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Shechem

Abram's first named stop in Canaan (12:6), at the great tree of Moreh — modern Tell Balata, between Mounts Ebal and Gerizim. Site of the first land-promise and Abram's first altar (12:7). Jacob returns generations later, camps 'in peace' before the city and buys a field from the sons of Hamor (33:18-19) — but it is also where his daughter Dinah is violated by the town's prince (who bears the city's own name, Shechem son of Hamor), and where Simeon and Levi answer with the massacre of the whole city (ch. 34). It keeps echoing: Joseph's bones are buried in that same field (Joshua 24:32), Joshua gathers Israel here for the covenant renewal and sets up the great witness-stone (Joshua 24), and it becomes the first capital of the northern kingdom (1 Kings 12).

The Discovery of Joshua's Great Witness Stone at Shechem (preview — this discovery belongs to Joshua 24, centuries after Abram's visit here)