You are strongly recommended to add to your library the excellent revised edition of Harper's Bible Dictionary titled, The Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, Revised Edition, edited by Paul J. Achtemeier, with the Society of Biblical Literature (NY: Harper Collins, 1996). It is currently the best one-volume Bible dictionary in English, and it is available at Border's Books, Christian Science Reading Rooms, http://www.borders.com, or http://www.christianbook.com.

Shunem, town on the southern border of Issachar (Josh. 19:18) guarding the pass to the Valley of Jezreel on the north, opposite the town of Jezreel at the foot of Mt. Gilboa. It is identified with modern Solem.

Shunem is mentioned in the fifteenth-century b.c. conquest lists of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III, the fourteenth-century Amarna letters, and the tenth-century inscription of Pharaoh Shishak at Karnak. The Philistines camped at Shunem before defeating the Israelites at Mt. Gilboa (1 Sam. 28:4), and David’s nurse in his old age, Abishag, was from Shunem (1 Kings 1:3). Elisha frequently stopped at this town in his travels and a woman there provided him with quarters; in return Elisha’s promise of a son was fulfilled and later Elisha revived him from death (2 Kings 4).