Galilee

Galilee is the hill country of northern Israel. It lies north of the Jezreel Valley, between the Jordan and the Sea of Chinnereth (the Sea of Galilee) on the east and the Plain of Acco and the Phoenician coast on the west. The name comes from the Hebrew galil, "circle" or "district," and early references use it as a district name: Kedesh "in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali" (Joshua 20:7). The region divides naturally into Upper Galilee, a high, rugged plateau rising to Mount Meron, and Lower Galilee, a lower country of east-west ridges and fertile basins that opens south toward the Jezreel Valley.

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Biblical Significance

Galilee lay mostly within the tribal territories of Naphtali and Zebulun, with Asher to the west and Issachar to the south. Kedesh in Galilee was set apart as a city of refuge and given to the Levites (Joshua 20:7; 21:32). Solomon gave Hiram, king of Tyre, twenty cities in the land of Galilee in return for timber and gold, and Hiram, displeased with them, called them "the land of Cabul" (1 Kings 9:11-13). In 733-732 BC, Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria took Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead and Galilee, "all the land of Naphtali," and carried the people captive to Assyria (2 Kings 15:29). Isaiah answers that disaster with a promise. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali, once brought into contempt, will be made glorious: "the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations" (Isaiah 9:1).

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Historical Overview

Through the judges and the united monarchy, Galilee was Israelite tribal territory bordering Phoenicia. After the kingdom divided, it belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel. Its position made it the first part of Israel exposed to invasion from the north. In the days of Baasha, Ben-hadad of Damascus struck Ijon, Dan, Abel-beth-maacah and "all Chinneroth, with all the land of Naphtali" (1 Kings 15:20). The Assyrian campaign of 733-732 BC then stripped Galilee from Israel a decade before Samaria itself fell. The region passed under Assyrian provincial rule, and later under Babylonian and Persian control.

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Archaeological Evidence

The clearest archaeological witness to the Assyrian conquest here is at Hazor, on the eastern edge of Upper Galilee above the Hula Valley. Yigael Yadin's excavations there uncovered a destruction layer (Stratum V) dated to Tiglath-pileser III's campaign of 732 BC. In Lower Galilee, Zvi Gal's archaeological survey (1974-1983) found Iron Age villages destroyed in the same campaign, and Gal concluded that their inhabitants were probably deported, as 2 Kings 15:29 records. Gal also proposed identifying a fortified Iron Age site he excavated at Horvat Rosh Zayit with the Cabul of 1 Kings 9:13.

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Theological Significance

Isaiah sets Galilee's humiliation and its glory side by side. The region that fell first to Assyria is "Galilee of the nations," a phrase read either as a district bordering the nations or as a land whose people had become mixed with them. It is the region on which Isaiah says the light will rise: "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone" (Isaiah 9:2, ESV). The prophet ties that light to the birth of a son who will sit on David's throne and uphold it with justice forever (9:6-7). He announces that deliverance but does not yet name it, and that forward promise is what gives Galilee its standing in the Old Testament.