[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, November 13, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day to all my loyal readers out there in cyberspace, whether or not you comment on what the Lord has given me to post.  I hope and pray that He is speaking to your hearts from what you have been reading since these messages have been started.

"The Significance of Shekem" by Thomas C. Simcox is the short article for today, and I pray that you all will enjoy it.  It is rendered as follows:

In Hebrew _schechem means "shoulder," an apt description of the town's location in the narrow valley between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal, approximately 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Jerusalem.

Today the world calls it Nablus, a Palestinian Authority city in the so-called West Bank and destined to become Judenrein, "clean of Jews," in a future Palestinian state.

But Shekem was once a very Jewish city, and it was no accident that, in his farewell to his people, an aged Joshua gathered the Israelites there to beg them to follow God (Josh. 24).

Joshua took Israel back to its roots, physically as well as historically, in a powerful object lesson to reinforce the nation's ties to generations past and all God had done.

Scholars Carl Keil and Franz Delitzsch noted the magnitude of this meeting.  "For this solumn act, he (Joshua) did not choose Shiloh, the site of the national sanctuary, but Shekem, a place which was sanctified as no other was for such a purpose as this by the most sacred reminiscences from the times of the patriarchs."

Why was Shekem so important? Because it was there that Moses, many years earlier, had told the Jewish people:

"This day thou art become the people of the Lord thy God ... These shall stand upon Mount Gerizim to bless the people ... and these shall stand upon Mount Ebal to curse" (Dt. 27:9, 12-13).

Thus, Joshua brought them back to the very spot where God had warned them to obey or be chastened.

Even more important, said Keil and Delitzsch, Shechem was where Abraham received the first promise from God (Gen. 12:6-7) and where Jacob settled after returning from Mesopotamia, "and it was here that he purified his house from the strange gods, burying all their idols under the oak" (Gen. 38:2, 4).

Through Joshua, God brought Israel back to its beginnings.  He recounted Abraham crossing "from the other side of the river (Euphrates)" (Josh. 24:3) hundreds of years earlier and arriving in Canaan.  And as God promised, He multiplied Abraham's seed and gave him a son Isaac.  Later God gave Jacob's brother, Esau, Mt. Seir, "but Jacob and his children went down into Egypt" (v. 4).

Then came Moses and the miraculous Exodus, which Joshua had experienced firsthand.  He reminded them of the unbelievable military victories God gave their forefathers and how God gave them cities they did not build and "vineyards and olive yards which ye planted not" (v. 13).

And it was outside Shechem where the Jewish nation then buried the bones of the patriarch Joseph, within the boundaries of the land God had promised to the children of Israel, "in a plot of ground which Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for an hundred pieces of silver" (Joshua 24:32).

Today the spot is known in Hebrew as _Kever _Yosef, "Joseph's Tomb." It is a Jewish holy site and yeshiva (Jewish school) that thousands of Jewish people visited each year.

In October 2000 the Palestinians destroyed it, set it on fire, and built a mosque in its place.

Well, what else would you have expected from the Palestinian Authority and its government? And, while we consider what they did reprehensible, may I remind those of us in the U.S. and Canada that our government also systematically looted and desecrated sacred and holy American Indian burial sites and other places sacred to them, so let's not leave our governments off the hook so easily.

I heard recently in a sermon that the site of Shechem was also the place where Jacob's well was located near "the city of Sychar" (John 4) that Jesus went to and had his encounter with the Samaritan woman.  She mentioned that their fathers "worshipped on this mountain," most probably Mount Gerizim.

Beginning tomorrow and continuing through Thanksgiving Day, these Daily Thought messages will be focused on the theme of thanksgiving.  I was simply amazed by the number and quality of articles I found addressing this subject, and I hope you will also.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord willing, tomorrow we will present another Daily Thought message.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul