Promised Land

This article is about the concept in the Abrahamic religions. For other uses, see Promised Land (disambiguation).

In the Abrahamic religions, the "Promised Land" (Hebrew: הָאָרֶץ הַמֻּבְטַחַת, romanized: Ha'aretz ha-Muvtaḥat) refers to an area in the Levant that God chose to bestow, via a series of covenants, upon the family and descendants of Abraham.

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/religious sense and with Canaan or Palestine in a secular/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.

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