What are the borders God gave to Israel?

Answer 1

Parts of the Old Testament seems to disagree on the size of the Promised Land. In places, it was what could be seen by looking westward from a mountain across the River Jordan. At other times, it stretched from the Euphrates to the Nile, and sometimes something in between.

When Moses sent the spies into Canaan, this could show how large he believed the Promised Land would be, from where they went, but there are actually two records of where they went. Numbers 13:22-25 says the spies travelled only as far north as Hebron (in the future kingdom of Judah) - providing a quite unambitious estimate of the size of the Promised Land. Numbers 13:21 says they toured "from the Wilderness of Zin to the entrance to Hamath". In fact, the spies account consists of two complete and quite different stories written by two different authors. The first account was written by the source now known as the Yahwist, who was only interested in writing for the kingdom of Judah. The second account was written by the source now known as the Priestly source, who was interested in justifying, in hindsight, a claim on the entire region from the Dead Sea to Galilee. The two stories are skilfully woven together so that to most readers they seem confusing and hard to follow, but somewhat harmonised as one account.

Perhaps the borders that God really gave to Israel, if these borders came from God, can best be identified by the lands they occupied by around the tenth century BCE. The southern Hebrew kingdom of Judah occupied an inland territory west of the Dead Sea, with the Negev Sesert to the south and Philistia to the west. The Philistines occupied the rich coastal plains and foothills north to approximately where Tel Aviv is today. The northern Hebrew kingdom of Israel occupied an inland territory west of the River Jordan, northwards to include the Jezreel Valley. In the ninth century BCE, Israel briefly expanded to include the Canaanite cities on the coast and even southern Syria, but by 722 BCE, Israel had in turn been conquered by the Assyrians and ceased to exist, leaving only the small enclave of Judah in the south.