In Abrahamic religions, the "Promised Land" is an area in the Levant, called Canaan, that God chose to bestow, via a series of covenants, upon the Israelites, descendants of Jacob (also known as "Israel'), the grandson of Abraham. Outside the Bible this tradition is mentioned in other ancient religious scriptures such as the Islamic Quran and classical historical records.
The Promised Land is translated as such in the following languages related to the topic:
Biblical Greek: γῆ τῆς ἐπαγγελίας, romanized: gē tēs epangelias Phoenician: 𐤀𐤓𐤑 𐤌𐤁𐤕𐤇𐤕, romanized: 'Arṣ Mibtāḥat.
In the context of the Hebrew Bible, these descendants are originally understood to have been the Israelites, whose forefather was Jacob, who was a son of Abraham's son Isaac. The concept of the Promised Land largely overlaps with the Land of Israel (Zion) or the Holy Land in a biblical or religious sense and with Canaan or Palestine in a secular or geographic sense. Although the Book of Numbers provides some definition for the Promised Land's boundaries, they are not delineated with precision, but it is universally accepted that the core areas lie in and around Jerusalem. According to the biblical account, the Promised Land was not inherited until the Israelite conquest of Canaan, which took place shortly after the Exodus.
These promises were given to Abram, later called Abraham, before the birth of his sons. Abraham's family tree includes both the Ishmaelite tribes, the claimed ancestry of Arabs and of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, through Abraham's first son, Ishmael; and the Israelite tribes, claimed ancestors of Jews and Samaritans, descended through Abraham's second son, Isaac.
Biblical narrative
The concept of the Promised Land is first mentioned in the Book of Genesis, which is the first book of the Torah, which collectively refers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
God's covenant with Abraham
God is believed in the Abrahamic religions to have made the following promises to Abraham which are recorded in several verses of Genesis: The had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." – : New International Version (NIV) The appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring [or seed] I will give this land." – : NIV
God repeated the promise in Genesis 13:14-17: The said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, "Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you." – : English Standard Version
Later in a passage called the covenant of the pieces, Genesis 15:18-21 sets out an account of God's gift to Abram, a "huge amount of land", defined by its borders (Gevulot Ha-aretz):Levy, O. (2003),Gevulot Haaretz, Kol Torah article, volume 13, no. 9, Torah Academy of Bergen County, accessed on 11 April 2026 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites." – : NIV
These promises, attributed to God, were given prior to the birth of Abraham's sons.Recounted in and God's further promise was given when Abraham was 99 years of age, after his first son Ishmael had been born: "I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God." – : ESV
Subsequent confirmations God later confirms the promise to Abraham's son Isaac (), and then to Isaac's son Jacob () in terms of "the land on which you are lying". Jacob is later renamed "Israel" () and his descendants are called the Children of Israel or the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The Torah's subsequent Book of Exodus describes it as "land flowing with milk and honey" () and gives verses on how to treat the prior occupants and marks the borders in terms of the Red Sea, the "Sea of the Philistines", and the "River", which a modern English Bible translates to: "I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you." –
The Israelites lived in a smaller area of former Canaanite land and land east of the Jordan River after the legendary prophet Moses led the Israelite Exodus out of Egypt (). The Torah's Book of Deuteronomy presents this occupation as their God's fulfillment of the promise (). Moses anticipated that their God might subsequently give the Israelites land reflecting the boundaries of the original promise – if they were obedient to the covenant ().
Boundaries from the Book of Numbers The boundaries of the "Promised Land" given in the Book of Numbers, (chapter ) are: The South border: (v. ) "Then your south quarter shall be from the wilderness of Zin along by the coast of Edom, and your south border shall be the outmost coast of the salt sea eastward : (v. 4) And your border shall turn from the south to the ascent of Akrabbim, and pass on to Zin : and the going forth thereof shall be from the south to Kadesh-barnea, and shall go on to Hazar-addar, and pass on to Azmon : (v. 5) And the border shall fetch a compass from Azmon unto the river of Egypt, and the goings out of it shall be at the sea." The Western border: (v. ) "And as for the western border, ye shall even have the great sea for a border: this shall be your west border." The North border: (v. ) "And this shall be your north border : from the great sea ye shall point out for you mount Hor : (v. ) From mount Hor ye shall point out your border unto the entrance of Hamath; and the goings forth of the border shall be to Zedad : (v ) And the border shall go on to Ziphron, and the goings out of it shall be at Hazar-enan : this shall be your north border." The East border: (v. ) "And ye shall point out your east border from Hazar-enan to Shepham: (v.) And the coast shall go down from Shepham to Riblah, on the east side of Ain; and the border shall descend, and shall reach unto the side of the sea of Chinnereth eastward: (v. ) And the border shall go down to Jordan, and the goings out of it shall be at the salt sea : this shall be your land with the coasts thereof round about."
Interpretations Jewish interpretation The concept of the Promised Land is a central religious belief of the Jewish people.Compare:
Mainstream Jewish tradition regards the promise made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as applying to anyone a member of the Jewish people, including proselytes and in turn their descendants and is signified through the brit milah (rite of circumcision).
Genesis 15 records God's covenant with Abraham, which includes the borders of the Promised Land:
In English:
Book of Joshua records the first prophecy given to Joshua about the conquest of the land:
In English:
Christian interpretation
New Testament In the New Testament, the descent and promise is reinterpreted along religious lines. In the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul the Apostle draws attention to the formulation of the promise, avoiding the term "seeds" in the plural (meaning many people), choosing instead "seed," meaning one person, who he understands to be Jesus (and those united with him). For example, in Galatians 3:16 he notes: "The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say "and to seeds", meaning many people, but "and to your seed", meaning one person, who is Christ.": NIV
In Galatians 3:28–29 Paul goes further, noting that the expansion of the promise from singular to the plural is not based on genetic/physical association, but a spiritual/religious one: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." NIV
In it is written: "It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." German Lutheran Old Testament commentator Johann Friedrich Karl Keil states that the covenant is through Isaac, but notes that Ishmael's descendants have held much of that land through time.
Jerome The boundaries of the 'Promised Land' given by Jerome around 400 CE read: You may delineate the Promised Land of Moses from the Book of Numbers (ch. 34): as bounded on the south by the desert tract called Sina, between the Dead Sea and the city of Kadesh-barnea, [which is located with the Arabah to the east] and continues to the west, as far as the river of Egypt, that discharges into the open sea near the city of Rhinocolara; as bounded on the west by the sea along the coasts of Palestine, Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, and Cilicia; as bounded on the north by the circle formed by the Taurus Mountains and Zephyrium and extending to Hamath, called Epiphany-Syria; as bounded on the east by the city of Antioch Hippos and Lake Kinneret, now called Tiberias, and then the Jordan River which discharges into the salt sea, now called the Dead Sea.Hieronymus (1910). "Epistola CXXIX Ad Dardanum de Terra promissionis (al. 129; scripta circa annum 414ce)". Epistularum Pars III —Epistulae 121-154, p. 171 (The fifty-sixth volume of Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum also known as the Vienna Corpus: Letters Part 3, Containing letters 121-154 of St. Jerome.) Image of p. 171 at Archive.org
Later theologians Keil and Delitzsch, in the 19th century, note that Abraham had taken the western lands of Canaan after Lot, his nephew, had chosen to occupy the Jordan Valley in Genesis 13:11-12, but Lot in fact "had no share in the promise of God", and the words "northward and southward and eastward and westward ... all the land that you see" in Genesis 13:14-15 indicate that Abraham was promised the "whole extent" of the land.Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch (1872–77), Keil and Delitzsch OT Commentary on Genesis 13, accessed on 27 February 2026
Muslim interpretation
Jewish and Muslim tradition, with records that date to at least as far back as the works of 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, postulates that Abraham's first son, Ishmael, was the founder of the Arab race.: "Josephus is thus alluding to a proposition, not yet established in his narrative, that Ishmael was the founder (ktistēs) of the race (ethnos) of the 'Arabes' and offers this as his explanation of a custom currently observed by them." Islam's main prophet, Muhammad, also considered himself a Hanif, that is, a true monotheistic believer of the religion of Abraham. His tribe, the Quraysh, traces its ancestry to Ishmael. However, this cannot be proven as there are 30 missing ancestors from the lineage. For these reasons, Muslims in general understand that Arabs are also entitled to the “Promised Land” bestowed upon their common ancestor Abraham (“Ibrahim”).
Later uses
American colonialism