Genesis 13:15

Hebrew Bible

14 After Lot had departed, the Lord said to Abram, “Look from the place where you stand to the north, south, east, and west. 15 I will give all the land that you see to you and your descendants forever. 16 And I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone is able to count the dust of the earth, then your descendants also can be counted.

Deuteronomy 34:4

Hebrew Bible

3 the Negev, and the plain of the Valley of Jericho, the city of date palm trees, as far as Zoar. 4 Then the Lord said to him, “This is the land I promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it, but you will not cross over there.” 5 So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab as the Lord had said.

 Notes and References

"... The promises of land as oaths to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—without their explicit modifier as “ancestors”—appears in the Pentateuch in Genesis 50:24; Exodus 32:13; 33:1; Numbers 32:11; Deuteronomy 34:4. If one adds Leviticus 26:42, which has similar content, then this is the only theological statement that carries through all five books of the Pentateuch. And—what is especially striking in this context—it is not found afterwards, in Joshua–2 Kings. From these general observations it is clear that with these texts one should think of components of a Pentateuch redaction. This suggestion is supported by the last of these texts, Deuteronomy 34:4, which points back to the network of promises from Genesis 12. through a clear inclusio (compare Genesis 12:2 and 13:15), so to the beginning of Israel and the Pentateuch. This first motif of the oath-formulated promises of the land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob theologically accentuates the diaspora character of the Torah, which in any case results in the fact that the narrative of the Torah ends before Israel’s entrance into the promised land. The Torah is the founding charter of “exilic” Israel, a people whose story begins outside its land, and a considerable part of the reading experience of the Torah also takes place outside this land. The Torah thereby receives an eminent “prophetic” tenor ..."

Schmid, Konrad Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible? (pp. 93-94) Eisenbrauns, 2014

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