East of the Jordan valley, the Eastern Range rises similarly to the Central Range on the west side. The plateaus of Moab and Gilead seem higher than the others, for whereas the Central Range rises gradually from a series of foothills to its exalted height, the Eastern Range rises abruptly from the extremely low river-valley.
The Eastern Range is blessed with a temperate climate. Heat is always moderated by breezes which bring health and prosperity with them. The soil is fertile, sufficiently watered and very productive. It is a region where agriculture and grazing are followed, and natural conditions are favorable to both occupations. In spite of these advantages, the region lies exposed to the south and east. Desert tribes make life and fortune uncertain for the inhabitants. Even today, when conditions have been somewhat improved, those who grow crops in this region must pay tribute to wandering tribes who demand it, or lose their all. How much more precarious must life have been in those days when even among the most enlightened nations the hand of the plunderer was scarcely restrained at all. The Hebrew tribes which settled this plateau were in the beginning as strong as those that located farther east, but they could not maintain their individuality against the conditions that beset them. Sooner or later, they drifted with the restless hordes and lost their identity.
One more natural division remains to be considered—the Plain of Esdraelon. Triangular in shape, one point lies north of Mt. Carmel, while the two long lines extend south-easterly, and meet the third near the river Jordan. It was this famous plain that gave access to the Central Range from the west—from the Coast Plain, approach to Samaria was not difficult by this means.
The region is rather made up of a series of plains, broken by scattered mountains, yet permitting free passage from the sea to the river Jordan. An ancient route lay along this way. It has been called the key to Palestine, and over it came the enemies of Israel. Especially interesting is the following description, with the added explanation of a bit of ancient Hebrew poetry characterizing the region:
"As you stand upon that last headland of Gilboa, 200 feet above the plain, ... the great triangle is spread before you. Along the north of it the steep brown wall of the Galilean hills, about 1000 feet high, runs almost due west, till it breaks out and down to the feet of Carmel, in the forest slopes just high enough to hide the Plain of Acre and sea. But over and past these slopes Carmel's steady ridge, deepening in blue the while, carries the eye out to its dark promontory above the Mediterranean. From this end of Carmel the lower Samarian hills, green with bush and dotted by white villages, run southeast to the main Samarian range, and on their edge, due south, seven miles across the bay, Jenin stands out with its minarets and palms.... But the rest of the plain is before you—a great expanse of loam, red and black, which in a more peaceful land would be one sea of waving wheat with island villages; but here is what its modern name implies, a free, wild prairie, upon which but one or two hamlets have ventured forth from the cover of the hills and a timid and tardy cultivation is only now seeking to overtake the waste of coarse grass and the thistly herbs that camels love. There is no water visible. The Kishon itself flows in a muddy trench, unseen five yards away. But here and there a clump of trees shows where a deep well is worked to keep a little orchard green through summer.... The roads have no limit to their breadth, but sprawl, as if at most seasons one caravan could not follow for mud on the path of another. But these details sink in a great sense of space, and of a level made almost absolute by the rise of hills on every side of it. It is a vast inland basin, and from it there breaks just at your feet, between Jezreel and Shunem, the valley Jordanwards,—breaks as visibly as river from lake, with a slope and almost the look of a current upon it.... From Jezreel you can appreciate everything in the literature and in the history of Esdraelon.
"To begin with, you can enjoy that happiest sketch of a landscape and its history that was ever drawn in half a dozen lines, Issachar—to which the most of Esdraelon fell—
"Issachar is a large-limbed ass,
Stretching himself between the sheepfolds:
For he saw a resting-place that it was good,
And the land that it was pleasant."
"Such exactly is Esdraelon—a land relaxed and sprawling up among the hills to north, south and east, as you will see a loosened ass roll and stretch his limbs any day in the sunshine of a Syrian village yard. To the highlander looking down upon it, Esdraelon is room to stretch in and lie happy. Yet the figure of the ass goes further—the room must be paid for—
'So he bowed his shoulder to bear
And became a servant under task-work.'
"The inheritors of this plain never enjoyed the highland independent of Manasseh or Naphtali. Open to east and west, Esdraelon was at distant intervals the war-path or battle-field of great empires.... Even when there has been no invasion to fear, Esdraelon has still suffered: when she has not been the camp of the foreigner she has served as the estate of her neighbors."[4]