a broad valley: the wide, flat floor of low open ground lying between higher hills or mountains
This word is built on a verb that means to split or break open (בָּקַע), and it names the result: a wide gap in the landscape, the open floor of a valley spread out below the high ground on either side. The picture is width and flatness, not a narrow crack. Hebrew keeps several words for low ground apart, and this is the broadest and most level of them. A deep gorge with steep sides is a different word (גַּיְא), and a streambed that runs with water in winter and dries out in summer is another (נַחַל).
Because the word describes a shape of land rather than a mood, it shows up wherever the ground itself is being described:
- the plain in Babylonia where the tower builders stopped and settled (Genesis 11:2)
- the hills and valleys of the promised land, watered by rain from the sky (Deuteronomy 11:11)
- the open plain outside the city where Ezekiel meets the glory of God, and where he later stands among the dry bones (Ezekiel 3:22; Ezekiel 37:1)
About half of its appearances name one particular place: the valley of Jericho, the valley of Megiddo where King Josiah was killed, the plain of Ono outside Jerusalem, and the valley of Lebanon, the long flat corridor between two mountain ranges that is still called the Beqaa today. In those phrases the word is doing straightforward geography, marking off a wide low basin by the town or region that sits in it.
The prophets turn the same word toward hope. Isaiah promises that rough, broken ground will be made level (Isaiah 40:4) and that springs will open in the valley floors of a wasteland (Isaiah 41:18). A flat, watered plain is land a person can farm, walk across, and live on, so it becomes a picture of a countryside made fit for human life.