"Choose you this day whom ye will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
Joshua 24:15 · King James Bible
Where it is
Shechem lies in a narrow valley between two mountains — Mount Gerizim to the south and Mount Ebal to the north — about thirty miles north of Jerusalem, in the heart of Samaria.Why it matters in the Bible
Shechem is Abraham's first stop when he enters Canaan (Genesis 12:6). He builds his first altar in the land here. Jacob buys a piece of ground here and pitches his tent (Genesis 33:18–19); later, Joseph's bones are brought back from Egypt and buried at Shechem (Joshua 24:32). It is the town where Joseph's brothers are grazing their father's flocks when they sell Joseph into Egypt (Genesis 37:12–14).Its greatest scene is Joshua 24. At the end of his life, Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel to Shechem for a covenant renewal. He recites the whole story of God's faithfulness — from Abraham to the exodus to the conquest — and then puts it plainly: "Choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." The people answer: "The Lord our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey." Joshua writes the covenant in a book, sets up a great stone under the oak, and dismisses the people to their inheritance.
Centuries later, in John 4, Jesus stops by Jacob's well at Shechem (called Sychar in his day) and speaks with a Samaritan woman about living water. Two of the great conversations of Scripture — one in the Old Testament, one in the New — happen at this town.