Israel: God's Holy LandSample

An Eternal Heritage

The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him. — GENESIS 12:7

As we celebrate the modern state of Israel, we must also recognize its greater context — the fact that while our nation is relatively young, it is also very, very old.

The first time the Bible references the Promised Land is in Genesis 12:1 when God tells Abraham (then still known as Abram) to “Go from your country… to the land I will show you.” That land is none other than Israel!

When Abraham arrived in the land then known as Canaan, God promised him, “To your offspring I will give this land.” He reaffirmed this promise in Genesis 13:15, when He told Abraham, “All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever.”

Interestingly, when God entered into a covenant with Abraham, He said, “To your descendants I give this land.” (Genesis 15:18) In Hebrew, the word used in Scriptures for “give” is natati, meaning “I have given,” which is in past tense.

God had already given this land to Abraham’s descendants, and indeed, Jewish tradition teaches that Israel was given to God’s people from the beginning of time. In other words, Jewish rights to the land were always part of the very fabric of Creation.

But who are Abraham’s descendants? After all, Ishmael was also Abraham’s son. Yet in Genesis 26:3, God confirmed that Isaac was the one through whom He would keep His covenant. God told Isaac, “For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham.”

A generation later, when Jacob, Isaac’s son, had his famous dream about angels ascending and descending a ladder spanning heaven and earth, God told him, “I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.” (Genesis 28:13) That land was the Holy Land. Later on, Jacob’s name was changed to Israel (Genesis 32:28), and his descendants became appropriately known as “the children of Israel.”

When the children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, God commanded Moses to tell the nation that He would take them out of Egypt, and that “I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession.” (Exodus 6:8)

Ultimately, Joshua led the children of Israel into the Promised Land and helped them to conquer and settle the land. King David established Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and his son Solomon built the first Holy Temple there. Eventually, the nation of Israel was divided into two kingdoms, both of which were conquered, and the Jewish people were exiled.

The Jewish Bible leads through the return of a remnant of the Jewish people, but the Bible also warns of a second exile. That occurred in 70 C.E., when the Second Temple was destroyed and the Romans threw out the Jewish people from their land, resulting in a painful, 2,000-year exile.

The Jewish people never stopped yearning for their homeland. God's promise to Abraham created an unbreakable bond between the Jewish people and Israel. The fulfillment of God's promises came in the miracle of the Jewish return to their land and a restoration of the nation of Israel.