Hamor

About Hamor

Hamor was a Hivite who founded the city of Shechem during the time of the patriarchs. His son was called Shechem, after whom the city was named (Gen.33.19). When Israel (or 'Jacob') and his family settled near Shechem, Hamor's son Shechem assaulted Jacob's daughter Dinah (Gen.34.2). Hamor and Shechem sought to arrange a marriage between Shechem and Dinah and proposed that their people intermarry with Jacob's family (Gen.34.8-10). Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, deceitfully agreed on the condition that all the men of Shechem be circumcised (Gen.34.13-24). However, while the men of Shechem were recovering from the circumcision, Simeon and Levi attacked the city, killed Hamor and Shechem, and rescued Dinah (Gen.34.25-29). The land that Jacob had purchased from Hamor became a possession of the Israelites and was later allocated to the tribe of Manasseh (Jos.24.32). In the time of the judges, Gaal son of Ebed challenged Abimelech's rule in Shechem, invoking the memory of Hamor as the city's ancestral leader (Jdg.9.28). In Act.7.16, Stephen mentions that Abraham bought a tomb from the sons of Hamor in Shechem, which may refer to the same transaction or a separate one.

Description from STEPBible TIPNR (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, lightly reformatted. This is background reference material, not Scripture and not a FaithGraph editorial claim.