Hunt first made studies of this landscape at Nazareth in 1870, intending to incorporate it as the background for the Shadow of Death (1870–73; Manchester Art Gallery). He later made several versions of the composition of which this is the last. It was painted during his third visit to Jerusalem and intended for the inaugural exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries in 1877. Hunt later described the view down the valley and of the 'flanking hills reaching to 'Gebel el Cowis', the Hill of Precipitation.... On the great lower plain stretched the patchwork slope of Tabor, continuing to the hills of Gilboa and Dothan and these branched out into the swelling heights of Samaria, as well as the extended range of Carmel, bounding on south Jezreel, Megiddo and the lowland'.