SHECHEM shĕk’ əm (שְׁכֶ֔ם; Συχέμ, ἡ Σίκιμα, τὰ̀ Σίκιμα, etc; shoulder or slope; KJV usually has SHECHEM but SICHEM in Gen 12:6 and SYCHEM in Acts 7:16). 1. The son of Hamor the Hivite who raped Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and who was killed by Simeon and Levi (Gen 34; Josh 24:32; Judg 9:28). See further below, § 4 B.
2. A descendant of Joseph and of Manasseh (Num 26:31) and the founder of a family (Josh 17:2).
3. The second son of Shemida of the tribe of Manasseh (1 Chron 7:19).
4. An ancient Canaanite town in the hill country of Ephraim (Josh 20:7) in the neighborhood of Mt. Gerizim (Judg 9:7), being about thirty-one m. N of Jerusalem. It became an important Israelite political and religious center. The site is known today as Tell Balatah.
A. The name. It was once thought that the name derived from Shechem the son of Hamor (Gen 33:18, 19) but it now seems more probable that the name referred to the geographical setting of the city, it being more or less on the slope of Mt. Gerizim. (On the origin of place names and their meaning see Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible [1967], 96ff.; for a similar use of anatomical terminology relating to geography, see “navel of the land” [Judg 9:37].) The name is now known to have been used in extra- and pre-Israelite sources. It occurs in Egyp. texts dating from 19th to 17th centuries b.c. and in the Amarna letters (see ANET, 230, 329, 477, 485-487, 489, 490). It appears as Sakmemi, Sakmami and Sekmem. The name also occurs in one of the early 8th cent. b.c. ostraca from Samaria.
B. Excavations. Early archeological expeditions were conducted at the site of Tell Balatah by Carl Watzinger from 1907-1909 and by Ernst Sellin and others between 1913 and 1934. In 1956 further excavations were begun by the Drew-McCormick Expedition in collaboration with the American School of Oriental Research. The excavations have uncovered the history of the site from the beginning of the fourth millennium b.c. down to c. 108 b.c. when the city evidently met its end.
The first signs of occupation were Chalcolithic campsites (c. 4000 b.c.) discovered immediately above bedrock in the lowest strata. Some pottery fragments were found for the period following this, though it appears that the site was not actually occupied again till c. 1800 b.c. The city then quickly reached the height of its prosperity under the Hyksos (1700-1550 b.c.).
From the beginning of the Hyksos period, the story of the city is one of building and rebuilding. A massive wall was built around the city and a large palace built within it. In c. 1650 the palace area was covered over and the great temple of Shechem was erected in its place. Egyptian military expeditions destroyed the temple about a cent. later and it was then rebuilt on a smaller scale. This temple must still have been standing when the Israelites invaded the land (see the references to the Amarna letters above). The destruction of the city by Abimelech (see Judg 9:45) is evident in the archeological record which places it in the 7th cent. b.c. The site was then utilized for storage pits until the days of the monarchy when a granary was built there. The city appears to have been reasonably prosperous again during the 9th and 8th centuries b.c., though it could not compare with the status it had assumed under the Hyksos. There is ample evidence in the masses of brick and burned debris for the destruction of the city by the Assyrians when they invaded in 724-721 b.c.
For four centuries following this, the city reverted to village status until the Samaritan period. Between c. 325 and c. 108 b.c., the palace was again rebuilt and enjoyed some prosperity. There is a continuous coin record for this period of the town’s existence. The abrupt end to this numismatic evidence suggests that the town may have been finally destroyed by John Hyrcanus along with the city of Samaria in c. 108 b.c.
C. Physical features. Ancient Shechem lay in the pass which runs between Mt. Ebal on the N and Mt. Gerizim on the S. Part of the ancient road connecting the E bank of the Jordan with the Mediterranean coast ran through this valley and connected with a N-S route known as “The Way of the Diviner’s Oak” at Shechem. The city enjoyed a good water supply and a fertile plain directly to the E. Shechem did not have the advantage of elevated terrain, thus necessitating its massive fortifications. Nevertheless, its location did mean control of some of the main roads through the mountainous regions of N Canaan, a feature of considerable military importance.
D. Shechem in the Bible. Shechem first enters the Biblical narrative in Genesis 12:6f., when Abram left Haran and journeyed to Canaan with his family and possessions. Abram’s first stopping place was the oak of Moreh near, or at, Shechem. The Canaanites were still in the land, but Yahweh appeared to Abram and renewed his covenant promise. Abram built an altar there.
In later years Jacob camped before the city of Shechem on his return from Paddan-aram. Here he bought a parcel of land from the sons of Hamor, the Hivite prince of the area, and built an altar to El-Elohe-Israel (God, the God of Israel; Gen 33:18, 19; 34:2). Shechem defiled Jacob’s daughter Dinah, and this resulted in a formal agreement between the Shechemites and Israel to permit intermarriage between the two peoples. Simeon and Levi, however, took revenge, killing Hamor and Shechem and all the males, plundering the city and taking captive all the women and children with their possessions (ch. 34).
It was near Shechem that Jacob hid the foreign gods of his family under the oak (35:4). Interestingly, Jacob’s sons later pastured their flocks near Shechem where Joseph went to find them (37:12ff.). It seems that Jacob wished to be friendly with the Shechemites (34:30; 49:5-7) and it appears that the pillaging of the town mentioned above did not permanently mar relations between the two peoples. Indeed, the body of Joseph, brought up from Egypt, is recorded to have been buried at Shechem (Josh 24:32; cf. Acts 7:16).
According to the Amarna letters referred to above, Shechem fell to the Habiru in the 15th cent. b.c. After the Israelite conquests in the land, Joshua called an assembly of the people at Shechem. Upon rehearsing the history of the people of Israel from their origin beyond the Euphrates to the conquest, Joshua summoned the people to unreserved service of Yahweh (Josh 24:1ff.). There he gave statutes and ordinances for Israel and these were included in the book of the law of God. A great stone was set up under the oak in the sanctuary of Yahweh to serve as a witness to Israel’s covenant with her God. The fact that assemblies of the people were held at Shechem has suggested to many scholars that Shechem rather than Shiloh (q.v.) was the center of an amphictyonic league (cf. M. Noth, The History of Israel [1958]). It has also been argued that Shechem served as the military and political center while Shiloh was the religious center. Both cities seem to have served as political and religious headquarters in some way or other, and it is impossible to determine the exact relationship between them. Little is said of the town now until the time of Abimelech, except that the boundary between Ephraim and Manasseh passed near it (Josh 17:7), and that it served as one of the cities of refuge (Josh 20:7; 21:21) and was assigned to the sons of Kohath as a Levitical city (1 Chron 6:66, 67). The mother of Abimelech, Gideon’s son, was a Shechemite woman (Judg 8:31). On the death of Gideon, Abimelech went to Shechem and through his mother’s family persuaded the Shechemites to make him king. Worthless men from Baal-berith, a Canaanite sanctuary which still existed in Shechem, were hired to help slay the seventy other sons of Gideon who would have had claim to the throne. It was there that the only other surviving son, Jotham, gave his famous parable which effected a curse upon Shechem. Abimelech ruled over Israel for three years, but he quickly lost favor with the people of Shechem. They warred against him but he finally took the city, destroying it and sowing it with salt. The house of El-berith was also destroyed with its occupants seeking refuge from the destruction of the city (Judg 9).
Nothing is said of Shechem during the united kingdom period. It was at Shechem, however, that the northern tribes rejected Rehoboam and made Jeroboam their king, thus creating the divided monarchy (1 Kings 12:1-19; 2 Chron 10ff.). Shechem then became, for a time at least, Jeroboam’s capital in the N and he began to rebuild it (1 Kings 12:25). Within a short time, however, he moved the capital to Penuel and then to Tirzah, possibly in an effort to make the capital less vulnerable to Judean attack.
There is evidence that Shechem continued to exist with some degree of importance during the times of Hosea (see Hos 6:9) and Jeremiah (see Jer 41:5), though little is known of it in this period. Nothing is said, for example, of the fate of the town under Assyrian and Babylonian invasions. The OT itself gives no information concerning Shechem during the postexilic period. From other sources, however, we know that Shechem became the leading city of the Samaritans (Jos. Antiq. XI. viii. 6) and was taken by John Hyrcanus (op. cit. XIII. ix. 1). After the war of a.d. 70, the town was refounded and named Flavia Neapolis in honor of Flavius Vespasianus. The modern Nablus, W of Tell Balatah, derives its name from this rebuilt city. A small community of Samaritans has continued to live in the area in modern times.
Bibliography E. Sellin, ZDPV (1926, 1927, 1928); E. Sellin, ZAW, L (1932), 303-308; E. Sellin and H. Steckeweh, ZPDV (1941); W. Harrelson, The City of Shechem: Its History and Importance (1953), Microcard Theological Series, no. 3, 1-603; E. Nielsen, Shechem, A Traditio-Historical Investigation (1955), 3-357; G. E. Wright, “The First Campaign at Tell Balatah (Shechem),” BASOR, no. 144 (1956), 9-23; ibid. “The Archaeology of the City,” BA, XX, no. 1 (1957), 19-32; ibid., “The Second Campaign at Tell Balatah (Shechem),” BASOR, no. 148 (1957), 11-28; B. W. Anderson, “The Place of Shechem in the Bible,” BA, XX, no. 1 (1957), 10-19; W. Harrelson, “Shechem in Extra-Biblical References,” BA, XX, no. 1 (1957), 2-10; H. C. Kee and L. E. Toombs, “The Second Season of Excavation at Biblical Shechem,” BA, XX, no. 4 (1957), 82-105; E. F. Campbell, R. J. Bull and G. R. H. Wright, BA, XXIV (1960); G. E. Wright, BASOR, no. 161 (1961); ibid., BASOR, no. 169 (1963); E. F. Campbell, Jr. and J. F. Ross, “The Excavation of Shechem and the Biblical Tradition,” BA, XXVI, no. 1 (1963), 2-26.