THE NAMES 'GALILEE,' AND 'GALILEE OF THE GENTILES.'

IT does not belong to the limits of the present work to show how this province came to be called Galilee. The origin of the word thus applied is, indeed, obscure. It is a word of pretty frequent occurrence in the Hebrew Bible, and has a variety of meanings, among which are circuit or district. But as Philistia, the Jordan valley, the wild and savage region west of the Dead Sea, and the northern part of the country, are thus designated, it is evident that no particular section could originally have been intended by it. The significance of the phrase in Isa. ix. 1, 'Galilee of the nations,' or, as it is rendered in the English version of Matt iv. 15, ' Galilee of the Gentiles,' is by no means clear, so far as referring to any region that was defined by fixed geographical limits. We are convinced that there is no ground for identifying 'Galilee of the Gentiles,' as Jahn¹ and some other writers have done, with what was known in later times as 'Upper Galilee.' Further, the location of the ' twenty cities in the land of Galilee²,' given by Solomon to Hiram, is also unknown. Ewald calls these cities ' small,' and Ritter refers to them as 'small and unimportant places probably; ' whereas the Hebrew gives no hint of that kind whatever. In our opinion they were heathen cities subject to Solomon; for the Jewish king would hardly have given away twenty cities occupied by his own people, unless he had been brought into great financial straits, which was not the case. And although Strabo states that ' the inhabitants of Galilee, of the Plain of Jericho, and of the territories of Philadelphia and Samaria' were composed of ' mixed tribes of Egyptians, Arabians, and Phoenicians,' we feel justified in claiming that the cities of both Upper and Lower Galilee were, with a very few exceptions, occupied by a Jewish population.

'Cabul,' the word used by Hiram, has never been satisfactorily explained, so far as the special meaning which he intended to give it is concerned. Of the passage in I Kings ix. 13, explanations maybe found in the lexicons of Gesenius and Fürst, also in Josephus³ and in Ewald; Ewald rejects altogether that of Josephus. For a reason why Solomon gave these cities to Hiram, see Ewald's History of Israel, III., p. 292. In connection with Isa. ix. i, the passage in I Mac. v. 15 et seq. should be compared, and in Keim, I., p. 308, will be found some hints on the name 'Galilee.'

1) Bib. Arch., § 25, p. 31.

2) I Kings ix. u.

3) Ant., VIII. v. 3.