That I will break the bow of Israel, &c.— St. Jerome says, the Israelites were overthrown by the Assyrians in a pitched battle in the plain of Jezrael or Jezreel. But of any such battle we have no mention in history, sacred or profane. But Tiglath-pileser took several of the principal cities in that plain, in the reign of Pekah. And afterwards, in the reign of Hoshea, Samaria was taken by Shalmanazer after a siege of three years; and this put an end to the kingdom of the ten tribes; 2 Kings 15:29; 2 Kings 17:5-6. And the taking of these cities successively, and at last of the capital itself, was "a breaking of the bow of Israel," a demolition of the whole military strength of the kingdom, "in the valley of Jezreel," where all those cities were situated. For the breaking of the bow was a natural image for the overthrow of military strength in general, at a time when the bow and arrow was one of the principal weapons.
Although the valley of Jezreel is here to be understood literally of the tract of country so named, yet perhaps there is an indirect allusion to the mystical import of the name. This being the finest spot of the whole land of promise, the name, the vale of Jezreel, describes it as the property of the holy seed, by whom it is at last to be possessed. So that, in the very terms of the denunciation against the kingdom of Israel, an oblique promise is contained of the restoration of the converted Israelites. The Israel which possessed it, in the time of this prophesy, were not the rightful owners of the soil. It is part of the domain of the Jezrael, or Jezreel, for whom it is reserved.