Lebanon

Lebanon (Hebrew Levanon, "white," from the snow that crowns its peaks much of the year, or from its pale limestone) is the great mountain region north of Israel, running parallel to the Mediterranean coast. Two ranges — the Lebanon proper along the sea and the Anti-Lebanon inland, crowned by Mount Hermon — enclose the fertile Beqaa valley between them. Famed above all for its towering cedars, Lebanon supplied the timber for Israel's holiest building and became throughout Scripture a living emblem of majesty, fragrance, fruitfulness, and — when felled — of pride brought low.

Lebanon marked the ideal northern boundary of the land promised to Israel: the LORD's grant ran "from the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates" (Joshua 1:4; cf. Deuteronomy 1:7). Its forests were the great cedar reserve of the ancient world. When Solomon built the temple, he contracted with Hiram king of Tyre for cedars cut in Lebanon and floated down the coast (1 Kings 5:6); so prominent were these beams that one of his palace structures was named "the House of the Forest of Lebanon" (1 Kings 7:2).

Because its cedars were the noblest of trees, "the glory of Lebanon" became a stock biblical image of grandeur and of God's blessing. The prophets promise that this glory will be given to the desert and to the sanctuary (Isaiah 35:2; Isaiah 60:13), and the Psalmist celebrates "the cedars of Lebanon that he planted" and the flourishing righteous who "grow like a cedar in Lebanon" (Psalm 92:12; Psalm 104:16). The Song of Solomon draws on Lebanon again and again for beauty, fragrance, and strength, calling the beloved to "come with me from Lebanon" (Song of Solomon 4:8).

Yet that same towering height makes Lebanon a symbol of human pride that God humbles. Isaiah warns that the day of the LORD is against "all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up" (Isaiah 2:13), and Ezekiel likens proud Assyria to a cedar of Lebanon, fairest of all trees, cut down for its arrogance (Ezekiel 31:3). "The LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon" by His thunderous voice (Psalm 29:5). Thus Lebanon holds together in one landscape both the splendor God gives and the loftiness He brings down — its cedars adorning His temple, and its felled trees testifying that every height must bow before Him.