What is the Promised Land?
Scripture calls Canaan "the land of promise" because a land was pledged to one man long before any nation existed to live in it. The question is what that promise covers: a stretch of real ground with real borders, a future for Israel, or a picture of something the Christian owns now.
A Land Given by Promise, Not Earned
The promise was not a bargain with conditions attached. It was staked out with named boundaries and repeated to Abraham again and again.
W. TrotterThe promises made to Abraham were unconditional and absolute. They included a great deal besides the possession of the land of Canaan; but they certainly embraced this in the most explicit terms. "And the LORD appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring I will give this land'" (Gen. 12:7)... The land is then given to Abraham by covenant, and its boundaries most accurately defined.
God could have claimed the whole earth. One writer notes that He chose to claim one strip of it:
William KellyGod might have justly claimed all the world, but He was pleased to claim only the land of Canaan for the seed of Abraham. This is no Jewish fable, but the revealed will of God; and from the very call of Abraham it was certain that a land was to be distinctly given him.
A Land Unlike Egypt
Egypt fed itself from the Nile by human effort. Canaan was to live off the sky.
J. G. BellettEgypt was watered by the foot, that is, by the ordinary work of her people drawing off the water of the Nile onto their fields and gardens. Their river was everything to them — all they needed was to be busy around its banks, and they could supply themselves out of it. But Canaan was to be tilled by the Lord. He would water it from heaven Himself — His heart would care for it, and His eyes would rest on it from one end of the year to the other.
Israel's Claim Still Outstanding
Joshua's conquest did not exhaust the promise. Israel held part of the land, then lost it.
W. W. FeredayThese promises have never been really fulfilled. Israel has never inhabited the whole extent of the land, as here described... Further, it is clear to everyone that they have not yet had any of it as an everlasting possession; for what they did take possession of they lost after a while because of sin, and were scattered among the Gentiles. Let no one suppose that because this was the case, there is no future glory for them.
That future is not read as a reward for good behaviour, and one writer is careful to separate it from the modern political situation:
An Outline of Sound WordsAlthough Israel are in the land of Palestine today, it is not on the ground of their divine title in God's promise, but because they have the support of some of the great nations of the world.
The Two Crossings
Israel left Egypt through the Red Sea and entered Canaan through the Jordan. Writers here read the two waters as two halves of one truth.
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe crossing of the Red Sea pictured Christ dying for the believer (by which the believer escapes death and judgement); the crossing of the Jordan pictured the believer dying with Christ, and being raised with Him... The Jordan itself has often been taken as a picture of death, which must be passed in order to enter heaven; but it is rather a figure of the entrance, while still on earth, through death with Christ into the heavenly position of the Christian.
Not Heaven, But the Heavenly
Commentators differ over whether the land stands for heaven itself. Several argue firmly that it does not, and give a reason drawn from Israel's own history:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe second reason why Canaan cannot mean heaven is that Israel could be driven out of the land. This is not possible with heaven... Canaan is the type of the heavenly position and possession which the believer has in Christ Jesus. It corresponds to what in Ephesians is called "in heavenly places."
Others treat it as a "double-type," where the land is also the rest still ahead of us, developed in Hebrews 3 and 4.
Given, Yet Taken Step by Step
The land was a gift, but the gift had to be walked on. Every foot of it was contested.
J. N. DarbyAll the land as far as the Euphrates had been given to them, but wherever they tried to put down the sole of their foot, there was a Canaanite. That is Satan hindering us, and that is where the true Joshua work comes in.
The same gap between title and enjoyment shows up in believers today:
H. Forbes Witherby"Foot"-possessors in the church of God are comparatively few. Many are geographers, who can map out the varied doctrines of the Bible; few are travellers, who describe what this and that blessing is, having themselves found its preciousness.
Summary
- Promised — the land was pledged to Abraham unconditionally, with borders named, before his family owned a square foot of it.
- Provided — unlike Egypt, watered by human labour, Canaan drank rain from heaven and lay under God's eye all year.
- Postponed — Israel never held the full extent promised, and lost what they held; the promise still waits on God's faithfulness, not theirs.
- Pictured — the Jordan crossing marks not dying and going to heaven, but being brought, dead and risen with Christ, into a heavenly portion now.
- Possessed — what God gives must still be walked on; the land was theirs by promise, but only theirs in fact where their feet went.