Jezreel was a city of the tribe of Issachar, built on a hill overlooking the vast fertile valley of the same name, between Mount Gilboa and Mount Carmel.
In the 9th century BC, King Ahab built a country palace there. Beside it lay Naboth’s vineyard, which he refused to sell because it was his family’s inheritance.
Naboth’s refusal, the murder plotted by Queen Jezebel, and Ahab’s seizure of the vineyard turned Jezreel into the setting for one of the gravest injustices in the Old Testament.
Years later, it was also in Jezreel that the judgment announced by Elijah against the house of Ahab was fulfilled. Jehu killed King Joram in that same field of Naboth, and Jezebel died there, exactly as the prophet had predicted.
The prophet Hosea later used the name Jezreel as a symbol of God’s judgment over the blood shed there, but also as a promise of future restoration for the people.
