CARMEL kär’ məl (כַּרְמֶ֖ל, meaning plantation, garden-land, fruit or garden-growth). A word generally indicating a place where trees and gardens grew but more specifically a definite location which had such growth, as Carmel, the mountain range and promontory jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea, and the name of a city of Judah.

1. Mount Carmel. The Carmel range, composed of hard, porous, Cenomanian limestone, including a promontory jutting in a NW direction into the Mediterranean Sea, extends inland to the SE for about thirteen m. It divides the Palestinian coastal plain into the Plain of Accho to the N and the Plains of Sharon and Philistia to the S. Also the Carmel range on the N borders on the plain of Esdraelon. At the NW promontory Carmel is 470 ft. high, but farther S it reaches a height of 1,742 ft.

In prehistoric times Mt. Carmel was not heavily populated, but there was a Stone Age culture developed on its lower western slopes, as is evidenced by the caves at the Wadi (Valley) el-Mugharah, excavated by Dorothy Garrod of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and Theodore McCown of the American School of Prehistoric Research.

The first reference to Carmel in the OT occurs in Joshua 12:22 where the king of Carmel is listed along with other rulers of that area conquered by Joshua and the Israelites, and in Joshua 19:26 it is set forth as one of the boundary points in delineating the portion of land given to Asher. Mount Carmel is well known as the place where the prophet Elijah, under the blessing of God, defeated the prophets of Baal and restored the true worship of God to Israel (1 Kings 18:19-42). Elisha, following in the steps of his predecessor, Elijah, frequented Carmel (2 Kings 2:25; 4:25).

Carmel is used in a poetic figure when the bride’s head is compared to the verdant foliage of Carmel (Song of Solomon 7:5), and by the Lord’s command the growth on the top of the mount is said to wither (Amos 1:2; Nah 1:4; cf. also Isa 33:9). Also the prominence of the conqueror Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, over Egypt is likened to the conspicuousness of “Carmel by the sea” (Jer 46:18).

Carmel figures eschatologically in that future day of the Lord’s deliverance when it, with the Plain of Sharon and all Pal., shall become fertile again (Isa 35:2), and Israel shall again profit from its pasture (Jer 50:19). Israel is pictured as not being able to escape the judgment of God, even though they hide in the foliage on the top of Carmel (Amos 9:3).

In extra-Biblical material Carmel seems to be referred to in lists of certain Egyp. kings as Thut-mose III (ANET, 228, 234).

2. The city of Carmel. The other Carmel was a city of the Maon district of Judah located several m. S of Hebron. Reference is first made to it in Joshua 15:55 when it with other cities is listed as a part of the inheritance of Judah. Some emphasis is placed upon this location in the accounts of King Saul (1 Sam 15:12) and of David, esp. in the latter’s dealings with Nabal, and with his wife Abigail whom the young warrior eventually married after Nabal’s death (1 Sam 25:2-40; 27:3; 30:5; 2 Sam 2:2; 3:3). One of David’s warriors came from this place (2 Sam 23:35; 1 Chron 11:37).

Carmel is not mentioned in the NT.

Bibliography G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 18th ed. (n.d.), 50, 338ff.; D. Baly, The Geography of the Bible (1957), 136, 137, 164, 180-182; C. F. Pfeiffer and H. F. Vos, The Wycliffe Historical Geography of Bible Lands (1967), 99, 100, 116.