Bibliotheca Sacra 138 1981 302 12 Copyright 1981 by Dallas Theological Seminary Cited with permission The Promised Land A Biblical Historical View Walter C Kaiser Jr In the Old Testament few issues are as important as that of the promise of the land to the patriarchs and the nation Israel In fact Cr x land is the fourth most frequent substantive in the Hebrew Bible 1 Were it not for the larger and more comprehensive theme of the total promise2 with all its multifaceted provisions the theme of Israel and her land could well serve as the central idea or the organizing rubric for the entire canon However it does hold a dominant place in the divine gifts of blessing to Israel Yet there is more to the promise of the land than religious significance arid theological meaning an essential interrelationship exists between the political and empirical reality of the land as a Jewish state and all biblical statements about its spiritual or theological functions The land of Israel cannot be reduced to a sort of mystical land defined as a new spiritual reality which transcends the old geographic and political designations if one wishes to continue to represent the single truth intentions3 of the writers of the biblical text Instead the Bible is most insistent on the fact that the land was promised to the patriarchs as a gift where their descendants would reside and rule as a nation The Land as Promise The priority of the divine Word and divine oath as the basis for any discussion of the land is of first importance From the 302 The Promised Land A Biblical Historical View 303 inception of God s call to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees God had marked out a specific geographical destination for him Gen 12 1 This territorial bequest was immediately reaffirmed and extended to his descendants as soon as Abraham reached Shechem Gen 12 7 Thus Alt was certainly wrong in rejecting the land as a part of the original promise Noth was closer to the mark when he declared that the promise of both the land and the seed was part of the original covenant to the patriarchs 4 So solemn was this covenant with its gift of the land5 that Genesis 15 7 21 depicted God alone moving between the halves of the sacrificial animals after sunset as a smoking furnace and a flaming torch v 17 all translations are the author s unless noted otherwise Thus He obligated Himself and only Himself to fulfill the terms of this oath Abraham was not asked or required likewise to obligate himself The total burden for the delivery of the gift of the land fell on the divine Provider but not on the devotion of the patriarch As if to underscore the permanence of this arrangement Genesis 17 7 13 19 stress that this was to be a MlAOf tyriB an everlasting covenant Boundaries of the Land The borders of this land promised to Abraham were to run from the River Egypt Myirac mi rhan mi to the Great River the River Euphrates trAp rhan ldoGAha rhAn Aha Gen 15 18 Or in the later words of the oft repeated pairs of cities the land included everything from Dan to Beersheba Judg 20 1 1 Sam 3 20 2 Sam 3 10 17 11 24 2 15 1 Kings 4 25 Heb 5 5 and in reverse order 2 Chron 30 5 These two cities marked the northernmost and southernmost administrative centers rather than sharply defined boundary lines Even though a number of evangelical scholars have wrongly judged the southern boundary of the River Egypt to be the Nile River 6 it is more accurately placed at the Wadi el Arish which reaches the Mediterranean Sea at the town of El Arish some ninety miles east of the Suez Canal and almost fifty miles southwest of Gaza cf Num 34 2 5 Ezek 47 14 19 48 28 Amos 6 14 likewise pointed to the same limits for the southern boundary the brook of the Arabah hbArAfEhA lHana which flows into the southern tip of the Dead Sea Other marks on the same southern boundary are the end of the Dead Sea Num 34 3 5 304 Bibliotheca Sacra October December 1981 Mount Halak Josh 11 17 the Wilderness of Zin Num 13 21 Arabah Deut 1 7 Negeb Deut 34 1 3 and Shihor opposite Egypt Josh 13 3 5 1 Chron 13 5 7 The western boundary of the land was the Sea of the Philistines that is the Great Sea Num 34 6 Josh 1 4 Ezek 47 20 48 28 or Mediterranean Sea while the eastern boundary was the eastern shore of the Sea of Kinnereth the Jordan River and the Dead Sea Num 34 7 12 Only the northern boundary presented a serious problem The river that bordered off the northernmost reaches of the promised land was called the great river which was later glossed according to some to read the River Euphrates in Genesis 15 18 Deuteronomy 1 7 and Joshua 1 4 In Exodus 23 31 it is simply the river But is the Euphrates River to be equated with the Great River Could it not be that these are the two extremities of the northern boundary This suggestion proves to have some weight in that the other topographical notices given along with these two river names would appear to be more ideally located in the valley which currently serves as the boundary between Lebanon and Syria The river running through this valley is called in modern Arabic Nahr el Kebir the great river One of the most difficult topographical features to isolate is the plain of Labwah or toward in the coming to Hamath tmAHE xbol bHor Num 13 21 or just simply Labwah Hamath Num 34 8 Josh 13 3 5 1 Kings 8 65 2 Kings 14 25 1 Chron 13 5 Amos 6 18 Ezek 47 15 48 1 28 Mazar Maisler has identified Labwah Hamath or toward Hamath as the modern city of Labwah in Lebanon This city in a forest just to the south of Kadesh and northeast of Baalbek was of sufficient stature to be mentioned in Amenhotep II s stele as Rameses II s favorite hunting grounds8 and in Tiglath pileser III s text along with Hamath Numbers 13 21 seems to point to the same plain bHor a district further defined by 2 Samuel 10 6 8 and Judges 18 28 Added to this site are Mount Hor which may be the same as Mount Akkar just south of the great river in Lebanon and the towns of Zedad Ziphron Hazer Ainon all referred to in Num 34 3 9 cf Ezek 47 15 19 48 1 2 28 and Riblah Ezek 6 14 All these towns may be bearers of names similar to some Arabic village names today for example Riblah Sadad Qousseir Hazer or Qaryatein Hazer Spring 9 The Promised Land A Biblical Historical View 305 While the precise details on the northern border remain extremely tentative the evidence favors some line far to the …