Pharaoh
Thothmes III., the names of which are recorded on the walls of his
temple at Karnak, was Jacob-el--a reminiscence, doubtless, of the Hebrew
patriarch. Professor Flinders Petrie has made us acquainted with
Egyptian scarabs on which is inscribed in hieroglyphic characters the
name of a king, Jacob-bar or Jacob-hal, who reigned in the valley of the
Nile before Abraham entered it, and Mr. Pinches has lately discovered
the name of Jacob-el among the persons mentioned in contracts of the
time of the Babylonian sovereign Sin-mu-ballidh, who was a contemporary
of Chedor-laomer. We thus have monumental evidence that the name of
Jacob was well known in the Semitic world in the age of the Hebrew
patriarchs.

Jacob and Esau met and were reconciled, and Jacob then journeyed onwards
to Succoth, "the booths." The site of this village of "booths" is
unknown, but it could not have been far from the banks of the Jordan and
the road to Nablus. The neighbourhood of Shechem, called in Greek times
Neapolis, the Nablus of to-day, was the next resting-place of the
patriarch. If we are to follow the translation of the Authorised
Version, it would have been at "Shalem, a city of Shechem," that his
tents were pitched. But many eminent scholars believe that the Hebrew
words should rather be rendered: "And Jacob came in peace to the city of
Shechem," the reference being to his peaceable parting from his brother.
There is, however, a hamlet still called Salim, nearly three miles to
the east of Nablus, and it may be therefore that it was really at a
place termed Shalem that Jacob rested on his way. In this case the field
bought from Hamor, "before the city of Shechem," cannot have been where,
since the days of our Lord, "Jacob's well" has been pointed out (S. John
iv. 5, 6). The well is situated considerably westward of Salim, midway,
in fact, between that village and Nablus, and close to the village of
'Askar, with which the "Sychar" of S. John's Gospel has sometimes been
identified. It has been cut through the solid rock to a depth of more
than a hundred feet, and the groovings made by the ropes of the
waterpots in far-off centuries are still visible at its mouth. But no
water can be drawn from it now. The well is choked with the rubbish of a
ruined church, built above it in the early days of Christianity, and of
which all that remains is a broken arch. It has been dug at a spot where
the road from Shechem to the Jordan branches off from t