2. The situation of Nazareth.

And the Lower Galilee is described by the Talmudists by this character, "That it produceth sycamines, which the Upper Galilee doth not." Now the sycamine trees were in the vale, 1 Kings 10:27. And hence seems to arise the distinction between the Upper and the Lower Galilee; the Lower so called because more plain and champaign, the Upper because more hilly and mountainous.

I am deceived if the Upper Galilee be not sometimes by way of emphasis called 'Galilee'; nor without cause, when as the Lower might be called the great plain. So Cana had the adjunct of 'Cana of Galilee,' perhaps that it might distinguish that Cana which bounds both the Galilees; of which more in its proper place. That passage which we meet with in our evangelist, chapter 4:43,44, "He departed from thence [from Samaria] and went into Galilee; for Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honour in his country": it looks this way; that is, he would not go into Nazareth, but into Galilee, viz. the Upper; and so came to Cana.

Nazareth, therefore, was in the Lower Galilee, in the very confines of Issachar and Zabulon, and is commonly received within Zabulon, itself being distant sixteen miles or more from Capernaum; for from Capernaum, mount Tabor is distant ten miles, or thereabouts.