In talking about the Land of Promise, we must begin with the land that was promised to Abraham in approximately 2100 BC:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country; and from your relatives; and from your Father’s house, to the land that I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great. And so your shall be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).

Let’s first notice that this promise from God was a “conditional” promise, not an “unconditional” promise. Why? Because God first told Abraham that he had to leave where he had been living with his relatives in (Haran) and go to a land that God hadn’t yet revealed to Him. If Abram hadn’t left Haran, the promise would have been made null and void.

And so, the promise involved land and the building of a great nation, and all of the blessings that go with that. Abraham obeyed God and headed south, believing in God’s promise. It was there in the Land of Canaan that God told him:

And the LORD said to Abram after Lot had separated from him, “Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are….For all the land which you see I will give it to you and to your descendants forever” (Genesis 13:14-15).

Forever? Yes, but that’s not all, as God later told Abram,

“I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you and to your descendants the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:7-8).

So now, the promise of land was elevated to the status of being an “everlasting possession” as an integral part of an “everlasting covenant.” However, several hundred years later during a time of famine in Canaan, the family was invited by Joseph (you remember the story of his ascendance to second in command under Pharoah) to live in Egypt during the time he served in Pharaoh’s court. But after Joseph’s death and a change in command in Egypt, the Israelites became slaves and served different Pharaohs for the next 430 years. And so, the issue of the land being an “everlasting” promise is certainly brought into question simply because Abraham’s descendants were no longer in the land. But the essence of the promise will be clarified hundreds of years later after Moses leads the children of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness, with the intention of “returning” to the Land of Promise. Here is Moses’ final message to the nation, just before they would enter the Promised Land under Joshua:

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So, choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them” (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).

Now we see a clarification of the promise made to Abraham. Just like the original promise was conditional, based upon Abraham leaving Haran before he knew where he was going, so now we see that the promise of remaining in the land would only last as long as the Israelites obeyed God. But, we know from Old Testament history that Abraham’s descendants only turned to God and obeyed Him during short intervals of their history. When the nation was divided after King Solomon, the Northern Kingdom of Israel never produced a “godly” king; and Judah to the south only produced an occasional “godly” king. As a result, the Northern Kingdom was overrun by the Assyrians in 722 BC and the people were removed from their land, and in 586 BC the southern Kingdom of Judah was overrun by the Babylonians, removing the people from the land of Judah. This occurred in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy that the people would lose their inheritance in the land due to idolatry, immorality, injustice, and indifference to God (Jeremiah 17:4). And for the next 70 years, Israel did not occupy the land, until they were allowed to return under King Cyrus of Persia in 536 BC.

At this time, the Israelites returned under the leadership of Ezra the scribe and Haggai the prophet in repentance and served God by rebuilding the temple that was destroyed by the Babylonians, and reinstituting the sacrifices offered by the Levitical Priesthood. But even though Cyrus allowed the Israelites to return to their land, the Persians were still the world power at the time, and only “allowed” the Israelites to re-occupy what was once their land. And later came the Greeks, and then the Romans, all of whom allowed the Israelites to occupy their land, even though their land was really under the control of each of those world powers. In short, Israelites “occupied” the land, but it was never again “officially” theirs.

For the next 500 years, the Israelites were allowed to “occupy” land that was controlled by a major foreign power, the Persians, the Greeks, and then the Romans. All of this was good until AD 66 when rebellion broke out in Jerusalem with Jewish rebel factions driving out the Romans from the Temple Mount, and each faction vying for control over the people. Rome had finally had enough, and after a four year struggle, beginning in Galilee and moving south, the Romans finally destroyed the city of Jerusalem, burning the temple and destroying the priesthood, putting an end to all sacrifices. When Jerusalem fell in AD 70, over 100 thousand Jews had been killed, and those who remained went to serve Rome working in the mines or on galley ships, or as servants to the aristocrats in Rome.

And for the next 1,900 years, the Land of Promise was called the Land of Palestine, a land that was controlled by a variety of foreign world powers. But in 1948, the land of Israel was given as a homeland for Jews, and even though other people inhabited the land and lived peacefully with the Jews who were already there, they became a new state, their own state, occupying a portion of the original land given to Israel in the Old Testament.  

And now, let’s return to the issue of whether that land of Promise was to be an “everlasting” promise. Looking at all of the periods of history when Israel did not occupy the land, we see that the original promise given to Abraham actually had conditions attached to it, namely, if Israel obeyed God, they could stay in the land, but if not, they would lose their inheritance and be destroyed and dispersed, which we know from history is just what happened.

Many have noted the fact that the only way Israel could return to their land was if they returned in repentance and faith. And if you read the Books of Ezra and Haggai, that is how the exiles returned to the land, that is, in repentance and faith. Those prophecies of returning to the land have already been fulfilled, and there is no mention of any “double fulfillment” for the present day. The Jews who returned to the land in 1948 were largely unrepentant atheists who were antagonistic toward the God of Israel, and they certainly rejected the Messiah. And so, their current occupation of the land is not a fulfillment of any biblical prophecy. Many have recognized this and suggested that the current occupation is just a prelude to the nation’s future repentance. Although repentance, at least in part, may one day happen in the future, it is not a part of Bible prophecy regarding the Land of Promise.  

But is the acquisition of physical land by Israel really what we should be focusing on? If you are a follower of Jesus, there has already been a fulfillment of prophecy and that prophecy forms the heart of the New Covenant. And it is to that issue that we will turn our attention next week as we look at Part 2 of our study of Israel and the Land of Promise. I hope you will join me.