Promised Land Series

Promised Land

Map showing the borders of the Promised Land, based on the Bible. (Numbers 34, Ezekiel 47).

Map showing one interpretation of the borders of the Promised Land, based on God's promise to Abraham (Genesis 15).

The Promised Land; also known as "") is the land which, according to the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament), God promised and subsequently gave to Abraham and his descendants. In modern contexts, the phrase "Promised Land" expresses an image and an idea related to the restored homeland for the Jewish people and the concepts of salvation and liberation.

God first makes the promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:18–21:

On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram. He said, "To your descendants, I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites,

Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites."

He later confirms the promise to Abraham's son Isaac (Genesis 26:3) and then to Isaac's son Jacob (Genesis 28:13), who is later renamed "Israel" (Genesis 32:28). The Book of Exodus describes the Promised Land in terms of the territory from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates river (Exodus 23:31). The Israelites conquered and occupied a smaller area of former Canaanite land and land east of the Jordan River after Moses led the Exodus out of Egypt (Numbers 34:1–12), and the Book of Deuteronomy presents this occupation as God's fulfillment of the promise (Deuteronomy 1:8). Moses anticipated that God might subsequently give the Israelites land reflecting the boundaries of God's original promise – if they were obedient to the covenant (Deuteronomy 19:8–9).

The concept of the Promised Land is the central tenet of Zionism, the Jewish national movement to re-establish the Jewish homeland. Palestinians also claim partial descent from the Israelites and Maccabees and from other peoples who have lived in the region.

African-American spirituals invoke the imagery of the "Promised Land" as heaven or an escape from slavery, which could often only be reached by death. The imagery and term also appear elsewhere in popular culture, in sermons, and in speeches such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 "I Have Been to the Mountaintop," in which he said:

I want to do God's will. Moreover, He has allowed me to go up to the mountain. Furthermore, I have looked over it. And I have seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I am happy tonight. I am not worried about anything. I do not fear any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Divine promise

Yahweh (God) shows Moses the Promised Land

The promise that is the basis of the term is contained in several verses of Genesis in the Torah. In Genesis 12:1, it is said:

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you."

Moreover, in Genesis 12:7: The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring [or seed] I will give this land."

Commentators have noted several problems with this promise and related ones:

1. It is to Abram's descendants that the land will (in the future tense) be given, not to Abram directly nor there and then. However, Genesis 15:7 also says, "I am the LORD, who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." However, how this verse relates to the promises is controversial.

2. There is nothing in the promise to indicate God intended it to be applied to Abraham's physical descendants unconditionally, exclusively (to nobody but these descendants), exhaustively (to all of them), or in perpetuity.

3. Jewish commentators drawing on Rashi's comments to the first verse in the Bible assert that no human collective ever has any a priori claim to any piece of land on the planet and that only God decides which group inhabits which land at any point in time. This interpretation has no contradictions since the idea that the Jewish people have a claim to ownership rights on the physical land is based on God deciding to give the land to the Jewish people and commanding them to occupy it, as referred to in Biblical texts previously mentioned.

In Genesis 15:18–21, the boundary of the Promised Land is clarified in terms of the territory of various ancient peoples, as follows:

On that day, the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants, I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites,