THE BIBLICAL BOUNDARIES OF ISRAEL

THE BIBLICAL BOUNDARIES OF ISRAEL

July 11, 2014 at 1:56pm

It seems to me that if Jewish claims to Israel as the Promised Land given by God to their ancestors are to form the basis for the justification of the existence of the modern State of Israel, the borders of that land would be those described in the Bible. I was very curious as to exactly what those borders would be, so I did a bit of research. I found this article, complete with accurate Bible citations. My Hebrew isn't the best, but with what little I have, I believe them to be accurate translations.

There is some uncertainty only about the southern boundary, hence the straight line through Saudi Arabia.

Geographical Boundaries of Israel: From Egypt to Iraq?

The boundaries of the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants are demarcated in Genesis 15. “On that day
the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.’” (Genesis 15:18). The ‘river of Egypt’ most likely refers to one of the tributaries of the Nile. The word in Hebrew
‘nahar’ denotes a large river and this is how early Aramaic translations along with Jewish commentaries identify the location
(See 1 Chronicles 13:5). The Euphrates begins in Turkey and flows through Syria and Iraq before entering the Persian Gulf.

If these boundaries were applied today, and depending on the route of the southern border from Eilat to the Euphrates, parts
of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, and even Kuwait and parts of Saudi Arabia would be incorporated. Some Zionist groups lay claim to all this territory using the term ‘Eretz Israel Ha Shlema’ to denote the whole or complete land of Israel. While most secular Israelis today would not identify with these ‘biblical’ borders,
the founders of Zionism, including Theodore Herzl, Vladimir Jabotinsky and David Ben-Gurion, certainly did. They saw the
creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, in 1922, as a betrayal of the British Mandate because it denied Zionists the right to settle there.

Nevertheless, it is significant that after nearly 60 years since the foundation of the State of Israel, successive governments have failed to declare what they regard as their territorial boundaries. Israel must be the only country
in the world that has not yet recognized its own borders.

Here is a map of the biblical Promised Land, as cited in the above article.

                                                    Borders of the Promised Land in the Bible
I have satisfied my own curiosity. I leave it to you the reader to draw whatever conclusions you like.