The borders of the Land tell us a great deal about who we are. Let’s start by putting things in order, and end with the meaning of the borders:
- In the Bible there are two systems of borders for the Land: the broad ‘borders of the Promise,’ and the borders of the smaller Land, given in great detail in our Torah portion and also named after it: the ‘Masei borders.’
- The borders of the Promise were stated in very general terms: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” That is — from the Euphrates to the eastern arm of the Nile. In other words: today’s Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and part of Iraq. (Are the deserts of Arabia, Syria and Sinai included? Disputed.) The Masei borders, by contrast, are very detailed, and broadly they run from the line of Nahal Tzin and Makhtesh Ramon in the south to the mountains of Lebanon in the north.
- What is the meaning of the difference between the two sets of borders? The borders of the Promise are the maximum that the Land of Israel can reach. That is, if we were to conquer Brazil, would it be the Land of Israel? No. But if there were conquests in Lebanon or Syria — then as long as there is Jewish sovereignty there, they are part of the Land.
- Is the eastern bank of the Jordan within the borders of the Promise or within the smaller borders? A serious question with several answers, but broadly, Transjordan from Nahal Arnon in the south to Mount Hermon in the north is within the smaller borders.
- The Golan is not necessarily considered part of eastern Transjordan, since according to the Sages, “the Jordan is only from Beit Yerach downward.” Beit Yerach stands at today’s Tzemach Junction. That is, according to the Sages, the Jordan north of the Sea of Galilee is not truly considered “the Jordan” or a real border, and therefore the Golan Heights are, in effect, not part of eastern Transjordan as far as the borders of the Land are concerned.
- Throughout the history of ancient Israelite sovereignty there was almost no settlement within the borders of the Promise, only within the smaller borders, called in the Bible many times “from Dan to Beer Sheva.” That is: there were conquests, rather few, that reached the Euphrates (the days of David, Solomon, and Jeroboam II), but they brought no settlement or demographic change in their wake. In fact, it can be said that no king ever aspired to settle within the borders of the Promise or to dispossess the nations there.
- And that is very interesting. Because if throughout 3,293 years of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel no one ever tried to settle sovereignly within the borders of the Promise — apparently there is no real such aspiration (sovereign, that is, of a state. I am not talking about a Jewish community in Aleppo or Beirut). In other words, contrary to some who aspire today that one day we will settle in Damascus and Baghdad, it seems that a simple reading of the Bible proves that no one in the Jewish people, ever, had a sovereign aspiration to settle there.
- So why do the borders of the Promise exist? I find convincing the approach of my friend Yair Tiktin, who calls them “the borders of responsibility.” That is, the local family of nations to whom we have a special cultural affinity, a responsibility and an aspiration for connection and joining of forces. Indeed, these borders were given to Abraham, and his relatives and descendants are a central part of those who dwelt within them: Edom, Moab, Ammon and Ishmael.
- We said that the Bible’s borders in practice were “from Dan to Beer Sheva,” but that is not one hundred percent accurate. There was one remarkably consistent exception: Eilat. Many kings reached, or aspired to reach, Eilat. Solomon, Jehoram, Jehoshaphat and Uzziah. They also developed the road to it with a network of road fortresses. And why is this interesting? Because it means that the borders of the State of Israel today are more or less the borders of the Land that Israel has always aspired to. From the sea to the river, from Dan to Eilat. No less, but also no more.
- It is not always noticed, but the very fact that in this Torah portion the people of Israel have defined, clear borders is a huge novelty in the ancient world. The territorial aspirations of the people of Israel were clear and quite limited. Nations that succeed exceptionally usually become filled with a lust for world domination. So it was with the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, Napoleon, and the Germans who sought boundless ‘Lebensraum.’ The great religions, too, were an evolution of this notion. Christianity and Islam, each in its turn, tried to impose a new world order — one that is surely the just and good one, to which everyone must be subject. From here comes the Christian mission, or religious coercion by the sword of Islam. Israel, by contrast, never aspired to be an empire, and correspondingly it also mostly never tried to impose its religion on other nations. The territorial aspirations of the people of Israel were clear and quite limited. But the Israeli novelty was greater still: the people of Israel recognized the right of nations, even those geographically close to Israel, to an independent state. So it happened, for example, with Moab, Ammon and Edom, of whom it was said: “For I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a footbreadth, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession… Do not harass Moab or provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession, because I have given Ar to the children of Lot as a possession.” The determination that there are parts of the land that ‘do not belong to me’ is revolutionary in the ancient world, in which every power that rose to greatness claimed for itself unlimited living space. The notion that every nation is ‘entitled’ to its own stretch of land appears already in the first chapters of the Tanakh, which describe the formation of the seventy nations of the world, each of them entitled to conduct its way of life in the territory defined for it.
The borders of the Land, then, tell us much about the Israeli aspiration. Not to impose one’s views by force, but to be a lighthouse whose light anyone who wishes may enjoy.
Not coercion of the nations, but: a light unto the nations.
