“entrance of Hamath,” and on the south by the “river of Egypt.” This
extent of territory, about 60,000 square miles, was at length conquered by
David, and was ruled over also by his son Solomon (2 Samuel 8; 1
Chronicles 18; 1 Kings 4:1, 21). This vast empire was the Promised Land;
but Palestine was only a part of it, terminating in the north at the southern
extremity of the Lebanon range, and in the south in the wilderness of
Paran, thus extending in all to about 144 miles in length. Its average breadth
was about 60 miles from the Mediterranean on the west to beyond the
Jordan. It has fittingly been designated “the least of all lands.” Western
Palestine, on the south of Gaza, is only about 40 miles in breadth from the
Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, narrowing gradually toward the north,
where it is only 20 miles from the sea-coast to the Jordan.
Palestine, “set in the midst” (Ezekiel 5:5) of all other lands, is the most
remarkable country on the face of the earth. No single country of such an
extent has so great a variety of climate, and hence also of plant and animal
life. Moses describes it as “a good land, a land of brooks of water, of
fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat,
and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive,
and honey; a land wherein thou shalt not eat bread without scarceness,
thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of
whose hills thou mayest dig brass” (Deuteronomy 8:7-9).
“In the time of Christ the country looked, in all probability, much as now.
The whole land consists of rounded limestone hills, fretted into countless
stony valleys, offering but rarely level tracts, of which Esdraelon alone,
below Nazareth, is large enough to be seen on the map. The original woods
had for ages disappeared, though the slopes were dotted, as now, with figs,
olives, and other fruit-trees where there was any soil. Permanent streams
were even then unknown, the passing rush of winter torrents being all that
was seen among the hills. The autumn and spring rains, caught in deep
cisterns hewn out like huge underground jars in the soft limestone, with
artificial mud-banked ponds still found near all villages, furnished water.
Hills now bare, or at best rough with stunted growth, were then terraced,
so as to grow vines, olives, and grain. To-day almost desolate, the country
then teemed with population. Wine-presses cut in the rocks, endless
terraces, and the ruins of old vineyard towers are now found amidst
solitudes overgrown for ages with thorns and thistles, or with wild shrubs
and poor gnarled scrub” (Geikie’s Life of Christ).