thirteen years to build. Included in this royal complex of buildings were the House of the Forest of Lebanon, the Porch of Pillars and the Porch of the Throne. There was also a special house for Pharaoh’s daughter, one of Solomon’s many wives, besides the king’s palace.—1 Ki. 7:1-8.

The description we have of Solomon’s palace is very meager compared with the details of the palatial temple. But the size of the foundation stones indicates that the palace must have been an impressive structure. In length these stones measured eight cubits (11.7 feet or 3.6 meters) and ten cubits (14.6 feet or 4.4 meters), and they must have been of proportionate size in their width and thickness, weighing many tons. The walls consisted of costly stones carefully sawn to measured specifications on both inside and outside surfaces.—1 Ki. 7:9-11; compare Psalm 144:12.

The psalmist, in the forty-fifth psalm, may have had in mind the decorations and furnishings of Solomon’s palace when he made reference to “the grand ivory palace.” The inspired writer of Hebrews applies the words of this psalm to Jesus Christ the heavenly King.—Ps. 45:8, 15; compare verses 6 and 7 with Hebrews 1:8, 9; Luke 4:18, 21.

PALAL

(Paʹlal) [God has judged].

Repairer of a section of Jerusalem’s wall in the days of Nehemiah; son of Uzai.—Neh. 3:25.

PALATE

See MOUTH.

PALESTINE

That land situated at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, which was once occupied by the ancient nation of Israel. The name is derived from the Latin Palaestina and the Greek Pa·lai·stiʹne. This latter word, in turn, is drawn from the Hebrew P^eleʹsheth. In the Hebrew Scriptures P^eleʹsheth (translated in English as “Philistia”) occurs only in reference to the limited coastal territory occupied by the Philistines. (Ex. 15:14; Ps. 60:8; 83:7; 87:4; 108:9; Isa. 14:29, 31; Joel 3:4) Herodotus, however, in the fifth century B.C.E., and later other secular writers (Philo, Ovid, Pliny, Josephus, Jerome) used the Greek and Latin terms to designate all that territory formerly known as the “land of Canaan” or the “land of Israel.” (Num. 34:2; 1 Sam. 13:19) Emperor Vespasian also described this territory as “Palestine” on the coins he struck in commemoration of Jerusalem’s fall in 70 C.E. Because Jehovah had promised this land to Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 15:18; Deut. 9:27, 28), it was also appropriately called the Promised Land or the Land of Promise. (Heb. 11:9) From the Middle Ages on, it has often been called the Holy Land.

LOCATION AND BOUNDARIES

In a sense Palestine is the connecting link between the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. This placed it in the center of a circle around the circumference of which were located the ancient world powers of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. (Ezek. 5:5) Hemmed in by great deserts on the E and S and by the Great Sea or Mediterranean on the W, Palestine served as a land bridge between the Nile and Euphrates Rivers, over which bridge the caravans on the world trade routes passed. Situated in what has been called the Fertile Crescent, Palestine itself was of particular interest, being a delightful place gifted with its own natural resources and special characteristics.—See FERTILE CRESCENT.

The boundaries for the Promised Land were set by Jehovah himself. In its broadest sense it embraced a territory extending “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Gen. 15:18; Ex. 23:31; Num. 34:1-12; Josh. 1:3, 4; 15:4), dimensions that were reached only during the reigns of David and Solomon. For most of Israel’s history a much smaller area of control was involved.

On the S an imaginary line could be drawn from the southern end of the Dead Sea to the SE corner of the Mediterranean, and on the N another line running from the southern slopes of Mount Hermon to a point near the city of Tyre. Within these limits from N to S, “from Dan to Beer-sheba” (1 Sam. 3:20; 2 Sam. 3:10), the country was about 150 miles (241 kilometers) in length. The latitude of its capital Jerusalem was a little below 32° N, approximately the same latitude as Savannah, Georgia; Waco, Texas; Shanghai, China; and Lahore, Pakistan. Longitudinally, and as regards the world time zones, Jerusalem was 2,072 miles (3,334 kilometers), or two hours and twenty-one minutes E of the Greenwich, England, meridian.

The width of Palestine, less than a third of its length, was rather indefinite since there was no fixed frontier on the E; the districts of Gilead and Bashan gradually merged into desolate steppes, over which nomadic Arab tribes roamed more or less at will. This territory E of the Jordan has been estimated at about 4,000 square miles (10,360 square kilometers). West of the central Jordanian valley the distance in the N from Dan to the Mediterranean was about twenty-six miles (42 kilometers) and in the S, from the southern tip of the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean, some eighty miles (129 kilometers). This amounted to another 6,000 square miles (15,540 square kilometers), a total of 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) for the country as a whole, less than the size of Belgium, but a little larger than the state of New Hampshire.

GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES

For a comprehensive view of its geography the territory of Palestine may be conveniently divided into four rather parallel regions.

First, there was a strip of fertile plain along the coast, a coast that, for the most part, had very little to offer in the way of natural harbors. Dividing this coastal plain in two was the promontory of the imposing Mount Carmel range, which jutted out almost to the sea. The northern section was known as the Plain of Asher or Phoenicia. The southern portion skirted around sand dunes nestled close to the sea, and consisted of the Plain of Sharon and the Plain of Philistia, the latter widening out in the S.

The second geographical region, next to the maritime plains, contained the principal mountain ranges, which ran N and S like a backbone of the country. In the N were the mountains of Naphtali, also called the Hills of Galilee. They were an extension of the Lebanon ranges, which were noted for their cedar forests and their prominent Mount Hermon, which towered skyward more than 9,000 feet (2,743 meters). The northern mountains of Palestine ranged in altitude from over 3,000 feet (914 meters) in Upper Galilee to less than 2,000 feet (610 meters) for Mount Tabor, made famous in the days of Barak. (Judg. 4:12) Below Mount Tabor was a comparatively broad central plain that cut transversely across the country from W to E, separating the northern mountains from those to the S. This valley, where many decisive battles were fought, consisted of two parts, the eastern “low plain of Jezreel,” and the western section, the “valley plain of Megiddo.”—Josh. 17:16; 2 Chron. 35:22.

To the W and N of the Megiddo valley, which was drained by the Kishon River, was the Carmel range running southeasterly from the coast and joining the mountains of Ephraim or Samaria in which the historic peaks of Gerizim and Ebal were located, the latter being over 3,000 feet (914 meters) high. (Deut. 11:29) Continuing S, this range was known as “the mountainous region of Judah,” for though elevations varied from 2,000 feet (610 meters) to over 3,300 feet (c. 1,000 meters), the area consisted largely of plateaus, rounded hills and gentle slopes. (2 Chron 27:4; Luke 1:39) Here in this region were such cities as Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron.

Gradually the Judean mountains on the S merged into the Negeb, a name thought to be from a root meaning “to be parched” or “dry”, a region that extended to the Torrent valley of Egypt and constituted the southern portion of Palestine. On the northern edge of the Negeb was the oasislike city of Beer-sheba; at the southern extremity, Kadesh-barnea.—Gen. 12:9; 20:1; 22:19.

When approaching the mountains of Judah from the W one comes to the hill section known as the Shephelah, with its several small W-E valleys leading from the coastal plains to the highlands. (Josh. 9:1) For the most part these hills were suitable for the grazing of flocks and cattle, the springs in the valleys furnishing the necessary water. The geological structure of the earth’s crust in this part of the country allowed the winter rain on the mountains to seep down through the porous sandstone rock to a waterproof layer or stratum, along which it flowed to feed the valley springs below.

The third feature of Palestine’s geography was the great Rift Valley, sometimes called the Arabah (Deut. 11:30), which divides the country longitudinally from top to bottom. This deep cleft began in Syria to the N and extended southward all the way to the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqabah. What made this central depression of the land all the more spectacular were the parallel mountain ranges and cliffs on either side of it.

When tracing this trenchlike depression from N to S, one quickly drops from the foothills of Mount Hermon to the Huleh basin, where the headwaters of the Jordan once formed a small lake. From there the Jordan, in some ten miles (16 kilometers), rapidly drops over 900 feet (274 meters) to the Sea of Galilee, which is nearly 700 feet (213 meters) below sea level. From Galilee to the Dead Sea this great rift in the earth’s crust is the Jordan valley proper, and by the Arabs is called the Ghor, meaning “depression.” It is a “gorge” as much as twelve miles (19 kilometers) wide in places. The Jordan itself is about 150 feet (46 meters) below the floor of this valley, and as it slowly snakes its way down to the Dead Sea it continues to drop about 600 more feet (183 meters). This makes the surface of the Dead Sea nearly 1,300 feet (396 meters) below the level of the Mediterranean—the lowest point on the earth’s surface.

The extension of the Rift Valley S of the Dead Sea for another hundred miles (161 kilometers) to the Gulf of Aqabah was more commonly known as the Arabah proper. (Deut. 2:8) Midway it reached its highest point, about 650 feet (198 meters) above sea level.

The fourth geographical region of Palestine consisted of hills and tablelands E of the great Jordanian rift. (Deut. 2:36, 37; 3:8-10) In the N this arable land extended E of the Sea of Galilee perhaps sixty miles (97 kilometers), while in the S the width was only about twenty-five miles (40 kilometers) before it became a wilderness, and steppes that eventually lost themselves in the Arabian Desert. The wider northern section of this rolling eastern region, above Ramoth-gilead, was called the land of Bashan, about 2,000 feet (610 meters) in average altitude; S of Bashan the domelike region of Gilead attained an elevation of 3,300 feet (1,006 meters). On its S, Gilead bordered the tableland N of the torrent valley of Arnon, in which area was situated Mount Nebo, over 2,700 feet (823 meters) high. This territory, at one time the possession of the Ammonites, was, in turn, bounded S of the torrent valley of Arnon by the land of Moab.—Josh. 13:24, 25; Judg. 11:12-28.

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

The ancient Hebrew names of many cities, mountains and valleys have been lost, partly due to the occupation of Palestine by the Arabs for much of the time since 638 C.E. But, since Arabic is the living language most closely related to Hebrew, it is possible