Mount Garizim, at the eastern end of the valley between this mount and Ebal. S. is initially in the OT, as the first point reached by Abraham, after leaving his homeland for Canaan. In S. Yahweh appeared to Abraham where he promised to give him the land of Canaan, and the patriarch erected an altar there, Gn 12, 6-7.
Jacob settled in front of the city of S. having left Paddán Aram, on a piece of land that he bought from the sons of Jamor, the Hivite, where he built an altar that he called “El”, God of Israel, Gn 22, 18- twenty. Here the rape of the daughter of Jacob and Leah, Dinah, by S., son of Jamor, took place, which caused the death of the men of the city and their looting, a violent act carried out by Simeon and Levi, sons of Jacob, Gn 34. From S. Jacob left with his family and settled in Bethel, Gn 35, 1. In S. Jacob’s flocks were grazing his sons, when Joseph went to look for them and they sold him to the merchants Midianites, Gn 37, 12-14.
The bones of Joseph, at his request, were transferred from Egypt to the plot that his father Jacob had acquired in S., Jos 24, 32. After the conquest of the land of Canaan, S. appears as a border point between the territories of Manasseh and Ephraim, Jos 17, 7, but within the inheritance of this tribe. It was designated a city of refuge, Jos 20, 7, and Levitical, awarded to the sons of Quehat, Jos 21, 20-21.
In S. ends the mission of Joshua in his last days of life, where he says his last speech to the great assembly of the tribes of Israel, in which he recalls the actions of Yahweh in favor of his people since he came out of slavery in Egypt, and the assembly chooses Yahweh and repudiates the foreign gods, after which the alliance is sealed and the Law is written down, Jos 24, 1-28. Here happened the episode of Abimelek, son of Gideon and his concubine of S., Jc 8, 31. Abimelek is elected king by the Canaanites of S., surrounds himself with vagabonds, kills the sons of Gideon, his brothers, of which only saves Jotham. After three years of A.’s reign, the Shechemites mutinied against Abimelek, who launched an attack on the Israelite city of Thebes, where he died, Jc 9. In this chapter of Judges, it can be seen that at this time they still existed in S. the Canaanite cults, such as that of Baal Berit in honor of which a temple existed there.
In times of the monarchy after the death of King Solomon, in the city of S., the assembly of the northern tribes met, who had not been very well treated by Solomon, from where the division of the kingdom came, and Jeroboam was proclaimed the first king of Israel, who fortified the city and placed in it the first capital of the Northern Kingdom, 1 R 12, 1-25; 2 Cro 10.
Digital Bible Dictionary, Grupo C Service & Design Ltda., Colombia, 2003
Source: Digital Bible Dictionary
(Heb., shekhem, shoulder). A proper name and the name of a district and of…