Galilee

(district, country) (Matt. 4:12; Mark 1:9; Luke 2:39). In the days of the Lord Jesus Christ, Palestine was divided into three parts, of which the northern was called Galilee; it bordered on the north on Anti-Lebanon, on the east on the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee, on the south on Samaria, and on the west on Phoenicia, which occupied the northern shore of it from Mount Carmel to Tyre. Galilee was divided into Upper and Lower; the former lay to the north and was inhabited partly by Syrians, Phoenicians, and Arabs, and was therefore called Galilee of the Gentiles (Matt. 4:15); the latter, occupying chiefly the plain along the Sea of Tiberias, was famed for its fertility and numerous population.

In antiquity Galilee comprised the territories of the tribes of Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, and Asher. Christ is called Jesus the Galilean (Matt. 26:69), because it was here that the Lord spent His whole childhood and youth; here He lived, taught, called His first disciples, and worked many miracles. The greater part of the parables were spoken by Him in Galilee, and the content of many of the parables is taken directly from the very nature of this or that Galilean locality, which the Lord happened to pass through with His disciples.

It was from Galilee that the Lord undertook His journeys to Jerusalem for the feasts. It was in Galilee and from among Galileans that He chose all His apostles. In Galilee He appeared to the apostles after His resurrection from the dead, and so on. But the Jews did not love the Galileans, both for their close and constant association with pagans, and for their not entirely pure and correct dialect. The conversation of the Apostle Peter with the servants at once betrayed the place of his birth (Matt. 26:69, 73; Mark 14:70).

Galilee was a very flourishing and fruitful country; it contained many rich cities and villages: Cana, Nazareth, Nain, Gennesaret, Tiberias, and others. To which of us, from the earliest childhood, are these Galilean cities, mentioned in the Gospel, not familiar and dear through sacred memory! The broad plains of Jezreel are to this day still occupied by Arab tribes; around their tents goats and sheep frisk to the sound of the pipe, which, as night falls, calls them to the gathering place.

“There shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches” (Isa. 27:10). Thus, precisely and strikingly, was fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah concerning Galilee, once the richest and most fertile country in Palestine.