Jeremiah 47:5 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

With the remnant of their valley— Gaza and Ashkelon were about twelve miles distant from each other, near the sea, in a valley, of whose beauty and fertility an accurate traveller has given the following description: "We passed this day through the most pregnant and pleasant valley that ever eye beheld. On the right hand a ridge of high mountains (whereon stands Hebron); on the left hand the Mediterranean sea, bordered with continued hills, beset with variety of fruits;—The champion between about twenty miles over, full of flowery hills ascending leisurely, and not much surmounting their ranker vallies; with groves of olives, and other fruits, dispersedly adorned." Sandys's Travels, book 3: p. 150. The author adds, that in his time "this wealthy bottom (as are all the rest) was for the most part uninhabited, but only for a few small and contemptible villages:" A state of desolation owing to the oppressions of a barbarous and ill-advised government. But we may easily conceive the populousness which must have prevailed there in its better days, especially if we consider the power that the Philistines once possessed, and the armies they brought into the field; although their country was scarcely forty English miles in length, and much longer than it was broad.