Most promises in the Bible are spoken to one person. The promises to Israel are different. God spoke them to a whole people, and He kept speaking them across hundreds of years, through deserts, wars, exile and return.
This page looks at what the King James Bible says about God's promises to Israel: who the land was promised to and why, how much land the text describes, what God pledged at Mount Sinai, which promises came with conditions, and what the prophets and the New Testament add. It sticks to what the text says. Questions about modern borders and governments are outside its scope, and we do not take sides on them here.
You will also see why these promises matter to people who are not Jewish. Many of God's promises to His people show what kind of God He is, and that never changes.
Who did God promise the land to?
The promise of a land started with one man and was handed down through three generations before it reached a nation.
- Abraham. Unto thy seed will I give this land, said God when Abram first reached Canaan (Genesis 12:7). In Genesis 15 God sealed it with a covenant.
- Isaac. During a famine, God told him to stay in the land and said He would keep the oath He swore to Abraham (Genesis 26:3).
- Jacob, renamed Israel. At Bethel and again later, the same land was promised to him and his seed (Genesis 28:13, 35:12).
- The twelve tribes. Through Moses, God said He would bring Jacob's descendants out of Egypt and give them the land as a heritage (Exodus 6:8).
Notice that the land is almost always tied to the fathers. Moses, Joshua and later writers keep repeating the phrase the land which the LORD sware unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The nation did not earn the land; it inherited a promise. For the beginning of that story, read God's promises to Abraham and God's promises to Jacob.
Seven times God said I will
When Moses first went to Pharaoh, things got worse, not better. The people's work was made harder and they turned on him. God answered with one of the fullest promises in the Old Testament.
Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments: And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD.
Exodus 6:6-8 (KJV)
Count the I wills. God would bring them out, rid them of slavery, redeem them, take them as His people, be their God, bring them into the land and give it to them. Every one depends on God, not on Israel. The passage opens and closes with I am the LORD, as if God were putting His name at the top and the bottom of a contract.
The people were too crushed to listen at first (Exodus 6:9). God kept His word anyway. That is worth remembering on days when you are too tired to believe much of anything.
The promise at Mount Sinai
In the third month after leaving Egypt, Israel camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Before God gave the Ten Commandments, He told the people what He wanted them to become.
Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
Exodus 19:5-6 (KJV)
A peculiar treasure means a special possession, something you set apart because it is precious to you. A kingdom of priests is often explained as a whole nation that would stand between God and the rest of the world. God's choice of Israel was always meant to bless others.
This promise has an if at the front. It was the shape of the covenant at Sinai: God would be their God, and they were to obey His voice. Peter later used the same words for believers, calling them a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.
Promises with an if, and promises resting on an oath
Leviticus 26 is one of the clearest places to see both kinds of promise in the same chapter.
If ye walk in my statutes
The first half of the chapter lists blessings for a faithful nation: rain at the right time, full harvests, peace, safety from wild animals, victory over enemies. It builds to what may be the best promise of all:
And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.
Leviticus 26:12 (KJV)
These blessings were tied to Israel's obedience. The chapter goes on to warn what would happen if they turned away, all the way to being scattered from the land.
Yet for all that
Then, after all the warnings, the chapter turns. Even scattered in the land of their enemies, God would not throw His people away.
And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God.
Leviticus 26:44 (KJV)
Just before this, verse 42 says God would remember His covenant with Jacob, Isaac and Abraham, and remember the land. Right after it, verse 45 says He would remember the covenant of their ancestors. Their behavior could cost them the blessings. It could not cancel the covenant. Our guide are God's promises conditional? looks at this pattern across the Bible.
How much land, and where is it?
People ask where God's promised land is and how big it was meant to be. The Bible gives several descriptions, written for different moments. Here they are side by side, using the place names the text uses.
| Passage | How the land is described |
|---|---|
| Genesis 15:18 to 21 | From the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates, home to ten named peoples, including the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites and Jebusites |
| Exodus 3:8 | A good land and a large, flowing with milk and honey, where six named peoples lived |
| Exodus 23:31 | From the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the river |
| Numbers 34:1 to 12 | The land of Canaan with exact borders: the wilderness of Zin and the Salt Sea in the south, the Great Sea on the west, Mount Hor and the entrance of Hamath in the north, the Sea of Chinnereth and the Jordan on the east |
| Joshua 1:4 | From the wilderness and Lebanon to the Euphrates, and to the Great Sea toward the sunset |
Numbers 34 is the most detailed and describes Canaan itself. Genesis 15 and Joshua 1 describe a wider reach. In the days of Solomon, 1 Kings 4:21 says he ruled over kingdoms from the river to the land of the Philistines and the border of Egypt. Scholars draw the ancient lines in different ways, and we leave the maps to them.
Did God keep His promises to Israel?
The book of Joshua answers with three of the strongest sentences in the Old Testament. After the conquest, the land was divided among the tribes, and the writer stopped to say this:
And the LORD gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein. And the LORD gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them; the LORD delivered all their enemies into their hand.
Joshua 21:43-44 (KJV)
Joshua said the same thing in his farewell speech, and centuries later Solomon said it again at the dedication of the temple: there hath not failed one word of all his good promise.
It did not happen overnight, and it did not happen for everyone in the first generation. Because of unbelief, the men counted from twenty years old and up who murmured against God died in the wilderness, all but Caleb and Joshua (Numbers 14:29 to 30). Moses himself saw the land only from a mountaintop. But the promise to the nation stood, and their children went in.
A new covenant, written on the heart
Later in Israel's history, the nation broke the Sinai covenant again and again and was carried into exile. In that dark time, God spoke through Jeremiah and promised something new.
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Jeremiah 31:33 (KJV)
The old covenant was written on stone. The new one would be written inside people. Verse 34 adds that everyone would know the LORD and that God would forgive their sin and remember it no more. And verses 35 and 36 tie Israel's future to the sun, the moon and the stars: as long as those keep their courses, Israel will not cease to be a nation before God.
Hebrews 8 quotes Jeremiah 31:31 to 34 and says Jesus is the one who brings the new covenant. That is how a promise first made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah became good news for people of every nation who trust Christ. Christians understand how this fits with God's promises to Israel as a nation in different ways. Some see the church as sharing in those promises, and others expect them to be kept to Israel in a future time as well. Romans 11 is the chapter both sides study most closely.
What God's promises to His people say to you
If you are not Jewish, the land promises were not made to you, and it is wise not to claim them as yours. But the promises to Israel still teach you a great deal about God.
They show that God chooses out of love, not because of size or merit. They show that He keeps His word through generations, even when His people fail. They show that He disciplines without abandoning. And Paul's words in Romans 11:29 are a comfort for anyone God has called: He does not take back His gifts. Moses put it simply in Deuteronomy 7:9: He is the faithful God, keeping covenant and mercy to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments.
To see how these promises connect with the ones in Genesis, read God's promises in Genesis. To go deeper into covenants as a whole, read our guide to covenant promises.
Read them one at a time
Book Two picks up at Numbers and goes through Esther, so it holds the promises God spoke to Israel in the wilderness, at the border of the land, under Joshua and the judges, through the kings and in the return from exile. Exodus and Leviticus, including Sinai, are in Book One. Each promise has its own page with the King James verse and a prayer.