Description
Bible Maps on Canvas
JEZREEL VALLEY
Some Bible maps are beautiful enough to deserve space on a wall. The Jezreel Valley, Israel’s prime farmland and its most famous battlefield, is such an image. It’s one of two favorites of the Casual English Bible mapmaker, Stephen M. Miller. It’s hanging in his office, just above the “in” box. Above his desk and computer monitors hangs the other, the Meander River Valley that stretches between Ephesus and Colossae.
Jezreel: just the landscape
The Bible Maps as Art are presented without place names, boundaries, and other mapping info. And without the watermark.
Jezreel: land and place names
But you can have your landscape and places, too. Just ask. No extra fees unless you want the map customized with content you select.
“Perfect battlefield”
That’s what French General Napoleon called this valley that has hosted dozens of major battles throughout recorded history.
But it’s perhaps most famous for its nickname: Valley of Armageddon. It comes from the last book in the Bible, Revelation, chapter 16, verse 16.
“Demons mustered all the kings and their armies into one place. It’s known in the Hebrew language as Armageddon.”
Not really. Armageddon is an invented word. There’s no such word in Hebrew, the native language of the Jewish people.
No such place, either.
Most popular interpretation is that we should read the ancient word read as Harmagedon. Not as in “harm” from battle. But har, the Hebrew word for “hill” or “mountain.”
Many scholars say Armageddon is a combo word—har magedon—which means Megiddo Mountain. Megiddo was a fortress city on a 100-foot-high hill (30 meters) by a main mountain pass in northern Israel. It overlooked fertile fields some 30 miles wide by 200 miles long (48 by 320 km).
That’s the Jezreel Valley, Napoleon’s perfect battlefield. It has also been, throughout the ages, sprawling primo farmland. Romans called it the Great Plain, and set up a base there: Legion of the Great Plain.
Armies have clashed there more than 30 times throughout the centuries.
Other Maps in the Art Gallery
Promised Land
Moses’ view from Mt Nebo
Sacred hills
Shechem, Mt Gerizim, Mt. Ebal
Meander River
Valley of Ephesus to Colossae
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