World Council of Churches
Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches
Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn

Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)

INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
“Promised Land”

Church Center Bürenpark, Bern, Switzerland
10 - 14 September 2008 

 The Promised Land
Old Testament Perspective

Very Rev. Fr Dr Paul Nadim Tarazi
St Vladimir Theological Seminary, USA

PDF version for downloads

A major handicap in dealing with the theme of this conference stems from the phrase “promised land”, which is a misnomer. It assumes that there is a given piece of land that was promised by someone to someone else. Looking closely at the biblical evidence, one finds that both terms, “promised” and “land”, are questionable. On the one hand, in Hebrew we have the one word ’eretz that is translated here as “earth” and there as “land”, sometimes in the same passage, as in the classic text Genesis 12:1-3. On the other hand, in a Semitic language such as Arabic the corresponding phrase for “promised land” is “the earth of the promise”. This renders more accurately the biblical concern, which is the divine promise concerning the earth.  

Another major handicap is the traditional view, which still has a tight grip on our minds, that the biblical story deals with historical events. It is, rather, an impressive literature like the Iliad or Odyssey, where Israel, just like the new Jerusalem, is to be grasped within the limits of this literature and in no way outside it. By the same token, the biblical “earth of Israel” is functional only within the confines of scripture.  

A third major handicap lies in our egotistical anthropocentrism that has all along misinformed our hearing of scripture. Jews consider that the “Jewish people” are the focal concern of the Bible; Christians, under the undue influence of Platonic philosophical premises, tend to assume that scripture’s ultimate topic is the human persona. 

As in any literature, it is the earliest passages that are constitutive in that they posit the lexicon as well as the premises for the subsequent literary product. The most widely spread assumption is that the early chapters of Genesis deal essentially with human being or beings. However, this is the clearest case of eisegesis dictated to us by our anthropocentrism. When one hears the text as it stands, one will notice that the toledot—story—of Adam is relegated to the beginning of Genesis 5. It is only then that scripture tells us that it is dealing with “man”. The specific intention of the shift in interest is underscored in that the author uses the unique phrase, “this is the book of the toledot of Adam” (v.1) as if to say, “I am now turning to another scroll.” The first four chapters, on the other hand, are under the heading “the toledot of the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 2:4), where human beings, the animals and the vegetation function merely as an aside. This means that the human being is a subsection in God’s total purview, just as Noah is a subsection in God’s purview of Adam, and Noah’s sons in that of Noah, and so on. That the biblical God’s encompassing interest is in the heavens and the earth he created (bara’) is corroborated by the end of Isaiah, where bara’ is a staple: we hear of “the new heavens and the new earth, which [God] will make”[1] (Is. 66:22; see also 65:17). God’s specific interest is the earth, since it is the actual domain with which the biblical story deals; the heavens are relegated to God himself.[2] Unless one takes seriously this all but forgotten premise, one is bound to mishear scripture. 

Given that Genesis 1-4 controls the rest of scripture in matter of scope and lexicon, it would behove us to have a quick look at it. There we hear that earth is not merely the mother of all vegetation (1:11-12), but also, as ’adamah, the mother of animals (1:25)[3] as well as ’adam (2:7). The close interaction, as well as connection, between these three “children” of the earth, i.e., vegetation, animal and man, is summed up at the close of the first creation narrative: 

God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. (1:29-31)

The only proviso is that humankind should be in charge to secure that God’s will be done, as a king would be in the earth of his deity (1:26-28).  

In the second creation narrative, Adam is assigned a location on God’s earth, a garden planted by God himself (2:8), and is given the opportunity to prove himself. He fails miserably. Adam does not heed a straightforward divine command that is so easy to follow (2:16-17) and, in so doing, he implements his own will instead of God’s. The result is that it was not ’adam who was cursed, but rather the ’adamah, the providing mother for her three children (3:17-19).  

The toledot of Adam continues with Cain, a “servant of the ’adamah” (4:2) as his father was (2:5) and living from it. Cain decides, for no reason in the original Hebrew, to defile the earth, his own mother, with the bloodshed of his brother, who represents half of humanity (4:8)! The result is that Cain ends up “cursed by the ’adamah” (’arur min-ha’adamah; 4:11) and consequently wandering (nad) without a foothold: his mother earth becomes for him “the earth of wandering (nod)” (4:16). This earth is none other than that to which his father was relegated when he was thrown out of the “garden”, since both Adam and Cain are sent “to the east of Eden” (3:24; 4:16). Yet, instead of accepting the divine verdict and relying on God to protect him (4:15), Cain opts to protect himself by building a city (4:17), the ultimate act of arrogance in scripture. Instead of a renewed life and the peace he is envisioning for himself and his progeny[4] behind the city walls, the outcome is extreme bloodshed under the fruit of his progeny, Lemech[5] (4:23-24).  

The alternative to the Adamic Cainite expanded and multi-faceted genealogy is the short Sethite one (4:25-26) that looks for protection not within city walls, but by “invoking the name of the Lord”. It is only when, following the original divine blessing, man (’adam) simply posits (šet) another man (’enoš) that “the Lord is there”, as mighty as a city (Ezek. 48:35), protecting his own, as a shepherd his flock (Ezek. 34) in the open earth of pasture (Ezek. 47:13-48:29). This will eventually be realized by God positing Ezekiel as the consummate ben ’adam.

In the meantime, the expanded biblical Adamic story, beginning with “the toledot of Adam” (Gen. 5), is constructed in a way to show that whenever any ’adam plans to control his own toledot-destiny without viewing it as an integral part of the earth he is living on and sharing with all those who live on it, he is headed for catastrophe. The toledot of Adam culminates with God’s decision to erase all life on earth (Gen. 6:1-7). That of Noah ends with a blessing mixed with a curse (9:25-27). The blessing is assured as a promise to Abraham (12:1-3) who, scripturally, has no toledot. It as though the condition for the implementation of the divine blessing is through someone who would accept to be part of a larger toledot, that of his father (11:27) and, ultimately, of the earth itself. Indeed, Abraham’s “unique” (yachid) son is a gift from God and not the fruit of Abraham’s seed.  And, unlike Abraham and Jacob, Isaac is born in Canaan, lives in it, and dies there without ever leaving it, even in his search for a wife. The story of Isaac, Abraham’s “unique” son, begins thus: 

Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to King Abimelech of the Philistines. The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; settle in the land that I shall show you. Reside in this land as an alien, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfil the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands; and all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” So Isaac settled in Gerar. (Gen. 26:1-6) 

Isaac is the consummate recipient of God’s gift of the earth and thus the realization of God’s promise to Abraham. Yet Isaac had to prove himself worthy of such a gift. Unlike both Abraham and Jacob, famine does not drive him out of Canaan to Egypt. He stays in Canaan in spite of the enmity of Abimelech the Philistine and strikes a covenant of peace with him, thus sharing Gerar, the earth of sojourning for both Isaac and Abimelech. Isaac understands that all inhabitants of the earth are, ultimately, visiting aliens (gerim) since “the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it” (Ps. 24:1), and he commits himself to such by settling at Beer-Sheba, the well that will provide life-giving water so long as the oath of friendship is maintained (Gen. 26:1-33). It is precisely there, at Beer-Sheba, that he hears the Lord saying to him: “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham's sake” (v.24). Unfortunately, Jacob reneges on Isaac’s oath and leaves Beer-Sheba—only to end up slaving, ironically to ensure himself a wife, both in his country of origin, Haran, and in his country of exile, Egypt. 

My reading of Abraham’s story as not being a toledot is corroborated in the story of Joseph, the “divine saviour”, who saves both Israel and its enemy, Egypt, from famine, which is nothing else than mother earth withholding its fruit that feeds its “children”. Joseph, too, is scripturally without toledot: his own sons are adopted by his father, Jacob (Gen. 48). He secured life and peace for his brothers, who sold him into slavery, and this continued even beyond his death (Ex. 1:6). Indeed, it is due to him, as his Hebrew name yoseph indicates, that large numbers were added to the “sons of Jacob” (Ex. 1:7) Calamity struck, we are told, only when “a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Ex. 1:8). Thus Abraham and Joseph remain as eternal reminders that length of days on God’s earth is secured through submission and faithfulness to God’s teachings, rather than through creating one’s own story with one’s own hands.  

With Abraham and Joseph as prototypes to follow, scripture concentrates on their progeny and legacy, the “sons of Jacob”, to show all nations that human beings are incorrigibly egocentric, in spite of God’s special care and graces. The “sons of Jacob” are graced with Moses, a new Joseph, through whom God iterates the lesson that Adam did not heed: the true assurance for length of days on God’s earth does not lie so much in the fruit of the earth as in the obedience to the one who triggers that mechanism in the earth (Gen. 1:11-12). This is the meaning behind and the function of the issuance of a law, which preserved the “sons of Jacob” in the wilderness, the “no-earth”. Yet, again as in the case of Adam, it is this same law that eventually would dispense divine curse as well as divine blessing in “the earth of Canaan” (Lev. 26; Deut. 28). Still, generation after generation, the recipients of such a teaching decide to flagrantly contravene it until “the earth of Canaan” is ravaged by divine decree (Joshua through 2 Kings).

Having showed its general thesis in a specific example, scripture is ready, especially through Second Isaiah, to offer a second chance to Israel, and an invitation to all nations among whom Israel was dispersed, to heed God’s law (Is. 42:1-9; 49:1-7). It is solely abiding by this law requiring mišpat, ’emet and tsedeq that will bring about God’s peace in any part of God’s earth. This is what nascent Judaism understood fully. Instead of flocking back to the earth of Canaan, the Jews settled around synagogues throughout the Roman oikoumenē gē, the inhabited earth. And, as reflected in the prologue to Sirach, the fathers of that nascent Judaism produced the ketubim, the scriptures addressed to the dispersed Israel and the nations alike. The quintessential message of these scriptures is encapsulated in the two books that head them: Job and Psalms. The first tells us the story of a devout Jew who was born, lived, and died outside Canaan; his true home was God’s precepts, which he tried to follow. He showed that he was equal to Isaac, who was born, lived and died in Canaan. His major sin, however, was self-righteousness: he equated pleading his own righteousness with being declared righteous. God had to correct Job with the thunderous voice of a whirlwind (Job 38-39), showing him to be worthy of his name “the enemy (’iyyob) of the Lord” (40:1). It was only when Job repented from his self-righteousness, not because he suffered unjustly, that he was reinstated in the original blessing.

The second book, the Psalms, is the new torah of the new heavenly Jerusalem, calling upon “everything that breathes”, both the lapsed Israel and the nations, to “praise the Lord” (Ps. 150:6) since “the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it” (Ps. 24:1). Later, Paul, a diaspora Jew, would commit himself to bringing the nations of the Roman empire under submission (Rom. 1:5) to the “law of the Spirit of life” (Rom. 8:2), the “law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2), which is nothing else than “the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures” (Rom. 1:1-2). This promise of life in peace (8:6) will be fulfilled only when we realize the Pauline proviso of walking by God’s law (8:3-8) whose heart is the mišpat, the just judgment, as his predecessor Jeremiah taught:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place … For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute mišpat one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place … then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors … Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely … and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? … And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh. (Jer. 7:3,5-7,9-10,13-14)

Only those who have ears not to hear can come up with the monstrous idea that a piece of land would be deeded forever to a group of people by no less than God himself. According to scripture, it is the divine promise that is ‘ad ‘olam, not Canaan. That promise was enacted fully only once in scripture, in Isaac, the “unique” son of the one without toledot. The diaspora Jew Paul captured that teaching for the ages in his inimitable letter to the churches of Galatia, when he wrote to the goyim asking them not to follow in the footsteps of the Jews dwelling in his contemporary Jerusalem, but rather stay where they are, in their “Gerar” (land of sojourn):

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, “Rejoice, you childless one, you who bear no children, burst into song and shout, you who endure no birth pangs; for the children of the desolate woman are more numerous than the children of the one who is married.” Now you, my friends, are children of the promise, like Isaac. (Gal. 4:22-28)