Whether this district embraced the fruitful plain of Sharon is not so clearly made out as Thenius supposes. בּן־אבינדב stands at the head absolutely, without any grammatical connection with כּל־נפת: “Abinadab: the whole of the high range of Dor,” etc. The person named was probably a son of David's eldest brother but one (1Sa 16:8; 1Sa 17:13), and therefore Solomon's cousin; and he had married Solomon's daughter.
Verse 12
1Ki 4:12Baana the son of Ahilud was most likely a brother of Jehoshaphat the chancellor (1Ki 4:3). This district embraced the cities on the southern edge of the plain of Jezreel, and extended to the Jordan. Taanach and Megiddo, which have been preserved in the villages of Taanuk and Lejun, were situated on the south-western border of this plain, and belonged to the Manassites (see at Jos 12:21; Jos 17:11). “And all Bethshean,” in other words, the whole of the district of Bethshean, i.e., Beisan, at the eastern end of the valley of Jezreel, where it opens into the Jordan valley (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 740ff.), “which (district was situated) by the side of Zarthan below Jezreel, from (the town of) Bethshean (see at Jos 17:11) to Abel-Mecholah, on the other side of Jokmeam.” Zarthan, also called Zereda (compare 1Ki 7:46 with 2Ch 4:17), has probably been preserved, so far as the name is concerned, in Kurn Sartabeh, in the neighbourhood of which the old city probably stood, about five miles to the south of Beisan, at a point where the Jordan valley contracts (see at Jos 3:16). The expression “below Jezreel” refers to “all Bethshean,” and may be explained from the elevated situation of Jezreel, the present Zerîn (see at Jos 19:18). According to Rob. iii. p. 163, this is “comparatively high, and commands a wide and noble view, extending down the broad low valley on the east of Beisan and to the mountains of Ajlun beyond the Jordan.” The following words, “from Bethshean to Abel-Mecholah,” give a more precise definition of the boundary. The lxx have erroneously inserted καὶ before מבּית־שׁאן, and Thenius and Böttcher defend it on the strength of their erroneous interpretations of the preceding statements. Abel-Mecholah was in the Jordan valley, according to the Onomast., ten Roman miles to the south of Beisan (see at Jdg 7:22). The last clause is not quite intelligible to us, as the situation of the Levitical city Jokmeam (1Ch 6:53, or Kibzaim, a different place from the Jokneam on Carmel, Jos 12:22; Jos 21:34) has not yet been discovered
