Promised Land

Interpretations

Jewish interpretation

The concept of the Promised Land is a central religious belief of the Jewish people.

Mainstream Jewish tradition regards the promise made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as applying to anyone a member of the Jewish people, including proselytes and in turn their descendants and is signified through the brit milah (rite of circumcision).

Genesis 15:18 records God's covenant with Abraham, which includes the borders of the Promised Land:

בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא כָּרַת ה' אֶת אַבְרָם בְּרִית לֵאמֹר: לְזַרְעֲךָ נָתַתִּי אֶת הָאָרֶץ הַזֹּאת מִנְּהַר מִצְרַיִם עַד הַנָּהָר הַגָּדֹל נְהַר פְּרָת.

In English:

On that day God made a covenant with Abraham: To your offspring I assign this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates

— The Contemporary Torah

Book of Joshua 1:4 records the first prophecy given to Joshua about the conquest of the land:

מֵהַמִּדְבָּר֩ וְהַלְּבָנ֨וֹן הַזֶּ֜ה וְֽעַד־הַנָּהָ֧ר הַגָּד֣וֹל נְהַר־פְּרָ֗ת כֹּ֚ל אֶ֣רֶץ הַֽחִתִּ֔ים וְעַד־הַיָּ֥ם הַגָּד֖וֹל מְב֣וֹא הַשָּׁ֑מֶשׁ יִֽהְיֶ֖ה גְּבוּלְכֶֽם

In English:

Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.

— THE JPS TANAKH

Christian interpretation

New Testament

In the New Testament, the descent and promise is reinterpreted along religious lines. In the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul the Apostle draws attention to the formulation of the promise, avoiding the term "seeds" in the plural (meaning many people), choosing instead "seed," meaning one person, who he understands to be Jesus (and those united with him). For example, in Galatians 3:16 he notes:

"The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say "and to seeds", meaning many people, but "and to your seed", meaning one person, who is Christ."

In Galatians 3:28–29 Paul goes further, noting that the expansion of the promise from singular to the plural is not based on genetic/physical association, but a spiritual/religious one:

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."

In Romans 4:13 it is written:

"It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith."

German Lutheran Old Testament commentator Johann Friedrich Karl Keil states that the covenant is through Isaac, but notes that Ishmael's descendants have held much of that land through time.

Jerome

The boundaries of the 'Promised Land' given by Jerome around 400 CE read:

You may delineate the Promised Land of Moses from the Book of Numbers (ch. 34): as bounded on the south by the desert tract called Sina, between the Dead Sea and the city of Kadesh-barnea, [which is located with the Arabah to the east] and continues to the west, as far as the river of Egypt, that discharges into the open sea near the city of Rhinocolara; as bounded on the west by the sea along the coasts of Palestine, Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, and Cilicia; as bounded on the north by the circle formed by the Taurus Mountains and Zephyrium and extending to Hamath, called Epiphany-Syria; as bounded on the east by the city of Antioch Hippos and Lake Kinneret, now called Tiberias, and then the Jordan River which discharges into the salt sea, now called the Dead Sea.

Later theologians

Keil and Delitzsch, in the 19th century, note that Abraham had taken the western lands of Canaan after Lot, his nephew, had chosen to occupy the Jordan Valley in Genesis 13:11-12, but Lot in fact "had no share in the promise of God", and the words "northward and southward and eastward and westward ... all the land that you see" in Genesis 13:14-15 indicate that Abraham was promised the "whole extent" of the land.

Muslim interpretation

Jewish and Muslim tradition, with records that date to at least as far back as the works of 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, postulates that Abraham's first son, Ishmael, was the founder of the Arab race. Islam's main prophet, Muhammad, also considered himself a Hanif, that is, a true monotheistic believer of the religion of Abraham. His tribe, the Quraysh, traces its ancestry to Ishmael. However, this cannot be proven as there are 30 missing ancestors from the lineage. For these reasons, Muslims in general understand that Arabs are also entitled to the “Promised Land” bestowed upon their common ancestor Abraham (“Ibrahim”).

Later uses

American colonialism

Many European colonists saw America as the "Promised Land", representing a haven from religious conflicts and persecution. For instance, Puritan minister John Cotton's 1630 sermon God's Promise to His Plantation gave colonizers departing England to Massachusetts repeated references to the Exodus story, and later German immigrants sang: "America [...] is a beautiful land that God promised to Abraham."

In a sermon celebrating independence in 1783, Yale president Ezra Stiles implied that Americans were chosen and delivered from bondage to a Promised Land: "the Lord shall have made his American Israel 'high above all nations which he hath made'," reflecting language from Deuteronomy of the promise.

Shawnee/Lenape scholar Steven Newcomb argued in his 2008 book Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery that Christendom's discovery doctrine was also the same claim of "the right to kill and plunder non-Christians" found in this covenant tradition, whereby "the Lord" in Deuteronomy told his chosen people how they were to "utterly destroy" the "many nations before thee" when "He" brought them into the land "He" had discovered and promised to "His" "Chosen People" to "possess", and that this "right" was woven into US law through the 1823 Johnson v. McIntosh Supreme Court ruling.

African-American spirituals

African-American spirituals invoke the imagery of the "Promised Land" as heaven or paradise and as 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've Been to the Mountaintop", in which he said:

I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've 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'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Palestinian nationalism

Some Palestinians claim partial descent from the Israelites and Maccabees, as well as from other peoples who have lived in the region.

• 1845: Salomon Munk, Palestine, Description Géographique, Historique et Archéologique," in "L'Univers Pittoresque:

Under the name Palestine, we comprehend the small country formerly inhabited by the Israelites, and which is today part of Acre and Damascus pachalics. It stretched between 31 and 33° N. latitude and between 32 and 35° degrees E. longitude, an area of about 1300 French: lieues carrées. Some zealous writers, to give the land of the Hebrews some political importance, have exaggerated the extent of Palestine; but we have an authority for us that one can not reject. St. Jerome, who had long traveled in this country, said in his letter to Dardanus (ep. 129) that the northern boundary to that of the southern, was a distance of 160 Roman miles, which is about 55 French: lieues. He paid homage to the truth despite his fears, as he said himself, of availing the Promised Land to pagan mockery, "Pudet dicere latitudinem terrae repromissionis, ne ethnicis occasionem blasphemandi dedisse uideamur" (Latin: "I am embarrassed to say the breadth of the promised land, lest we seem to have given the heathen an opportunity of blaspheming").