The Messiah and the Covenants of Israel (Continued)

The Land Covenant

In the Abrahamic Covenant there is mention of a homeland for the posterity of Abraham. At the time when Abraham had confidence that his children, and his children’s children, would multiply into a large nation (he had believed God and it had been accounted to him for righteousness) he re-visited the issue of where they would live. Several times he had been promised the land bordering the Mediterranean as a homeland for them, but that seemed very improbable – it was already occupied, and the inhabitants were very well established. Abraham appealed to God for some assurance, and the Lord gave him that assurance under the ceremony of ‘cutting a covenant’, at the end of which He said, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates— the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” (Gen. 15:18-21) Thus the promise of the land is a main feature of the covenant of God with Abraham. This is not the Land Covenant; this is the land aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Title to the land of Canaan was renewed with Isaac. “Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father”. (Gen.26:3) Hand in hand with the title of the land was the promise of the blessing of the Lord, which makes rich and adds no sorrow with it. “Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the Lord blessed him”. (Gen. 26:12)

Isaac, in turn, conferred both blessing and title on Jacob, who would be renamed Israel. “Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him … and said to him … May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham.” (Gen. 28:1-5)

And God confirmed it to Jacob at Bethel, saying, “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.” (Gen. 28:13) Jacob returned to Bethel where God changed his name to Israel, and renewed entitlement to the land. It is to this experience that he returned when speaking to Joseph when Joseph was a ruler in Egypt. “Then Jacob said to Joseph: “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me, and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a multitude of people, and give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.’” (Gen. 48:3-4) Joseph, clearly aware of the covenant and confident that it would mature in due time, gave instruction for his remains to be taken and buried in the land of promise when God led the nation of Israel out of Egypt.

The detail of the Abrahamic Covenant dictated that the grant of the land should not mature until more than four centuries after Israel had resided in Egypt. Accordingly, it is during the time of Moses that the promise of the land of Canaan to Israel comes to the fore. Moses, chosen by God to be deliverer, mediator and leader, had a message for Israel.  It was in two parts. The first related to the deliverance – God would bring them out. The second would relate to their inheritance – God would take them in to Canaan. The intelligence given at ‘the bush’ included this double purpose of the Lord. “I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites”. (Exod. 3:8) The provision of God was to be of the highest quality. The land is described as ‘good’, which to a nation whose economy was to be agricultural, meant ‘fertile’; it is ‘broad’ in contrast to the confinement of their Egyptian prison; and flowing with ‘milk and honey’, which are the choicest products of a land with abundant grass and flowers. This last epithet, ‘flowing with milk and honey’, is the descriptive phrase that is most frequently employed to summarize the fruitfulness of what was to be the new homeland of the Jewish nation.

The generation that was redeemed from Egypt did not receive this second part of the message in faith, and were excluded from Canaan (all except Caleb and Joshua). But even unbelief and disobedience cannot annul an unconditional covenant, (the Abrahamic Covenant held this status), and they did ultimately enter the land. But Moses, God’s prophet and spokesman, indicated that their occupation of the land would be conditional. This became evident when the land element of the Abrahamic Covenant was then redrafted as a covenant in its own right. Although mediated by Moses, it was separate from the Mosaic Covenant. “These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He made with them in Horeb”. (Deut. 29:1) And the terms were spelt out in great detail. 

In that part of his address recorded in chapters 28 through 30 of Deuteronomy, Moses had been at pains to warn the nation that they would lose occupation of the land if they disobeyed the Mosaic covenant. In fact, he prophesied that some time in the future they would turn away from the Lord, and be exiled from the land, but it would not invalidate either the Abrahamic Covenant or the Land Covenant, for God would, on their repentance, regather them and return them to the land, even if they had been scattered to the four corners of the earth.

So the Abrahamic covenant declared that title to the land was unconditional.

The Land Covenant declared that occupation of the land was conditioned on the obedience of the Jewish nation.

It appears from chapter 30 of Deuteronomy that the Land Covenant will only come into full fruition during the Messianic age, that period when Israel would have come to realize and accept that Jesus of Nazareth is their Messiah and Lord.

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