Sharon

Shair´uhn

The Plain of, the area where the coastal plain widens south of the slopes of Mt. Carmel, extending about thirty miles south to the Yarkon River north of Joppa. It varies from about eight to twelve miles in width. In Israelite times the dunes supported an impenetrable oak forest. Pastureland would have been on the fringe of the forest (1Chr 27:29). The rose of Sharon is a kind of crocus growing as a “lily among brambles” (Song 2:1-2). Thus the biblical picture of Sharon is a forbidding jungle of oaks and swampy marshes rather than a fertile or productive plain.