WHERE is Sychar? One would have anticipated little difficulty in finding a reply to this question, for the evangelist John rather particularizes when he speaks of the place: “Jesus... cometh,” he says, “to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s Well was there.” The site of Jacob’s Well is unquestioned― “absolutely undisputed,” says one writer; it is one of the spots made sacred by the Lord’s presence and words―a spot which few Travelers to the Holy Land omit to see. It has been measured and scaled in the most accurate fashion, it has been described with pen and pencil, but the site of Sychar, the city or town near to the well, is a question still unsettled. For a long time it was (and by some still is) identified with the neighboring Shechem. It has been sought to account for the great variation in name, by conjectures which are at least ingenious and interesting, even though they rest on no historic foundation. One such attempted solution is this,―that the name was changed (after a fashion common among the Jews) to describe the habits of the Shechemites, Shechem being displaced by Shiccor, “drunken.” Another and more probable guess is, that Sychar is derived from the Hebrew Shecker, (in sound not greatly removed from Shechem), that is, “a lie,” and that this name was given with reference to the false worship of the Samaritans, who worshipped “they knew not what.” In support of the former of these changes, appeal has been made to Isaiah, who speaks of the Ephraimites (Ephraim being Israel, whose capital was at Samaria)―as shiccorim “drunkards.” With respect to the second, a passage in Habakkuk is cited, in which the words moreh shecker, a “teacher of lies,” are supposed to contain an allusion to Moreh, a name borne by Shechem and its district. But these are in no sense proofs, though put forward as such.
Yet other guesses there are, which only prove the difficulty of establishing the identity sought. Jerome anciently thought that Sychar was a copyist’s error for Sychem―a conjecture abundantly disproved by the existing manuscripts of the New Testament. Some see in it a “proverbial mispronunciation of the period”; while a very improbable suggestion is, that it is from sacar, “to hire,” with reference to Gen. 33:1919And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father, for an hundred pieces of money. (Genesis 33:19), which speaks of Jacob buying (Kanah) a field from the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father!
Against this identification it can be urged (a) that there is not a scrap of historical evidence which removes these guesses out of the region of mere conjecture―that is to say, no trace survives anywhere of Shechem having borne the name of Sychar; (b) that it is difficult to account for the Samaritan woman journeying from that city to Jacob’s Well, a distance of nearly two miles, when Shechem itself contains an abundant supply of water. It has been attempted to meet this objection by urging the love which Eastern people have for particular wells, and by the “probability” that the ancient city was larger, and extended nearer to the well.
This probability has some countenance given to it by a local belief that Shechem occupied a portion of the valley on the east, beyond the limits of the present town. We also mention (c) that when Stephen referred to the ancient Shechem he gave it the form of the Greek Old Testament, Sychem, and not Sychar, and (d) that Eusebius, a Christian writer of the fourth century, says that Sychar lay to the east of Neapolis―i.e., Shechem.
Attention has, in recent years, been called to a village named Askar, situate about hall a mile to the north-east of the well, and within sight of it. Slight difficulties there are in the way of accounting for the change of name in this instance, especially as regards its new initial, but this has been conjectured (we have nothing better) to arise from a contraction of Ain (“a well”) before the original name, and that it signifies “the well of Sychar.”
Certainty there is not, and at present we must be content to confess our ignorance and to wait for light which future days and further research may cast upon the subject We purpose giving a few particulars about. Shechem, which for so many years has held the honor of being the Sychar of the Ney Testament. Apart from this, it is interesting because it is the only home of the fey Samaritans, (that is, in faith,) who survive to this day.
Shechem (which is situated in Mount Ephraim, between Ebal and Gerizim) come; first into view during the passage of Abram into the land of Canaan. It was there that he built his first altar to the Lord, and to it he returned after the unhappy visit to Egypt. To Shechem came in safety his grandson Jacob, and there he bought the parcel of ground which he afterward gave to his son Joseph. There, too, he built his altar, “El-Elohe-Israel,” and there also occurred that sad chapter in the history of his family which he remembered with regret upon his dying bed―the relations of his children with tin Hivites, and the slaughter of Hamor the prince and his son Shechem? And this suggests the question whether the city took its name from the son, or the son from the city. In all probability the latter, remembering that the city is called Shechem in the history of Abraham, though it is, of course, possible that the historian may have given the city the name by which it was known in his days. Its signification is a “shoulder” or “ridge,” and it is most likely that the city was named with reference to the “shoulder” of the heights upon which it was built.
Shechem afterward frequently appears in the history of the patriarchs and of the children of Israel, but our space will not permit us to trace the many references, nor to set down the many incidents of which the city was the scene. The hiding of the strange gods under the oak at Shechem by Jacob, the burial of Joseph’s bones in the ground which became the inheritance of his children, the covenant made between Joshua and the people there, the appointment of Shechem as one of the six cities of refuge, Jotham’s parable of the trees which sought a king, and the succeeding stormy days through which Shechem passed, in which “all the evil of the men of Shechem did God render upon their heads” ―all these, we think, are known to the reader. Here, too, it was that Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, was made king, and that, upon his ill-advised threatening to make the yoke of the people heavier, the cry was raised―the note of revolt against David’s house― “To your tents, O Israel!”
Shechem seems to have been for a time the capital of the revolted kingdom, though Samaria (not then built) afterward took that honor. In all probability the city of which we write shared in the deportation, when the king of Assyria carried Israel away into his land, and that it was repeopled by the Cuthims and Babylonians who were sent by that king to dwell in the cities of Samaria, instead of the children of Israel. These people, the writer of the Book of Kings graphically tells us, “feared the Lord, and served their own gods.” The after-history of this city is little distinct from that of Samaria. It appears to have been destroyed during the Jewish war, and to the city which sprang up on the old site Vespasian gave the name of Neapolis (“New Town”), which has become transformed to the modern Nabulus, or Nablus.
The city is placed in a most beautiful district, and, as one well says, “Travelers vie with each other in the language which they employ to describe the scene that bursts here so suddenly upon them on arriving, in spring or early summer, at this paradise of the Holy Land.” Jewish travelers, who have been disappointed with the mournful and barren aspect of the land which is so dear to their hearts, find pleasure in this spot, discerning here the features, well-nigh obliterated from every other district, of “the land that floweth with milk and honey.” “There is no wilderness here,” says Van de Velde, “there are no wild thickets, yet there is always verdure, always shade, not of the oak, the terebinth, and the caroub-tree, but of the olive-grove, so soft in color, so picturesque in form, that, for its sake, we can willingly dispense with all other wood.” Then, having spoken of what is peculiar to Shechem―the pale blue or gray mist which arises from the plentiful supply of water, softening down the hard outlines of an Eastern scene, and giving those atmospheric tints which add to the charm of the landscape―he goes on: “And so you advance under the shade of the foliage, along the living waters, and charmed by the melody of a host of singing birds―for they, too, know where to find their best quarters; while the perspective fades away and is lost in the damp, vapory atmosphere.” Even Mahomet, contrary to what we might expect, sings its praise: “The land of Syria is beloved by Allah beyond all lands, and the part of Syria which He loveth most is the district of Jerusalem, and the place which He loveth most in the district of Jerusalem is the mountain of Nablus.”
As already mentioned, Shechem, or rather Nablus, is now the only place where the adherents of the Samaritan faith, (that strange fruit of Mosaic ritual grafted upon simple paganism,) can be found. Narrow and elusive as ever, they drag out a wretched existence, persecuted by the Moslems and hated by the Jews. They number only about two hundred, — a figure at which they have stood for the last fifty years. We hope to speak of them more particularly in our next number, when Samaria will be the subject. Jr.