When the first child was born God said, ‘Call him Jezreel’ (1:4). Jezreel was the name of a well-known town and also a valley in the northern kingdom. Its ‘location … in a valley-plain between the mountains of Samaria and Galilee, and its close proximity to the valley of Megiddo, mark it as one of the prominent battle sites in Palestine, one of the few places where chariotry, cavalry and marching armies could be manoeuvred’.2 Many famous battles had been
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