Genesis 12:1-3
G-d promises Abraham to make him a big nation.
"Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."
(Gen 12:1-3 KJV)
Genesis 12:7
G-d promises Abraham To give him and his seed the land of Cenaan.
Genesis 13:14-16
G-d repeats His promise to give Abraham and his seed the land of Cenaan.
Genesis 15:7-21
G-d anchors His promise to Abraham in a Covenant
(brit bein habetarim), and defines the borders of the promised land: from the river of Egypt to the river of Perat.
Genesis 17:1-14
G-d changes Avram's name to Avraham, promising to make him the father af many nations, and anchors the promise of the land of Cenaan in the Covenant of circumcision.
"And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a G-d unto thee, and to thy seed after
thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their
G-d. And G-d said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the
covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant."
(Gen 17:7-13 KJV)
Genesis 17:19-21
G-d tells Abraham that the Covenant will be materialized in Sarah's son, Isac.
Genesis 22:14
The mount where Isaac is offered as sacrifice, is chosen to be the future mountain where the Sanctuary will be built, surrounding Isaac's altar.
Genesis 26:2-5
G-d promises Isaac the land of Cenaan and to be the heir of Abraham's Covenant.
Genesis 28:13-15
G-d promises Jacob to give him and his seed the land of
Cenaan.
Genesis 35:9-12
G-d changes Jacob's name to Israel and promises him the
land promised to Abraham and Isaac.
Exo 2:24 KJV
"And G-d heard their groaning, and G-d remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob."
Ezek 44:9 KJV
"Thus saith the Lord GOD; No stranger, uncircumcised in heart,nor uncircumcised in flesh, shall enter into my sanctuary, of any stranger that is among the children of Israel."
Deuteronomey 8:7
"Your G-d is bringing you to a good land - a land with flowing sreams and underground springs gushing out in valley and mountain. It is a land of wheat, barely, figs and pomegrants - a land of oil-olives and honey-dates. It is a land where you shall not eat your bread in rations and you will not lack anything - a land whose stones are iron
and from whose moumtains you will quarry copper. When you eat and are satisfied, you must therefore bless your G-d for the good land that He has given you."
"For the whole area is excellent for crops or pasturage and rich in trees of every kind, so that by its fertility it invites even those least inclined to work the land. In fact, every inch of it has been cultivated by the inhabitants and not a parcel goes to waste. It is thicky covered with towns, and thanks to the natural abundance of the soil, the many villages are so densely populated that the smallest of them has more than fifteen thousand inhabitants".
Josephus, "The Jewish Wars", Book III 3:2, Penguin edition, Pg. 192.
"Rami, Ben Yehezkel, traveled to Bnei Brak. There he saw goats eating under the fig trees. Honey was dripping from the figs, milk was flowing from the goats and they mixed together on the ground. He exclaimed, 'This is it, a land flowing with milk and honey!'"
Gemara Ketubot 111b.
"And I shall turn Jerusalem into a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals. I will make the cities of Judah into a desolation without inhabitants".
Jeremiah 9:10
"And I shall make the land a desolate waste, so that its proud strength will cease, and the mountains of Israel will be so desolate that no one will cross them. Then they shall know that I am G-d when I make the land a desolate waste because of the abominable things they have done."
Ezekiel 33:28-29
"So devastated will I leave that land that your enemies who shal dwell therein shall be desolate on it."
Leviticus 26:32
Ramban - Leviticus 26:32
"Similarly, that which He stated here, 'and your enemies that shall dwell therein shall be desolate in it' constitutes a good tiding, proclaiming that during all our exiles, our Land will not accept our enemies. This also is a great proof and assurance to us, for on the whole inhabited part of the world one cannot find such a 'good and large land' which was always lived in and yet is as ruined as it is [today] (1), for since the time we left it, it has not accepted any nation or people, and they all try to settle it, but to no avail" (2).
Commentary by Prof. Chavel:
(1) When these words were written - sometime after the middle of the 13th century - the land of Israel had just experienced the Mongolian invasion (of 1259-60), which following upon the constant wars of the Crusaders, left the country in total ruin.
(2) A clear reference to the many nations that have tried - and failed - to cultivate the Land of Israel since the Jews were driven from it by the Romans. This indubitable historical fact is, as Ramban correctly poits out, "A great proof" that the Land belongs to Israel.
Mark Twain visited the Land of Israel in 1867:
"We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given wholly to weeds - a silent, mornful expanse... a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely... we never saw a human being on the whole route. We presses on toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jerusalem. The further we went the hotter the son
got and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became... there was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than which bounds the approach to Jrusalem...
Jerusalem is mornful, dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopless, dreary, heartbroken land... Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies... Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse
of the Deity beutify a land? Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition - it is dream-land"
Mark Twain, "The innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrim's Progress", Volume II Harper and Brothers (1922) N.Y. Pp. 216-359.
"Outside the walls of Jerusalem however we saw no living being, heard no living voice. We encountered that desolation and that deadly silence which we would have expected to find at the ruined gates of Pompey... a total eternal dread spell envelopes the city, the
highways and the villages... the burial grounds of an entire people."
Alfons de Lamartine, "Recollections of the East", Volume I London (1845) Pg. 238 (Hebrew-French).
"Until today no people has succeeded in establishing national dominion in the Land of Israel... no national unity or spirit of nationalism has acquired any hold there. The mixed multitude of itinerant tribes that managed to settle there did so on lease, as temporary residents. It seems that they await the return of the permanent residents of the land."
Professor Sir Joun Wolliam Dosson in "Modern Science in Bible Lands", London (1888) Pp 449-450.
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