Matthew 4:15

_ _ The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea — the coast skirting the Sea of Galilee westward — beyond Jordan — a phrase commonly meaning eastward of Jordan; but here and in several places it means westward of the Jordan. The word seems to have got the general meaning of “the other side”; the nature of the case determining which side that was.

_ _ Galilee of the Gentiles — so called from its position, which made it the frontier between the Holy Land and the external world. While Ephraim and Judah, as Stanley says, were separated from the world by the Jordan valley on one side and the hostile Philistines on another, the northern tribes were in the direct highway of all the invaders from the north, in unbroken communication with the promiscuous races who have always occupied the heights of Lebanon, and in close and peaceful alliance with the most commercial nation of the ancient world, the Phoenicians. Twenty of the cities of Galilee were actually annexed by Solomon to the adjacent kingdom of Tyre, and formed, with their territory, the “boundary” or “offscouring” (Gebul or Cabul) of the two dominions — at a later time still known by the general name of “the boundaries (coasts or borders) of Tyre and Sidon.” In the first great transportation of the Jewish population, Naphtali and Galilee suffered the same fate as the trans-jordanic tribes before Ephraim or Judah had been molested (2 Kings 15:29). In the time of the Christian era this original disadvantage of their position was still felt; the speech of the Galileans “bewrayed them” by its uncouth pronunciation (Matthew 26:73); and their distance from the seats of government and civilization at Jerusalem and Caesarea gave them their character for turbulence or independence, according as it was viewed by their friends or their enemies.