5. Land Inheritance Under
the Three Covenants
Each
of the covenants has a land inheritance component. Central to that inheritance
is the Promised Land, which has been
alternately called Canaan, Israel and Palestine. (I will deal with the “name”
issue in the second treatise.) Understanding the inheritance component in these
covenants is critical to today’s land debate and accurately interpreting God’s
actions regarding the return of natural Jews to it today. So I will give extra
attention to this.
- The Abrahamic Land Inheritance
Abraham
was promised both a seed and a land. The two were promised together and are
inseparable. This means whatever is true about the promises to the Abrahamic
seed in its two dimensions is also true
regarding the inheritance of the Land.
Concerning
the Land, God makes some interesting statements. First, He defines its
bounds—from the “River of Egypt” (Nahar Mitzrayim,
ie, the Nile River) to the Euphrates River (Gen. 15:18). Second, He tells
Abraham when his seed will possess the Land, specifically, in the “fourth generation,” (ie, 400 years).
Third, and most importantly, the Lord tells Abraham that this land will be for
an everlasting possession and that he himself will personally inherit the Land
as well as his seed.
These
statements have overlapping meaning in view of the two dimensions of Abraham’s
seed. The statement about 400 years refers strictly to the natural seed of
Israel under the time continuum. But the word that speaks to Abraham personally
and refers to his inheritance as everlasting is outside of time because Abraham
never inherited the Land in his original lifetime. This means the promise of
the Land has an application to the
Eternal Israel seed of Abraham which includes Abraham.
That
Abraham is himself promised
inheritance in the Promised Land, yet during his earthly life never inherited
it is the most crucial point for
discovering the truth about Israel’s relationship to the Promised Land and the
meaning of inheritance in context of the Abrahamic Covenant.
To
unravel and rightly divide this mystery of natural vs. eternal inheritance of
the same Land, we must look deeper
into the two covenants proceeding from the Abrahamic Covenant. They will show
us to whom the Land belongs when, and under what conditions.
- The Mosaic Land Inheritance
Israel’s
sojourn from Egypt to Canaan under Moses fulfils the natural dimension of
promised inheritance to Abraham’s seed. But, unlike the Abrahamic promise,
inheritance under the Mosaic promise was conditional. It was conditioned by the
same factors that characterized the Mosaic covenant and the natural seed
itself—specifically the factors of performance
and perishability.
The conditionality of the Mosaic land inheritance is intriguing in the light of the Abrahamic promise, which was unconditional. As the Mosaic Covenant’s effectiveness was conditioned on human performance, so was Israel’s ability to remain in the Promised Land under that covenant. If Israel failed the covenant, both their right to stay in the Land and their right of inheritance in the Land could be forfeited.9
Interestingly,
the land boundaries assigned to natural Israel were set smaller than those
promised to Abraham, to be expanded based on performance. The Numbers 34 metes
and bounds (from the Nachal Mitzrayim, the “Brook of Egypt” or Wady al Arish, to the “entrance of Hamath”) are significantly smaller than the bounds
promised Abraham. According to Deuteronomy 19, this smaller territory could
only be enlarged to the full extent of the Abrahamic promise as Israel proved
its faithfulness under Moses.10
For
all this however, and as we saw before, the Mosaic covenant was made under the foregone conclusion that it would
be broken. This embraced the equally foregone conclusion that natural
Israel would one day be ejected from the Promised Land, scattered throughout
the world and lose its title to the Land. (The Mosaic covenant also held out
the promise and hope for the return of title and possession based on
repentance. I will address this in detail in the Appendix.)
· Inheritance and Hades
One
final consideration regards natural Israel’s inheritance in light of the
everlasting character of the Abrahamic land promise. As the people of Israel
died, unless they possessed the faith
marking those belonging to Eternal Israel, their final inheritance could
only be death—forever separated from Abraham under the earth in Hades, and thus
permanently from inheritance in the Promised Land on earth.
There
simply is no return from the pit for anyone descending there on death. So if
natural Jews have gone to the pit, they have no possibility of everlasting
inheritance in the Promised Land—not even
the hope of return to the Land through repentance given through Moses. Once
in the pit, their original human identity as the seed of Abraham is of zero
avail.
To
this hour, millions of Abraham’s
descendents through Isaac and Jacob exist in Hades, even though many were
graced to physically live inside the bounds of the Promised Land for a few
decades of mortal life, as Abraham also did. Yet Gehenna remains their final “everlasting possession.” They never will
dwell on the earth again, never mind in the Promised Land.
**********
The
point of all the foregoing is that, as a perishable seed, natural Israel (of
itself) was and remains incapable of permanently receiving the Land promised to
Abraham and his seed everlastingly. Their inheritance as a natural people was
not and is not everlasting, and the Mosaic Covenant was powerless to make it
so.
The
Mosaic promise of land inheritance could point to everlasting inheritance of
the Land through eternal life, but couldn’t produce the life by which the
natural seed could realize the permanence
of inheritance promised to Abraham. Having a fleeting relationship to the
Abrahamic covenant under mortality, natural Israel’s land heirship does not
fulfill the everlasting promise of heirship made through the Abrahamic
Covenant.
9 The issue of loss of inheritance and land title will be
shortly proven below in detail.
10 That
the Mosaic inheritance was extendable to the greater Abrahamic inheritance
extended to the Nile is confirmed by Micah 7:11-12, “—On that day will your boundary be extended. It {will be} a day when
they will come to you From Assyria and the cities of Egypt, From Egypt even
to the Euphrates, Even from sea to sea and mountain to mountain.”