Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious, and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine.
The biblical definition of the limits of the Land of Israel are outlined in, and differ from the borders of established historical Israelite and later Jewish kingdoms, including the United Kingdom of Israel, the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Hasmonean kingdom, and the Herodian kingdom. At their heights, these realms ruled lands with similar but not identical boundaries.
Jewish religious belief defines the land as where Jewish religious law prevailed and excludes territory where it was not applied.Though the Land of Israel is not used as a phrase in the Torah, it is held that the area is a God-given inheritance of the Jewish people based on the Torah, particularly the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as well as Joshua and the later Prophets. According to the Book of Genesis, the land was first promised by God to Abram's descendants; the text is explicit that this is a covenant between God and Abram for his descendants. Abram's name was later changed to Abraham, with the promise refined to pass through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. This belief is not shared by most adherents of replacement theology, who hold the view that the Old Testament prophecies were superseded by the coming of Jesus, a view often repudiated by Christian Zionists as a theological error. Evangelical Zionists variously claim that Israel has title to the land by divine right, or by a theological, historical and moral grounding of attachment to the land unique to Jews. The idea that ancient religious texts can be warrant or divine right for a modern claim has often been challenged, and Israeli courts have rejected land claims based on religious motivations.
During the League of Nations mandate period the term "Eretz Yisrael" or the "Land of Israel" was part of the official Hebrew name of Mandatory Palestine. Official Hebrew documents used the Hebrew transliteration of the word "Palestine" פלשתינה followed always by the two initial letters of "Eretz Yisrael", א״י Aleph-Yod.
The Land of Israel concept has been evoked by the founders of the State of Israel. It often surfaces in political debates on the status of the West Bank, referred to in official Israeli discourse as the Judea and Samaria Area.
Etymology and biblical roots
The term "Land of Israel" is a direct translation of the Hebrew phrase . This phrase appears nowhere in Pentateuch, but occasionally occurs in other parts of the Bible, and is first mentioned in the Tanakh in, following the Exodus, when the Israelite tribes were already in the Land of Canaan. The words are used sparsely in the Bible: King David is ordered to gather 'strangers to the land of Israel' for building purposes, and the same phrasing is used in reference to King Solomon's census of all of the 'strangers in the Land of Israel'. Ezekiel, although generally preferring the phrase 'soil of Israel', employs eretz Israel twice, respectively at and.According to Martin Noth, the term is not an "authentic and original name for this land", but instead serves as "a somewhat flexible description of the area which the Israelite tribes had their settlements". According to Anita Shapira, the term "Eretz Yisrael" was a holy term, vague as far as the exact boundaries of the territories are concerned but clearly defining ownership. The sanctity of the land developed rich associations in rabbinical thought, where it assumes a highly symbolic and mythological status infused with promise, although always connected to a geographical location. Nur Masalha argues that the biblical boundaries are "entirely fictitious", and bore simply religious connotations in Diaspora Judaism, with the term only coming into ascendency with the rise of Zionism.
The Hebrew Bible provides three specific sets of borders for the "Promised Land", each with a different purpose. Neither of the terms "Promised Land" or "Land of Israel" are used in these passages:, and use the term "the land", as does in which it is promised explicitly to "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob... and to their descendants after them", whilst describes the "Land of Canaan" which is allocated to nine and half of the twelve Israelite tribes after the Exodus. The expression "Land of Israel" is first used in a later book,. It is defined in detail in the exilic Book of Ezekiel as a land where both the twelve tribes and the "strangers in midst", can claim inheritance. The name "Israel" first appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name given by God to the patriarch Jacob. Deriving from the name "Israel", other designations that came to be associated with the Jewish people have included the "Children of Israel" or "Israelites".
The term 'Land of Israel' occurs in one episode in the New Testament, where, according to Shlomo Sand, it bears the unusual sense of 'the area surrounding Jerusalem'. The section in which it appears was written as a parallel to the earlier Book of Exodus.
Biblical borders
Ezekiel 47
provides a definition of borders of the Land of Israel in which the twelve tribes of Israel will live during the final redemption, at the end of days. The borders of the land described by the text in Ezekiel include the northern border of modern Lebanon, eastwards to Zedad and Hazar-enan in modern Syria; south by southwest to the area of Busra on the Syrian border ; follows the Jordan River between the West Bank and the land of Gilead to Tamar on the western shore of the Dead Sea; From Tamar to Meribah Kadesh, then along the Brook of Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea. The territory defined by these borders is divided into twelve strips, one for each of the twelve tribes.Hence, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47 define different but similar borders which include the whole of contemporary Lebanon, both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Israel, except for the South Negev and Eilat. Small parts of Syria are also included.
The following passages do not explicitly use the phrase "Land of Israel":
Genesis 15
describes what are known as "Borders of the Land", which in Jewish tradition defines the extent of the land promised to the descendants of Abraham, through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob. The passage describes the area as the land of the ten named ancient peoples then living there.More precise geographical borders are given in, which describes borders as marked by the Red Sea, the traditional furthest extent of the Kingdom of David.
Genesis gives the border with Egypt as Nahar Mitzrayim – nahar in Hebrew denotes a river or stream, as opposed to a wadi.
Exodus 23
A slightly more detailed definition is given in, which describes the borders as "from the sea of reeds to the Sea of the Philistines and from the desert to the Euphrates River", although the Hebrew text of the Bible uses the name, "the River", to refer to the Euphrates.Only the "Red Sea" and the Euphrates are mentioned to define the southern and eastern borders of the full land promised to the Israelites. The "Red Sea" corresponding to Hebrew Yam Suf was understood in ancient times to be the Erythraean Sea, as reflected in the Septuagint translation. Although the English name "Red Sea" is derived from this name, the term denoted all the waters surrounding Arabia—including the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, not merely the sea lying to the west of Arabia bearing this name in modern English. Thus, the entire Arabian peninsula lies within the borders described. Modern maps depicting the region take a reticent view and often leave the southern and eastern borders vaguely defined. The borders of the land to be conquered given in Numbers have a precisely defined eastern border which included the Arabah and Jordan.
Numbers 34
describes the land allocated to the Israelite tribes after the Exodus. The tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh received land east of the Jordan as explained in. provides a detailed description of the borders of the land to be conquered west of the Jordan for the remaining tribes. The region is called "the Land of Canaan" in and the borders are known in Jewish tradition as the "borders for those coming out of Egypt". These borders are again mentioned in, and.According to the Hebrew Bible, Canaan was the son of Ham who with his descendants had seized the land from the descendants of Shem according to the Book of Jubilees. Jewish tradition thus refers to the region as Canaan during the period between the Flood and the Israelite settlement. Eliezer Schweid sees Canaan as a geographical name, and Israel the spiritual name of the land. He writes: "The uniqueness of the Land of Israel is thus "geo-theological" and not merely climatic. This is the land which faces the entrance of the spiritual world, that sphere of existence that lies beyond the physical world known to us through our senses. This is the key to the land's unique status with regard to prophecy and prayer, and also with regard to the commandments." Thus, the renaming of this landmarks a change in religious status, the origin of the Holy Land concept. uses the term Canaan strictly for the land west of the Jordan, but Land of Israel is used in Jewish tradition to denote the entire land of the Israelites. The English expression "Promised Land" can denote either the land promised to Abraham in Genesis or the land of Canaan, although the latter meaning is more common.
The border with Egypt is given as the Nachal Mitzrayim in Numbers, as well as in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel. Jewish tradition understand this as referring to the Nile; more precisely the Pelusian branch of the Nile Delta according to Halevi—a view supported by Egyptian and Assyrian texts. Saadia Gaon identified it as the "Wadi of El-Arish", referring to the biblical Sukkot near Faiyum. Kaftor Vaferech placed it in the same region, which approximates the location of the former Pelusian branch of the Nile. 19th century Bible commentaries understood the identification as a reference to the Wadi al-Arish of the coastal town Arish. Easton's, however, notes a local tradition that the course of the river had changed and there was once a branch of the Nile where today there is a wadi. Biblical minimalists have suggested that the Besor is intended.