This Land is Mine

The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.—Leviticus 25:23

Abridged from the booklet of the same name by the Chicago Bible Students

To both Jew and Arab, to both Christian and Moslem, the land of Israel, hardly larger than the state of Illinois, is viewed with something akin to reverence as The Promised Land. In truth, it is not so much the land itself, although with irrigation and hard work it can be made extremely fruitful, but it is religious associations that have made this a hallowed land.

The heartbeat of this religious fervor is the golden city of Jerusalem itself. The Mosque of Omar and the silver-domed Mosque of El Aqsah, place Jerusalem as one of the most holy cities for the sons of Islam. The tomb of David and the citadel which bears his name recall a bygone glory for the Israelis. The faithful orthodox of Jewry, rocking in earnest prayer at the Western Wall, rejoice that their prayer has finally been answered—that at last it is "This year in Jerusalem." For the Christians it is no less so. The sacred associations with the life of Jesus of Nazareth, especially in Jerusalem, make this holy ground also for the followers of the Galilean. It was here that Jesus died and it was here that Jesus was buried. And it was here, according to the New Testament scriptures, that Jesus rose again on the third day.

Thus it is little wonder that this ancient land is the most hotly-contested piece of real estate on the globe today.

Claims and Counter Claims

Current mid-East tensions can be readily traced to the formation of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948 and the subsequent hostility of its Arab and Palestinian neighbors, many of them uprooted from their ancestral homes. It is this hostility which erupted in the repetitive border wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 and the almost continuous skirmishes ever since.

The past century has seen two very different sets of claims and counter-claims upon the land. First, there has been the conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs in a search for borders that both sides consider mutually secure and defensible. Second, there is the related debate between the Jews and the Palestinians as to who has a right to live on the land in the first place.

The first question is one of politics and security, while the second is one of history. Let us examine the second question more closely.

The discussion goes something like this. The Palestinian charges, "We have been uprooted from a land that our ancestors have lived on for over a thousand years." The Israeli counters, "Yes, but before that, our ancestors occupied this land for over two thousand years."

"But," the Palestinian is quick with his counter-claim, "before that, our ancestors dwelt in this land as its original inhabitants." The Palestinian goes on to explain that his heritage is different from that of his Arab neighbor. While the Arabs are blood relatives of the Israelis, being both a Semitic people who trace their roots back to Abraham, the Palestinian claim is to Hamitic stock, descendants from the original Canaanites from which the land received its name, "the land of Canaan."

Biblical Borders

For many Israelis there is yet another significant factor in the conflicting claims for the land of the Middle East. Their position is that the proper borders of Israel should be nothing less—and nothing more—than those borders spelled out in the Old Testament as the inheritance of the Jewish people.

To us, as Christians, this position seems eminently correct. This is the position we wish to examine in our investigation of the Bible and its promises considering the division of the land.

This Land is Mine!

What right has anyone—and if anyone, Who?—to arbitrarily partition the land at all. Leviticus 25:23 deals with the jubilee law of ancient Israel, whereby purchasers of property were to return the land to the original possessors every fifty years. The text reads: "The land shall not be sold forever; for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." The basis of the entire matter, then, lies in the fact that not only the ancient land of Canaan but the land of the whole world as well belongs to the God who created it, and he has a right to divide it as he chooses.

Deuteronomy 32:8, 9 reads: "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance."

The Old Testament does have a bias toward Israel. We read in Amos 3:2 that God says of Israel, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth." The reason for this bias, this favoritism of God toward one nation over another, is the unique relationship the nation of Israel possessed with God—a covenant relationship.

A Covenant with Abraham

In order to trace this covenant we need to turn to the twelfth chapter of the book of Genesis. There we find God approaching a man named Abram in the far-off city of Ur, in the land of the Chaldees. Abram is told to leave his land and journey to another, one which God would show him. There God would make a covenant, or pact, with him. In obedience, Abram and his entourage journeyed into the land of Canaan.

Close to Shechem, the modern Nablus on the West Bank, Abram first settled in the promised land. Further wanderings took him as far as Egypt and then back to Canaan: first to Bethel, north of Jerusalem, and then finally to Mamre, in the vicinity of modern Hebron. There God fulfilled his promise and made a covenant with him. This covenant is recorded for us in Genesis 15:7: "I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it."

After sealing this covenant, in verse 17, God outlined the scope of the promised land in verses 18 through 21: "In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the River of Egypt unto the Great River, the River Euphrates: the Kenites, the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites."

The boundaries of the area promised to the descendants of Abram are defined in two distinctly different manners—first, by a geographical description; and second, by naming the inhabitants of the land at that time.

Two specific borders are mentioned—the River of Egypt and the River Euphrates. Bible scholars are divided in their opinion as to the identity of the River of Egypt. Some say that it is the main trunk of the Nile. Others claim it to be the easternmost branch of the Nile near Suez. Still others argue for the Wadi el Arish, now a dry river bed in the eastern Sinai.

We cite six reasons, which include every use of the term "River of Egypt," for the belief that the description is of the Wadi el Arish.

The River of Egypt

(1) In 1 Chronicles 13:5; 2 Chronicles 7:8; and 1 Kings 8:65, the River of Egypt is used to describe a boundary of Israel during the reigns of David and Solomon. No scholar holds that, historically, the kingdom of either David or Solomon included the entirety of the Sinai peninsula.

(2) The River of Egypt is used as a southern boundary of Israel in Numbers 34:3-5 and Joshua 15:4, 47, where it is closely allied with the geographic sites of Gaza, Kadesh, and the southern end of the Dead Sea. All of these points are far removed from either the Suez or the Nile, but lie in proximity or on a line with the Wadi el Arish. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that the Joshua 15:4 reference mentions it in connection with "Azmon," a site that has been tentatively identified by archaeologists with a recent dig in the area of el Arish.

(3) The river is mentioned in Isaiah 27:12. The Septuagint version of this text, translated in the days before our common era, utilizes the word "Rhinocororua," a name archaeologically identified with the site of el Arish itself.

(4) In 2 Kings 24:7, a passage referring to Jehoiakim, a king of Judah defeated by Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century before the common era. we read: "And the king of Egypt came not up anymore out of his land: for the King of Babylon had taken from the River of Egypt unto the River Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt." The fact that the Babylonian empire, at this time, did not control the Sinai peninsula is well documented. (5) The scriptures say that the immediate descendants of Abram, before inheriting the land, would go through a period of affliction in "a land that was not theirs" (Gen. 15:13). This is descriptive of the period of bondage which Israel spent in the land of Goshen, on the east bank of the Nile river in Egypt. Therefore, if the River of Egypt referred to the Nile, they would not have been in "a land that was not theirs." Rather, in that case, they would have been afflicted in a land that would eventually become their rightful inheritance.

(6) In the Genesis 15 text referred to earlier, the "River of Egypt" is contrasted with "the great river, the Euphrates." Great as is the mighty Euphrates, it cannot be compared with the mighty Nile for greatness. The Nile is second only to the Amazon as the longest river in the world. Therefore, since the River of Egypt lacks the appellation "great," it must be not as great as the Euphrates, and therefore not the Nile. In fact the Nile is over twice as long as the Euphrates.

The Euphrates on the North

The river Euphrates can be shown from the scriptures to be a northern, and not an eastern, border of Israel.

(1) The River of Egypt mentioned in Numbers 34:3-5 and Joshua 15:47 is given as the southern border. The contrast to be anticipated, therefore, is that in the second phrase in Genesis 15:18-21, the river Euphrates would be the northern boundary.

(2) Another description of the promised land is found in Exodus 23:31. Here it is described as extending (east to west) from the red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines (the Mediterranean); and (south to north) from "the desert" (the Negev) to "the River," the Euphrates.

(3) In yet another description of the promised land (Deut. 11:24) the river Euphrates is listed in conjunction with Lebanon, to Israel’s north, and not to one of the countries that lie to the east of Israel.

(4) In Genesis 12, Abram was to leave Ur of the Chaldees and journey to the promised land. Ur is located just west of the Euphrates, near the Persian Gulf, in the modern country of Iraq. If the Euphrates was meant to describe an eastern border of Israel, Ur would already be within the "promised land" and there would have been no necessity to "journey" to it.

A Complete Description

The most complete description of the land which Abram’s seed was to inherit is found in Deuteronomy 1:7, 8: "Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites [the Nebo ridge on the east bank of the Jordan]; and go to all the places nigh thereunto [the Jordan valley, east of the river itself]; in the plain [in Hebrew, Arabah, the Great Rift of the Jordan valley south of the Dead Sea]; and in the hills [the Judean hills]; and in the vale [in Hebrew, Shephelah, lying between the coastal plain and the Judean hills] and in the south [the Negev]; and by the seaside [the Mediterranean coastal plain]; to the land of the Canaanites [particularly the Plain of Sharon and the Jezreel Valley]; and unto Lebanon [in the north—How far north?], unto the Great River, the River Euphrates. Behold I have set the land before thee: go and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them."

Ten Nations Dispossessed

Next, note the boundaries of the land as described by the list of inhabitants then living there. These nations, which Israel was to conquer, are listed many times. We will just cite two of them.

Ten enemy nations are listed in Genesis 15:19-21, while Joshua catalogs only seven of them. The harmony between these two accounts is simple. The Genesis record covers all the tribes whose land Israel was to inherit while the record in Joshua, written years later, omits the names of those nations which had already been conquered.

Let us locate these early peoples in the land of Palestine. We will deal first only with those who are listed in the Genesis account and note that they are either located in the Negev or east of the Jordan river, territory which Israel had already made secure before the text given in the book of Joshua.

The Kenites are mentioned first. They were iron workers, living in the northern Sinai, near present day Eilat. The Kenites first mined copper at the spot known today as "King Solomon’s mines."

The Kenizzites were hunters who reputedly lived on the western slopes of Mount Seir, in the Wadi Arabah. This is due south of the Dead Sea, close to the famous red rock city of Petra. The location of the Kadmonites is not definitely known. However, since their name means "easterners," it can be presumed that they lived east of the Jordan river. Tradition locates them at the foot of Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights.

The Rephaim were large men, giants as it were. According to Deuteronomy 3:11 they lived in Bashan, which lies east of the Jordan, south of the Sea of Galilee.

The next grouping we want to examine are those names found in both the lists of Genesis and the book of Joshua. There are six tribes in this list, all located west of the Jordan river, from the Negev on the south through Lebanon on the north.

First, in this grouping, are the Hittites. There are two ancient people, both known as Hittites. One of these lived in the far north, in the present day country of Turkey. These are the ancestors of the current Armenians. However, the Hittites referred to in the Genesis record are more probably the people known as the "Hurrians" by archaeologists. They dwelt in Lebanon, from the Mediterranean to the slopes of Mount Hermon.

The Perizzites are believed to have lived in the Shephelah, east of the Philistines of the Gaza strip, but to the west of modern Hebron.

While the Genesis account locates the Amorites in the area of Hebron and Mamre, they are also found just north of the Arnon river in the Trans-Jordan. The Israelite troops, under the command of Moses, made the first approach to the promised land and engaged in battle with Sihon, king of Heshbon. Heshbon has been recently excavated by archaeologists and lies between Amman and Madaba in today’s country of Jordan.

The Canaanites lived in the fertile farming area of the Plain of Sharon and the Valley of Jezreel. Their famous fortress city was Megiddo, whose location is undisputed today by archaeologists.

We are informed in Joshua 24:11 that the Girgashites dwelt west of Jordan, presumably in the Jordan valley itself, northward from Jericho to the city of Adam.

Finally, the Jebusites were the early occupants of the city of Jerusalem. So strongly had they fortified this city, in fact, that it held out against the Israelites for nearly 500 years before being captured for David by his nephews, Joab and Abishai.

There is one more tribe to consider—the Hivites, who, while not listed in the Genesis account, are named in the book of Joshua. They were probably omitted in Genesis because they were not recognized as a people in Abram’s time but sprung up shortly thereafter.

Two generations later, however, they evidently had come into existence and were located in the West Bank area, at ancient Shechem, modern Nablus. It was a Hivite, a resident of this town, who defiled Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, in one of the uglier incidents in biblical history (Gen. 34).

The combined area of these eleven nations is the very same area encompassed in the geographic description of the promised land—a second witness to the title deed of the land which Israel was to inherit.

Up to now we have looked at the promise of land in the Bible for the Jewish people. What about the claims of the Arabs and the Palestinians? Are they left to be without a homeland of their own?

God’s Promises to the Arabs

The claims of the Palestinians and those of the Arabs are very different, and thus we will treat them separately. We will first look at the promises of God recorded in the Bible for the Arabs. Most of the Arab nations have sprung from one of four biblical ancestors—Ishmael, Esau, Moab, and Ammon.

In Genesis 16:12 we read about Ishmael, the older brother of Isaac, and the son of Abraham by Sarah’s bond-maid Hagar. There is a positive promise made concerning his descendants: "He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren."

This implies a shared inheritance with the children of Abraham through Isaac—the people of Israel. Since the main descendants of Ishmael today are represented by the Bedouin tribes, who are already living peaceably in Israel, this promise seems peculiarly fitting.

There are further promises for Ishmael in the Bible. "As for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation" (Gen. 17:20). Again: "And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed" (Gen. 21:13). And yet again, "I will make him a great nation" (Gen. 21:18).

Similarly of the descendants of Esau it is written that God has given them a distinct territorial grant of their own. We read of this in Deuteronomy 2:5, "Meddle not with them [the Edomites, sons of Esau, ancestors of many of today’s Arabs]; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot breadth; because I have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession."

The territory of Mount Seir is in present-day Jordan, between the Moabite territory at the southern end of the Dead Sea, southward to Aqaba, on the Red Sea.

The other two noted ancestors of the Arab tribes were Moab and Ammon, the children of Abraham’s nephew, Lot.

Of the former of these we read in Deuteronomy 2:9, "Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle; for I will not give thee of their land for a possession; because I have given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession."

"Ar," meaning "mountain," or "mountain range," is well identified with the mountain range to the east of the Dead Sea, just south of the Arnon river. This is to be a possession for ever for the children of Lot.

Likewise, of Ammon, we read in Deuteronomy 2:19, "When thou comest nigh over against the children of Ammon, distress them not, nor meddle with them: for I shall not give thee of the children of Ammon any possession; because I have given it unto the children of Lot for a possession."

This "land of Ammon" is the western portion of present day Jordan. Indeed, Jordan’s capital city, Amman, takes its name from this ancient heritage of the children of Ammon.

Thus, with the Ishmaelites (the Bedouins) living amongst the Israelis; and with provision for the other Arabs—whether they descended from Moab, Ammon, or Esau—to the east of the Dead Sea, the Bible lays the groundwork for a peaceful solution with equality toward all—both for Jews and for Arabs.