The State of Israel -- By: Charles Lee Feinberg

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 112:448 (Oct 1955)
Article: The State of Israel
Author: Charles Lee Feinberg


The State of Israel

Charles Lee Feinberg

[Editor’s Note: Dr. Feinberg is President of Talbot Theological Seminary, Los Angeles, California, and an outstanding evangelical Old Testament scholar.]

The Land Grant

To the little land of Palestine, about 150 miles long and 60 miles wide, almost a billion souls—Jews, Christians, and Moslem—look as the sacred center of their faith.1 Though many are not aware of the fact, one of the integral features of the Abrahamic Covenant is the grant of the land of Palestine to Abraham and his seed in perpetuity (See Gen 12:7). This promise is reiterated in Genesis 13:14–18, 15:18–21, and 17:6–8 to Abraham; in Genesis 26:1–5 it is confirmed to Isaac; and in Genesis 28:1–4 and 35:11–12 the grant is reconfirmed to Jacob. Similarly, the Davidic Covenant contained as an inseparable element the same promise of the land to the seed of Abraham (Note 2 Sam 7:10). It is with ample justification, then, that the Mosaic writings spend so much time in relating how Israel came back to the land from Egypt, that the Book of Joshua occupies itself so largely with the matter of the distribution of the land among the tribes of Israel, and that the Book of Ezekiel closes with a detailed presentation of the allotment of the land in the time of the earthly reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Land in the Prophets

Every repetition of the Davidic Covenant among the prophets is explicit in stating that Israel will be settled in the

land under the reigning Messiah. Compare Isaiah 9:6–7; 11:11–16; 49:8–21; Jeremiah 23:1–8; Ezekiel 11:17–21; 34:11–15; 36:24–28; Daniel 7:23–27 (especially verse 27 ); Hosea 3:5 and 13:10; Joel 3:17–21

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