Introduction

Given the current situation in Israel, not to mention the context of the disputes over the past 80 years, I think it is worthwhile to evaluate what the Bible has to say about Israel’s claims to their land today.

The Bible is overflowing with hundreds of instances of God promising the land of Israel (“Canaan”) to the Israelites, both post-Egypt and post-Assyrian and Babylonian exiles.  Certainly, it is a popular opinion today that modern Israel – the nation established by the UN in 1948 – has some form of biblically mandated franchise on these promises of the land known as Israel/Palestine.  But, is this what the Bible says?

This is not simply a biblical issue.  The people of today’s Israel, though overwhelmingly secular, are nonetheless people who have a right to live, just as the Palestinians have a right to live.  But if we hear religious arguments for Israel’s possession of their land, how should we judge those claims?  The answer to that question is the point of this piece.

Contexts of Land Promises

When we encounter God promising the land, or a return by the Israelites to the land, how can we evaluate whether or not that promise is current today, 2,500 or so years after that promise was made?

As when interpreting any Biblical verse, we must start by understanding when the promise/prophecy was made, and what its context was at that time.

Second, particularly in the case of the land promises (but also some others we’ll look at), we need to interpret God’s timeframe for accomplishing His promise/prophecy.  Is the promise to be immanently implemented, or is it timeless?  Here we will pay special attention to the Hebrew term (5769. עוֹלָם `ôlām), typically rendered “forever” in our English Bibles.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Some Examples

We start at the beginning, with God’s original promise to Abram of the land of Canaan: Gen 13:14-15

[14] The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, [15] for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.

Here’s our first encounter with the “forever” condition — `ôlām.  Now we all know what our word “forever” means; something like “to the end of time”.  But is that what the Hebrew word means?

Here is one dictionary’s definition:

5769. עוֹלָם `ôlām: A masculine noun meaning a very long time. The word usually refers to looking forward but many times expresses the idea of looking backward. It may cover a given person’s lifetime (Ex 21:6;1Sa 1:22); a period of many generations (Jos 24:2;Pr 22:28); the time of the present created order (Dt 33:15;Ps 73:12); time beyond this temporal sphere, especially when used regarding God (Ge 21:33;Ps 90:2;Da 12:2,7). The term also applies to many things associated with God, such as His decrees, His covenants, and the Messiah (Ge 9:16;Ex 12:14;Mi 5:2 [1]). This word describes the span of time in which God is to be obeyed and praised (1Ch 16:36;Ps 89:1 [2]; 119:112). In the age to come, there will be no need for sun or moon, for God Himself will be the everlasting light (Isa 60:19,20; cf. Rev 22:5).

Clearly, this term refers to an extended, but undefined, period of time.  Young’s literal translation of Genesis 13:15 is:

[15] for the whole of the land which thou are seeing, to thee I give it, and to thy seed–to the age.

In the Bible, there are commonly two “ages” talked about: this age, and “the age to come”.  The idea is that “this age” is the current period of time of the verse in which life is following its usual pattern.  No one knows how long that will continue.  But many prophecies allude to the “age to come”, whose character will be fundamentally different than that of “this age”.
So we can think of `ôlām as a period extending to a point in time beyond which we can see no further – the horizon, if you will, of time, but not the end of time.  A reasonable English rendering is: “as long as a very long time”.

God repeats his Abrahamic promise to Moses before rescuing the Hebrews from Egypt: Exodus 6:8

[8] I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.’”

It might help us to grasp the meaning of this word to review how it is variously translated in the Hebrew Bible.  Certainly, its translation as “forever” is its predominant translation.  The following surely isn’t an exhaustive list of its occurrences.  But it is representative.

Gen 48:4 “and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession.’”

Lev 25:32 “As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem at any time the houses in the cities they possess.”

Here we see it used with the negative, lo’ – resulting in a “not ever” English translation:

Jdg 2:1 “Now the angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you,”

Interpreting the Promises

So far we haven’t shown that the term ôlām could possibly not mean “without end”, only that it sounds, w/r/t God’s land promise to Abraham/Israel, that His intention was for it to be a secure, long-lasting covenant.  Are there other prophecies/promises invoked for ôlām that we know were temporal?  Yes.

Speaking to David, God makes this commitment to him concerning his son Solomon and his future line of sons; 2 Sam7:12

[12] When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. [13] He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

We have a parallel verse in 1 Chr 17:12

[12] He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever.

God is saying that he will establish Solomon’s throne (over what was at that moment the United Kingdom of Israel) `ôlām. However, as is well known, Solomon’s literal throne over his kingdom was challenged by the northern tribes, and then rejected by them when Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, took that throne.  So while under Rehoboam it could still be said (since he was a Davidic king) that David and Solomon’s throne still reigned, it just wasn’t over Israel but only Judah and Benjamin.

Why was God’s promise abbreviated and seemingly withdrawn?

Certainly, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that Solomon was no David when it came to devotion to the LORD.  Solomon’s life was one of support for blatant apostasy among his foreign wives.  Just the fact that he had a huge harem of wives and concubines was an affront to God (1 Ki 11:3).  However, in addition, these wives led Solomon himself into foreign worship (1 Ki 11:4), aggressively violating God’s first commandment (“word”) from Sinai.  Neither was he to have many horses (Dt.17:16-17).  Yet he is known for his vast stables in Jerusalem that housed his animals (1 Ki 4:26).

So given that following the 70 and 135 AD destructions, Jews were essentially banished from living in the land, at least ‘officially’, until 1948, we should ask what, if anything, intervened such that God’s ôlām promise was curtailed, or perhaps even rescinded?

In a post-exile retrospective, the author of Deuteronomy has this to say: Dt 29:22-28

[22] And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick— [23] the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and wrath— [24] all the nations will say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ [25] Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, [26] and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. [27] Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, [28] and the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.’

The author here is looking back on the Babylonian destruction and exile (anachronistically, obviously, since according to the narrative of the book, Israel has not yet entered the land the first time) and asking what caused such a cataclysm to happen; why was it that not only didn’t Israel possess their land ôlām, but they were attacked, destroyed, and banished from it?  He then answers his own question.

Immediately following this retrospective we find the author of Deuteronomy declaring that God will have mercy on the exiles and see to their restoration to their land if they “return to the LORD”; Dt 30:1-3:

[30:1] “And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, [2] and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, [3] then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you.

And, just in case somebody has misunderstood God’s redemptive proposition, the Deuteronomist puts a fine point on that proposition a few verses later; Dt 30:16-18:

[16] If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. [17] But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, [18] I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.

(Oddly and perhaps confusingly, this is Moses’ message to Israel chronologically before they entered the land and took possession of it the first time.)  It’s hard to miss the fact that Israel’s possession of the land is contingent on their love and faithfulness toward their LORD, YHWH.

Reconciling the Conditional and Unconditional Land Promises

We started out looking at God’s promise to Abram and his descendants of the land he could then see (Gen 13:14-15; also Gen 12:7).  God apparently placed no conditions on this promise.  In fact, the sense we get is that it is Abram’s reward for his faithfulness in abandoning his home and land and following God’s directions to Canaan.

Yet later, when Abraham’s descendants are in the land, fulfilling one of God’s promises to Abram, they learn of some requirements applicable to them as the land’s inheritors.  To them, the promise of the land is not unconditional!

Does this make sense?  Can we reconcile the two different approaches to the land covenants?  Yes, I think so.  And here’s how.

It would have made little sense for the LORD to admonish Abram 500 years before his descendants even existed and then entered Canaan, to make sure that they loved the LORD and were perpetually faithful in carrying out His commands.  How would Abram ever fulfill such a condition?

On the other hand, once the descendants were in the land, having been admonished by Moses throughout their Exodus, their Sinai experience, and their 40-year sojourn in the desert, God had every right to expect their faithfulness to Him as His priesthood on earth (Ex 19:5-6).  The same is true following their hundreds of years of admonitions from their prophets to live faithfully and righteously, their exile to Babylon because of their unfaithfulness, and subsequent return.

And, there may be another significant point to be made here.  Many of the post-exilic return-to-the-land promises seem to have the character that God Himself will not be the One to “pull up” the restored but still disobedient Jews from their land in the future.  For example, here’s Amos prophesying in 9:15:

[15] I will plant them on their land,

and they shall never again be uprooted

out of the land that I have given them,”

says the LORD your God.

Amos, a pre-Assyrian exile prophet, is prophesying, nevertheless, about God’s treatment of the future exiles upon their return to the land.

Initially, we’re left quite uncomfortable with verses like this.  And, understandably so.  Obviously, the Jews were uprooted from the land not only in the 8th and 6th centuries BC, but also in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

Ezekiel, writing contemporaneously with the exile, proclaims this; Ezk 11:17-18:

[17] Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ [18] And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations.

Here we should notice two things: first, there is no mention of ôlām, and second; Ezekiel’s message has a bit more expectation associated with it – that the returnees will eradicate all of their remaining idol altars, intermarriages, and other detestable things.  Was this accomplished?  Ezra (Ezr 9:1), in surveying post-exilic Israel, doesn’t seem to think so.

Here’s Isaiah on the same topic; Isaiah 60:18-21:

[18] Violence shall no more be heard in your land,

devastation or destruction within your borders;

you shall call your walls Salvation,

and your gates Praise.

[19] The sun shall be no more

your light by day,

nor for brightness shall the moon

give you light;

but the LORD will be your everlasting light,

and your God will be your glory.

[20] Your sun shall no more go down,

nor your moon withdraw itself;

for the LORD will be your everlasting light,

and your days of mourning shall be ended.

[21] Your people shall all be righteous;

they shall possess the land forever,

the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,

that I might be glorified.

So what is the point in these seemingly unconditional return prophecies?  I’ll offer you my opinion, and that is that God is setting His expectations for the returnees.  Meeting His expectations is the condition.  He expects their faithful adherence to His will.  It’s hard to misunderstand the imperative of “Your people shall all be righteous.”  He hardly needs to spell out that that is the condition for “they shall possess the land ôlām.”

If they once again find themselves evicted from their land, it won’t be His doing.  Rather it will be because after they didn’t return to and rely on Him in love and faithfulness, He simply left them to their own consequences.  This is actually quite a common judgment of the LORD regarding aspects of the people’s apostasy other than their ability to live in the land (Ps 81:12).

You may not sense it from these passages, but I get the distinct impression that God is drawing the line here.  He’s saying: “I saved you out of Egypt and you were thankless.  You continually violated all that I had commanded you at Horeb, and so I disciplined you with forty years of wandering, and subsequently, exile.  Now, by My mercy, I have redeemed you once again, with you knowing full well what I require of you as told to you by all of your prophets.  If you insist on ignoring these requirements yet again, you’re on your own.  It won’t be Me that uproots you from the land, or subjects you to devastation or destruction; but if you don’t live righteously with Me, neither will I act to prevent it.”

I’ve often wondered about God’s virtual silence in the Bible following the Babylonian return.  Had God said all He needed to say to the succeeding generations?  The Hebrew Bible finishes chronologically with the prophet Malachi.  And the message he brings is the familiar one of condemnation of the many in the nation who continue to behave unrighteously.  For example, we have this:  Malachi 3:16-18

[16] Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the LORD and esteemed his name. [17] “They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. [18] Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.

It seems that living with the LORD in the land carried with it certain requirements that, if unmet, had serious consequences.  But it does not appear that God felt the need to further explain Himself to the unfaithful — His curses or simple abandonment from those who refused to seek and serve Him.

Land Prophecies and Modern Israel

As mentioned in the introduction, there are thousands of Christians and Jews today who imagine that the Bible has something to say about modern Israel, its right to exist, the modern Jews’ right to inhabit it, not to mention its role (for certain sects of Christianity) as the scene of various end-time events.  It is quite common, for example, especially in the United States, for Christians (and some Jews) to believe that the reconstitution of Israel in 1948 was the fulfillment of some Biblical prophecy.  (I don’t know which one they pick.)

Was it?  What specific prophecy was unmet at that time that that event fulfilled, and what is the Biblical evidence for that conclusion?  But more than that, does the Bible actually say anything about the modern state of Israel?

My opinion is that it does not.  I hold that opinion because all of the prophecies of Israel occupying the land promised to Abram for his descendants, and being restored to it following their exile, were all made and fulfilled before or during that exilic return.

There are no Biblical prophecies regarding the nation of Israel occupying the land of Israel following the Babylonian return.  (You should check this for yourself so that you are assured.)  And there are no New Testament prophecies of Israel in or returning to the land.

Modern Israel On Its Own

So if the Bible has nothing to say about the modern state, meaning that there is no Biblically-attested, God-ordained franchise of those of the Jewish faith today on the land of Canaan/Palestine/Israel, how should we think about Israel, particularly in light of its struggle against Palestinian and Iranian terrorists?

That’s a much simpler question to answer than the question of whether or not there remain any Biblical prophecies pertaining to modern Israel.  To answer this question, we don’t need to analyze texts.  We just need to have a functional moral compass.

The vast majority of Israelis today are secularists.  Not only are they not observant Jews, they may have no faith of any kind.  Nevertheless, they are human beings.  As such they are to be loved and served by us, their neighbors.  And, like any human beings, they deserve their God-given right to not be assaulted by others: i.e. freedom from others acting to remove their right to life.

The thing that makes this situation ambiguous is that passive Palestinian civilians deserve this same right.  Unfortunately, their terrorist overlords, who they elected, have insisted on positioning them such that the terrorists can hide behind (or underneath) these civilians, exposing these non-combatant people to assaults by Israel’s IDF intended to destroy Hamas terrorist strongholds.  (This same tactic is being employed by Iranian-supported Hezbollah in the north.)

The centroid of world moral opinion should be firmly positioned in support of Israeli and Palestinian innocents; and against Palestinian terrorists (who have burned alive Jewish families, beheaded Jewish infants, and raped, mutilated, and taken Jewish women hostage to no doubt incur unspeakable horrors).  This is straightforward: defend/protect the innocent defenseless; destroy the destroyers.

I just can’t help but think that this represents a significant opportunity for a righteous God to intervene not only to protect innocents but to punish evil.  He wanted His name to be glorified in this land.  This would be a great way for Him to do that.  Let’s pray that He does.