Shechem

The town set in the narrow pass between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim in the heart of the central hill country, on the main north-south road between Galilee and Judea. Abraham builds his first altar in Canaan here (Genesis 12) and Jacob buys a plot of land outside the city and digs the well that John 4 calls Jacob's well. Joseph leaves the family camp at Hebron to find his brothers grazing the flocks "near Shechem" and is sent on to Dothan. Joshua renews the covenant at Shechem at the end of the conquest; centuries later Jeroboam I makes it the first capital of the northern kingdom.