Genesis 17:8

Hebrew Bible

6 I will make you extremely fruitful. I will make nations of you, and kings will descend from you. 7 I will confirm my covenant as a perpetual covenant between me and you. It will extend to your descendants after you throughout their generations. I will be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 I will give the whole land of Canaan—the land where you are now residing—to you and your descendants after you as a permanent possession. I will be their God.” 9 Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep the covenantal requirement I am imposing on you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. 10 This is my requirement that you and your descendants after you must keep: Every male among you must be circumcised.

Psalm 105:11

Hebrew Bible

9 the promise he made to Abraham, the promise he made by oath to Isaac. 10 He gave it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as a lasting promise, 11 saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaanas the portion of your inheritance. 12 When they were few in number, just a very few, and resident foreigners within it, 13 they wandered from nation to nation, and from one kingdom to another.

 Notes and References

"... Ezekiel’s nearer predecessor, Habakkuk, had described the Babylonians as “an eagle swooping down to devour” (1:8). But this eagle is different: he is cast as a genuinely benevolent figure, plucking off a sprig of a cedar (that is about to be cut down?), taking it away to Babylon, and planting it there, apparently in very favorable circumstances. While it is obvious the prophet is speaking of a particular and special bird, it may not have been so obvious to Ezekiel’s audience whom this eagle represented. Could this be YHWH, who both narrative and hymnic tradition says had carried Israel on his eagle’s wings and brought them to himself (Exodus 19:4; compare Deuteronomy 32:11) Or was this some human monarch? In addition to serving as a symbol of strength and terror, in the ancient Near East the eagle was a common military and royal symbol, being attested on ensigns as early as the Old Babylonian city of Lagash and as late as the Persian and Roman periods. Kings were often portrayed as cherub-like figures with eagle’s wings. By having the great eagle fly to Lebanon, where he plucked off the top of a cedar, Ezekiel has adapted and transformed a stock phrase, “cedars of Lebanon.” The association of these cedars with the royal constructions in Jerusalem encourages a connection with the dynasty. However, in an act quite uncharacteristic of eagles, the magnificent bird snipped off the “crown” and carried the shoot of fresh growth off to a foreign land, identified enigmatically as a “land of merchants” and a “city of traders”. On first hearing, one’s impulse is to associate these expressions with Israel’s native land, to which the former expression always refers outside this book (Compare Genesis 17:8; 45:25; Exodus 6:4; 16:35; Leviticus 14:34; 18:3; 25:38; Numbers 13:2, 17; 32:32; 33:51; 34:2; Deuteronomy 32:49; Joshua 5:12; 22:11, 32; 24:3; 1 Chronicles 16:18; Psalm 105:11) ..."

Block, Daniel I. Beyond the River Chebar: Studies in Kingship and Eschatology in the Book of Ezekiel (pp. 53-54) Cascade Books, 2013

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