The
Sentry of the Valley
The Jezreel Valley is the largest and most fertile valley in the land
of Israel. It has the shape of an equilateral triangle measuring thirty-three
kilometers along the sides with the Carmel massif at its base and
Mount Tavor at its summit. Spreading between the Samarian Mountains
in the south and those of the Galilee in the north, it is watered
by the Qishon, which crosses it from the southeast to the northwest,
and by the Harod, a tributary of the Jordan River, which leaves it
through the small valley of Beth Shean. Its Jewish name, yizreel,
means « that God sow ». The Bible, moreover, names it the Plain of
Esdraelon. During a visit in October 1832, well before the Jewish
settlers purchased and drained it at the beginning of the 20th century,
Lamartine, the writer and French diplomat described it as follows:
Its
rounded hills, between Palestine and maritime Syria, are among the
sweetest and, at the same time, the most solemn sites that we have
ever contemplated. Here and there, the oak forests left solely to
their own growth form vast clearings, covered with grass that is
as velvety as that of our Western prairies; the summit of the Tavor
rises behind it like a majestic altar crowned with green wreaths
in a sky of fire: further away, the blue summits of the mountains
and hills of the Gilboa tremble in the horizon. The Carmel casts
its somber curtain in large folds to one side of the scene and the
view continues as far as the sea, which completes it like the sky
in beautiful landscapes.
Lamartine, A Voyage to the East
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