Genesis 48:22 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

One portion. — Heb., one Shechem. In favour of this being the town of Shechem is the fact that it did belong to Jacob (Genesis 37:12, where see Note); also that Joseph’s embalmed body was deposited there (see Joshua 24:32, where the land is said to have been bought for a hundred kesitas); and, lastly, the testimony of John 4:5, where a parcel of ground at Sychar, close to Shechem, is identified with the ground given by Jacob to Joseph. On the other hand, one Shechem is an unnatural way of describing a town. Shechem also means, as we have seen (Genesis 12:6), the shoulder, and Abul-walid, in his Lexicon, quoting this place, says that both the Hebrews and Arabs gave this name to any elevated strip of ground. This is confirmed by Numbers 34:11, &c., though the word actually used, chatef, is different. Probably, therefore, there was a play upon words in calling this plot of hill-ground Shechem, and not chatef’, but made with the intention of showing that the town of Shechem was the portion really signified. But what is meant by “Jacob having taken it out of the hand of the Amorite by his sword and his bow”? Shechem was strictly a town of the Hivites, but as they were but a feeble tribe, the term Amorite may be used to give greater glory to the exploit. In Genesis 15:16, the Amorites, literally mountaineers, are described as owners of the whole country, and probably it was a term loosely applied to all the inhabitants of the uplands, though occasionally used with a more definite meaning (Genesis 15:21). As Jacob so strongly condemns the conduct of Simeon and Levi (Genesis 49:5-7), he can scarcely refer to their exploit, and therefore commentators generally suppose that he used the words prophetically, meaning, “which my descendants will, centuries hence, conquer for themselves with their swords and bows.” But this is, to take the words of Holy Scripture in a non-natural sense. Jacob was the owner of a strip of this “shoulder-land” in a way in which he was not the owner of any other portion of land in Canaan, except the cave of Machpelah; and we find him sending his cattle to pasture there when he was himself dwelling far away (Genesis 37:12). And it is quite possible that, after the inhuman treatment of the Hivites at Shechem, the Amorites did gather themselves together to avenge the Wrong, but were deterred by the threatening position taken up by Jacob, or even repulsed in an attack. The latter supposition would best harmonise with the fact that “a mighty terror fell upon all the cities round about” (Genesis 35:5), and also with the exultant spirit in which Jacob, a pre-eminently peaceful and timid man, here alludes to the one military exploit of his life.