What land, and for how long?

The short answer Settled

A real territory, promised to last. God named the land's borders and the peoples living in it, and He told Abram to walk it. Then He called both the covenant and the possession of the land "everlasting," and set that promise to run through Abraham's descendants in their generations.

What the passages show

The land is described the way ground is described. God tells Abram to look north, south, east, and west from where he stands, and then, "Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you" (Genesis 13:17). Two chapters later the grant is given edges: "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates" (Genesis 15:18). Then comes a list of ten peoples living inside those edges, from the Kenites to the Jebusites (Genesis 15:19-21). A picture of something else does not have borders, occupants, a length, and a width.

Years later God repeats the covenant and puts a length of time on it. The covenant is "an everlasting covenant" (Genesis 17:7), and the land is "all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession" (Genesis 17:8). The same Hebrew word, olamHebrewעוֹלָםolameverlasting5769 · Noun, masculine singular; with the prefix le-, "forever", does both jobs, one verse apart. Whatever lasting the covenant has, the land holding has the same.

That word can mean less than forever. A servant who chose to stay with his master "shall serve him forever" (Exodus 21:6), and that "forever" ends when the servant dies. So the word alone settles nothing, and this page does not rest on it alone. What settles it is what the passage says around the word. The servant's term is tied to one man. This promise is made to Abraham "and your descendants after you in their generations" (Genesis 17:7), so it is written to run past the death of the man it was spoken to.

Centuries after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, Psalm 105 still calls the covenant everlasting and says what it was about: "He remembers His covenant forever, The word which He commanded, for a thousand generations" (Psalm 105:8), confirmed "To Israel as an everlasting covenant" (Psalm 105:10), with these words: "To you I will give the land of Canaan As the allotment of your inheritance" (Psalm 105:11).

The usual objection

Many readers treat the land as a picture: Canaan stands for heaven, or for the believer's rest, or for God's blessing in general. On that view the territory was always the outward shell of a spiritual promise, so no land promise was ever left unkept. Others grant that the land is literal but say olamHebrewעוֹלָםolameverlasting5769 · Noun, masculine singular; with the prefix le-, "forever" only means a long age that ends.

Both points have something true in them. Scripture does sometimes apply a real thing to a greater one, and Hebrews 4 does so with the rest Israel failed to enter. And olamHebrewעוֹלָםolameverlasting5769 · Noun, masculine singular; with the prefix le-, "forever" really can describe a limited time. But a later application does not give Genesis a second meaning. Each passage has one meaning, and these passages name rivers, draw borders, list peoples, and set the promise to run through generations of descendants. That plain sense has to be established before anything is built on it.

The words behind it