place termed Shalem that Jacob rested on his way. In this case the field
bought from Hamor, "before the city of Shechem," cannot have been where,
since the days of our Lord, "Jacob's well" has been pointed out (S. John
iv. 5, 6). The well is situated considerably westward of Salîm, midway,
in fact, between that village and Nablûs, and close to the village of
'Askâr, with which the "Sychar" of S. John's Gospel has sometimes been
identified. It has been cut through the solid rock to a depth of more
than a hundred feet, and the groovings made by the ropes of the
waterpots in far-off centuries are still visible at its mouth. But no
water can be drawn from it now. The well is choked with the rubbish of a
ruined church, built above it in the early days of Christianity, and of
which all that remains is a broken arch. It has been dug at a spot where
the road from Shechem to the Jordan branches off from that which runs
towards the north, though Shechem itself is more than a mile distant. We
should notice that S. John does not say that the well was actually in
"the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph," only that it
was "near to" the patriarch's field.

If Jacob came to Shechem in peace, the peace was of no long continuance.
Simeon and Levi, the sons of the patriarch, avenged the insult offered
by the Shechemite prince to their sister Dinah, by treacherously falling
upon the city and slaying "all the males." Jacob was forced to fly,
leaving behind him the altar he had erected. He made for the Canaanitish
city of Luz, the Beth-el of later days, where he had seen the great
altar-stairs sloping upward to heaven. The idols that had been carried
from Mesopotamia were buried "under the oak which was by Shechem," along
with the ear-rings of the women. The oak was one of those sacred trees
which abounded in the Semitic world, like another oak at Beth-el,
beneath which the nurse of Rebekah was soon afterwards to be buried.