The powerful city of Shechem (sixty miles north of Jerusalem) was built circa 1800 b. c. by Hamor, as the Bible says, whose sons sold land to Abraham’s grandson Jacob, land where four hundred years later the bones of Joseph, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, would be buried. Joshua buried the bones and apparently had little resistance from the Canaanites when Israel came into the land, probably because of the presence of progeny of Jacob having remained there, Shechem which became a key city of Israel.
