Land: An Important Biblical Theme for God’s People
The land of Israel is disputed territory. Today it is the center of competing political claims. Israel is also the center of competing theological claims. Do the Biblical land promises have any present relevance? Does Israel have any claim to the land promised to Abraham and his seed? These are matters of theological dispute. You may even wonder why God promised Abraham land. The importance of the seed promise and the blessing are clear to many Christians. Jesus Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the seed promise (Gal. 3:16). The blessing is the gospel going out to all the nations (Gal. 3:8). But Christians often struggle to understand the significance of the land promise. Land seems unspiritual and perhaps even irrelevant to Christianity.
The Land Promise Is Relevant for Christians
Some theologians endorse the view that the land promise has no relevance today. Just as the sacrifices were fulfilled in Christ, so also the land promise is fulfilled in Him. What “in the land” was to Israel, “in Christ” is to the Christian.1 Thus the land is a type of Christ. This view greatly misunderstands the significance of the land theme in the Bible.
The themes of land, seed, and blessing begin in Genesis 1. All three of these themes appear together at the climax of the Creation narrative. Genesis 1:28 identifies God’s words in 1:28–30 as a blessing. The blessing centers on seed (“be fruitful, and multiply”) and land (“replenish the earth, and subdue it”). When Adam and Eve sin the blessing is replaced with a curse (Gen. 3:17). The content of the judgment focuses on seed (3:16) and land (3:17).
This is the context of the land promise to Abraham. Because of sin the earth/land has been cursed. But with Abraham land will once again be part of God’s blessing. Israel’s possession of the land could be as much of a return to Eden as is possible in a fallen world (Ezek. 36:35). It is “a good land,” a land in which they will “not lack any thing” (Deut. 8:7–10). Ideally, Israel would live under God’s law within the land and demonstrate to the nations what good and wise rule over the earth looks like. In this way they were to draw the nations to God (Deut. 4:5–8). Long life in the land is promised for obedience (Deut. 5:33), but disobedience will result in exile and death (Deut. 28:64; 30:15–20). Sadly, Israel chose the route of disobedience. Though Israel enjoyed some brief periods blessing in the land (cf. 1 Kings 4:20, 21, 25), Israel’s disobedience meant that the nation suffered under the covenant curses (Deut. 28:15–68). Eventually, this included exile from the land.
But disobedience and exile were not the last word. God had promised Abraham that the land of Canaan would be his and his seed’s as an “everlasting possession” (Gen. 17:8). God sent prophets to Israel to expand on this promise and to predict the return of the people to the land. The land promises far exceeded the return that occurred in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. For instance, Amos prophesied of a future in which Israel will be permanently planted in the land and the plowman overtakes the reaper, and the mountains flow with wine rather than water (9:13–15; cf. Joel 3:18). This is obviously an image of extraordinary fecundity.
The New Testament affirms the importance of this theme. Jesus promises that the meek will “inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). Paul says the creation groans as it waits to be set free from its bondage (Rom. 8:21, 22). Finally, the Bible closes not with the discarding of the physical world but with a New Creation and a New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1, 2).
The hermeneutical error of those who wish to equate the OT “in the land” with a NT “in Christ” is the supposition that the physical does not really matter. These interpreters assume that the physical serves only as the type to the spiritual. But a survey of the land theme for Genesis 1 to Revelation 21 reveals that the physical earth is important in its own right as God’s good creation.
The Land Promise Persists for Israel
Another set of interpreters agree that the physical world is theologically significant. However, they argue that the land of Israel is only a type. The promises of Israel’s restoration will be fulfilled when God renovates the earth in the new creation. The beneficiaries of the promises will be all believers; Jewish believers will receive no special benefit.
Those arguing for this position make three primary arguments. First, the New Testament has broken down the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. Jewish believers therefore have no special status or promises. Second, the New Testament reinterprets the promise to Abraham, showing him to be heir of the world and not just Canaan (Rom. 4:13). Jesus also reapplies the promise of inheriting the land from the land of Canaan to the whole earth (Matt 5:5). Third, the land promised to Israel was therefore simply a type of the New Earth.2
These interpreters are correct that the benefits of the land promise will encompass the whole world. But they err in thinking that the New Testament reinterpreted the Old Testament. The extension of the land promise to the world occurs as early as the time of David and Solomon. Psalm 72 (identified as “of Solomon” in the superscription) alludes to the promised borders of Israel in verse 8, but instead of constraining them between the Euphrates River and the river of Egypt, the psalmist extends the realm of the Messiah to encompass “the ends of the earth.” Likewise, in Psalm 2 God promises the Messiah that he will receive “the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession” (2:8). Amos predicts that God will raise up the Davidic house so that Israel will “possess the remnant of Edom, and all the heathen, which are called by my name” (9:12). Abraham is heir of the world because the Son of Abraham, the Son of David rules over the world.
But even though the land promise encompasses the whole creation, Israel will still receive the land promised to Abraham in the Millennium and New Creation. Those who deny Israel’s special status appeal to Galatians 2:28. But as conservatives have pointed out in debates with evangelical feminists, equality in Christ is not incompatible with differing roles and responsibilities. For instance, James notes that Gentile nations, and not Israel alone, can be identified as “called by my name” (Amos 9:12; Acts 15:16, 17). He concludes from this that Gentiles do not need to become Jews and submit to the Jewish law to be saved. But Amos 9 also teaches that Israel will possess the nations since the Davidic heir will rule over all the earth.
Those who interpret the land promises to Israel as mere types of the New Earth make several hermeneutical errors. The fundamental error is their willingness to reinterpret the Old Testament in light of what they think the New Testament is teaching. Both Old and New Testament are the Word of God given through His prophets. The authorial intent, both divine and human, must be respected in interpreting both Testaments. Compatibility rather than contradiction between the Testaments should be the goal of the interpreter. Second, these interpreters err in thinking that oneness in Christ erases all distinction in role.3 Third, they fail to distinguish between a partial fulfillment and a type. What Israel had the potential to enjoy in the Promised Land was an anticipation of the New Creation rather than a type that would pass away as the sacrifices did.
Conclusion
Even though land may seem like an unspiritual theme when compared to justification or glorification, the earth is God’s good creation. God has promised to redeem His fallen creation (Rom. 8:21), and He has promised the nation Israel a special place in the Millennium and New Creation. In the end, Jesus, the Messiah, will rule from Israel’s capital over His redeemed world.
Far from irrelevant, the author of Hebrews places us in the same position as Abraham. Abraham lived in the Promised Land, but he lived there as a pilgrim and a sojourner. He endured by faith, looking for the better country, for the city prepared by God for him. We also live in a promised land—a renewed earth is our inheritance (Matt. 5:5). But we live here as sojourners. We are foreigners in this present evil age looking with Abraham to the New Jerusalem prepared for us by God.
Brian Collins (PhD, Bob Jones University) serves as an elder at Mount Calvary Baptist Church and on the Bible integration team at BJU Press.
(Originally published in FrontLine • November/December 2013. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)
Photo by Adam Groffman, used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.
- Christopher J. H. Wright, God’s People in God’s Land: Family, Land and Property in the Old Testament (Paternoster, 1990), 111–13; idem., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 123–24. Wright argues that just as Israel had social and economic responsibilities in the land, so Christians have such responsibilities to one another in Christ. See also D. C. Allison Jr., “Land in Early Christianity,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1997), 644. [↩]
- O. Palmer Robertson, Understanding the Land of the Bible: A Biblical-Theological Guide (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1996), 141–44; Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 209–12. [↩]
- Strangely, they even think that equality in Christ prevents Israel from occupying the Promised Land. This places these interpreters in the odd position of arguing that all the nations receive the land promise except Israel, to whom the promise was made. [↩]