so fond, that the name can be brought into connection with the word
_sar_, "a prince." But the name of Jacob was well known among the
northern Semites. We gather from the inscriptions of Egypt that its full
form was Jacob-el. Like Jeshurun by the side of Israel, or Jephthah by
the side of Jiphthah-el (Josh. xix. 27), Jacob is but an abbreviated
Jacob-el. One of the places in Palestine conquered by the Pharaoh
Thothmes III., the names of which are recorded on the walls of his
temple at Karnak, was Jacob-el--a reminiscence, doubtless, of the Hebrew
patriarch. Professor Flinders Petrie has made us acquainted with
Egyptian scarabs on which is inscribed in hieroglyphic characters the
name of a king, Jacob-bar or Jacob-hal, who reigned in the valley of the
Nile before Abraham entered it, and Mr. Pinches has lately discovered
the name of Jacob-el among the persons mentioned in contracts of the
time of the Babylonian sovereign Sin-mu-ballidh, who was a contemporary
of Chedor-laomer. We thus have monumental evidence that the name of
Jacob was well known in the Semitic world in the age of the Hebrew
patriarchs.

Jacob and Esau met and were reconciled, and Jacob then journeyed onwards
to Succoth, "the booths." The site of this village of "booths" is
unknown, but it could not have been far from the banks of the Jordan and
the road to Nablûs. The neighbourhood of Shechem, called in Greek times
Neapolis, the Nablûs of to-day, was the next resting-place of the
patriarch. If we are to follow the translation of the Authorised
Version, it would have been at "Shalem, a city of Shechem," that his
tents were pitched. But many eminent scholars believe that the Hebrew
words should rather be rendered: "And Jacob came in peace to the city of
Shechem," the reference being to his peaceable parting from his brother.
There is, however, a hamlet still called Salîm, nearly three miles to
the east of Nablûs, and it may be therefore that it was really at a