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 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 (Samaria) and Judah, the Hasmonean kingdom, and the Herodian kingdom. At their heights, these realms ruled lands with similar but not identical boundaries.
Jewish communities living in the land after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem defined the term as where Jewish religious law prevailed and excluded territory where it was not applied.Havelock, Rachel (2011). River Jordan: The Mythology of a Dividing Line, University of Chicago Press, p. 210. Quote: "[F]or rabbinic communities dwelling in the land following the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kokhba uprising [...] The designation 'Land of Israel' was reserved for specific locales within the biblical boundaries [...] where Jews constituted enough of a majority to govern their lives through Jewish law." Though 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 (: "I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners"). 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 (Gen 15:18–21 (NIV): "On that day the LORD made a covenant"). 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most adherents of replacement theology (or supersessionism), who hold the view that the Old Testament prophecies were superseded by the coming of Jesus,Vlach, Michael J. (2010). Has the Church Replaced Israel?: A Theological Evaluation, B&H Publishing Group, pp. 3–5. a view often repudiated by Christian Zionists as a theological error.Spector, Stephen (2009). Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, Oxford University Press, p. 21. Evangelical Zionists variously claim that Israel has title to the land by divine right,Wagner, Donald E. and Davis, Walter T. (2014). Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land, The Lutterworth Press, p. 161. or by a theological, historical and moral grounding of attachment to the land unique to Jews (Parkes, James).Kenny, Anthony J. (1993). Catholics, Jews, and the State of Israel, Paulist Press, pp. 75–78. The idea that ancient religious texts can be warrant or divine right for a modern claim has often been challenged,Prior, Michael (1997). The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique, A&C Black, p. 171: "As an agent of legitimacy in international law, the Zionist appeal to Tanakh for legitimation of its claims to Eretz Israel is not much more compelling than if the Portuguese and Spanish Governments today presented to the UN the bulls off Nicholas V and Alexander VI, which also claimed divine authority, in their bid to reclaim the lands of the New World."Bickerton, Ian (2012). The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Guide for the Perplexed, A&C Black, p. 13. and Israeli courts have rejected land claims based on religious motivations.Cotran, Eugene; Mallat, Chibli; Stott, David, eds. (1996). The Arab-Israeli Accords: Legal Perspectives, BRILL, pp. 11–12.
During the League of Nations mandate period (1920–1948) 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 (Palestina) followed always by the two initial letters of "Eretz Yisrael", א״י Aleph-Yod.Sharon, Moshe, The Holy Land in History and Thought: Papers Submitted to the International conference edited by Moše Šārôn.Cohen, Israel (1951). A Short History of Zionism, London: Frederick Muller Co., p. 96.
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. It is also mentioned in the 2018 Nation-state law.
Etymology and biblical roots
The term "Land of Israel" is a direct translation of the Hebrew phrase (Eretz Yisrael). This phrase appears nowhere in Pentateuch (Torah), 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.Keith W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History, (1996) Routledge 2013, p. 43. The words are used sparsely in the Bible: King David is ordered to gather 'strangers to the land of Israel' (hag-gêrîm 'ăšer, bə'ereṣ yiśrā'êl) 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' (admat yiśrā'êl), employs eretz Israel twice, respectively at and .Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel, Westminster John Knox Press, 1990, p.152: Quote: "It may be surprising to learn that the designation "the land of Israel" (ereṣ yiśrā'êl), in common use today, occurs for the first time in Ezekiel (40:2; 47:18) and very rarely elsewhere (I Chron. 22:2; II Chron. 2:17), apart from the more restrictive allusion to the Northern Kingdom. By preference, however, Ezekiel speaks of the "soil of Israel" (admat yiśrā'êl), a phrase that occurs eighteen times in the book and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. (The title "holy land", literally "holy soil", used preferentially by Christians, occurs only once, at Zech. 2:12.)"
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.Anita Shapira, 1992, Land and Power, , p. ix. The sanctity of the land (kedushat ha-aretz) developed rich associations in rabbinical thought,Bradley Shavit Artson, 'Our Covenant with Stones: A Jewish Ecology of Earth', in Judaism and Envirobnmental Ehics: A Reader, Lexington Books, 2001, pp. 161-171, p. 162. where it assumes a highly symbolic and mythological status infused with promise, although always connected to a geographical location.Michael L. Satlow, Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice, p. 160, Columbia University Press, 2006. 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" (Ha'Aretz HaMuvtahat) or "Land of Israel" are used in these passages: , and use the term "the land" (ha'aretz), 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" (Eretz Kna'an) 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 (their) midst", can claim inheritance.Rachel Havrelock, River Jordan: The Mythology of a Dividing Line, University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 21. 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' (γῆ Ἰσραήλ) occurs in one episode in the New Testament (Matthew 2:20–21), 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 (the way of Hethlon) to Zedad and Hazar-enan in modern Syria; south by southwest to the area of Busra on the Syrian border (area of Hauran in Ezekiel); follows the Jordan River between the West Bank and the land of Gilead to Tamar (Ein Gedi) on the western shore of the Dead Sea; From Tamar to Meribah Kadesh (Kadesh Barnea), then along the Brook of Egypt (see debate below) 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" (Gevulot Ha-aretz),Kol Torah, vol. 13, no. 9, Torah Academy of Bergen County, 8 November 2003. which in Jewish tradition defines the extent of the land promised to the descendants of Abraham, through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob.See 6th and 7th portion commentaries by Rashi 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 (see debate below), the "Sea of the Philistines" i.e., the Mediterranean, and the "River", the Euphrates), the traditional furthest extent of the Kingdom of David.Stuart, Douglas K., Exodus, B&H Publishing Group, 2006, p. 549.Tyndale Bible Dictionary, Walter A. Elwell, Philip Wesley Comfort, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2001, p. 984.
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 (Red Sea) to the Sea of the Philistines (Mediterranean sea) 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.