What Was the Seriah?

Abimelech’s attack on Shechem culminates with the “notables of the Tower of Shechem” taking refuge in the seriah—sometimes translated as “the stronghold”—of the Temple of El-berith (Judges 9:46). Abimelech and his troops gathered brushwood and “laid it against the seriah and they set the seriah on fire over [or against] them, so that all the people of the Tower of Shechem also died, about a thousand men and women” (Judges 9:46, 49).