Shechem
Second City—Shechem.
Shechem was situated at the extremity of a valley among the hills of Ephraim. The famous mountains of Ebal and Gerizim rose on either side, from the slopes of which the blessings and the curses of the law were proclaimed in the ears of assembled Israel. If Jerusalem was the greatest and the grandest of the cities of Palestine, Shechem was perhaps the most beautiful. It is still spoken of by travellers as one of the loveliest spots in the Holy Land, with its orchards of olive, fig, and pomegranate, and its flocks of singing-birds, which have made the inhabitants give to the graceful slope on which it looks down, the name of the “Musical Valley.” I don't know if the streets in the olden time resembled what they are now. The following is the recent description of a traveller familiar with them:—“The streets are narrow and vaulted over, and in the winter time it is difficult to pass along many of them on account of brooks, which rush over the pavement with deafening roar.... It has mulberry, orange, pomegranate, and other trees mingled in with the houses, whose odoriferous flowers load the air with delicious perfume during the months of April and May.”[21] You do not require to be told that Shechem is a very ancient city, and that many interesting events in sacred story took place in connexion with it. The earliest mention made of it is when the patriarch Abraham slept under its oaks, (the Terebinths of Moreh,) when he came to Canaan from distant Chaldea, and erected his first altar under their shade;[22] and one of the last Bible notices regarding it, is in connexion with the woman of Samaria, when Jesus sat with her at “the well of Sychar,” and spoke to her of the better fountain, “springing up to everlasting life.”[23]
What does the name Shechem tell of Christ?
It is a word which means “SHOULDER.”
Jesus, our Refuge, bore a guilty world upon His shoulder. The ancients had a fabled Atlas, who was supposed to carry the earth on his shoulders. Jesus Christ is the true Atlas. “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows!”[24] All the sins of all His people Jesus bore for ever away. Think of that heavy load which bowed Him down to the ground in the garden of Gethsemane, and caused drops of blood to fall from His brow! No other one but Jesus could have carried such an awful load and burden as this. No angel or archangel could have done so. Jesus, being God, was alone “able to save unto the uttermost.”[25] He is the only “sure foundation” that could sustain all the building.[26] With any other, it would have fallen into a mass of ruins.
But I love not only to visit the old city of Shechem, and to think of Jesus bearing the guilt of His people on His shoulders, but I like to think of Him as the true Shechem now. He is our Shechem at God's right hand. “The government is upon His SHOULDER.”[27] The Church and the world are upheld by Him. Believers—the poorest, the weakest, the humblest—are on the shoulders of Jesus. He is bearing the weight of them all; loving them all, attending to them all, interceding for them all. All that befalls me, Jesus orders. Food and raiment, health and strength, friends and home, are gifts from Him. Every tear I shed, He knows it, He appoints it. If he sends me sorrow and trial, I will go and enter the gates of this city Shechem, and remember, “Jesus (Jesus, who died for me) bears me on his shoulder!”
Moses speaks of God conducting the children of Israel through the wilderness of old as a kind father carries on his shoulder his weak and weary child. “Thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son.”[28] And David says in an hour of trouble, “I am poor and needy, yet the Lord (lit) carries me on his heart.”[29]