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great victory over the Midianites (Judges 7:1-25). Here also Barak defeated Sisera, and Saul’s army was defeated by the Philistines, and king Josiah, while fighting in disguise against Necho, king of Egypt, was slain (2 Chronicles 35:20-27; 2 Kings 23-29). This plain has been well called the “battle-field of Palestine.” “It has been a chosen place for encampment in every contest carried on in this country, from the days of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, in the history of whose wars with Arphaxad it is mentioned as the Great Plain of Esdraelon, until the disastrous march of Napoleon Bonaparte from Egypt into Syria. Jews, Gentiles, Saracens, Crusaders, Frenchmen, Egyptians, Persians, Druses, Turks, and Arabs, warriors out of every nation which is under heaven, have pitched their tents in the plain, and have beheld the various banners of their nations wet with the dews of Tabor and Hermon” (Dr. Clark).
•ESEK quarrel, a well which Isaac’s herdsmen dug in the valley of Gerar, and so called because the herdsmen of Gerar quarrelled with them for its possession (Genesis 26:20).
•ESHBAAL man of Baal, the fourth son of king Saul (1 Chronicles 8:33; 9:39). He is also called Ish-bosheth (q.v.), 2 Samuel 2:8.
•ESHCOL bunch; brave. (1.) A young Amoritish chief who joined Abraham in the recovery of Lot from the hands of Chedorlaomer (Genesis 14:13, 24).
(2.) A valley in which the spies obtained a fine cluster of grapes (Numbers 13:23, 24; “the brook Eshcol,” A.V.; “the valley of Eshcol,” R.V.), which they took back with them to the camp of Israel as a specimen of the fruits of the Promised Land. On their way back they explored the route which led into the south (the Negeb) by the western edge of the mountains at Telilat el-‘Anab, i.e., “grape-mounds”, near Beersheba. “In one of these extensive valleys, perhaps in Wady Hanein, where miles of grape-mounds even now meet the eye, they cut the gigantic clusters of grapes, and gathered the pomegranates and figs, to show how goodly was the land which the Lord had promised for their inheritance.”, Palmer’s Desert of the Exodus.