The protest slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ is plastered on anti-Israel banners and flags, waved at street demonstrations and in public places across North America and Europe. Rage-filled shouts, the beating of drums, violent marches and cries for destruction of the Jewish state – these Nazi-like manifestations are now commonplace today.
Yet, a text without a context is a pretext. Where is the river? What is the sea? What do these woke protestors mean by this sinister slogan? Do the Hebrew Scriptures – the Jewish Bible, the Christian Old Testament – offer any enlightenment here?
The earth is the Lord’s
Three thousand years ago King David, the scion of the tribe of Judah, declared in Psalm 24:1-2: “The earth is YHVH’s, and all it contains – the world, and those who live in it. For He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers!” This Jewish king reigned over the first kingdom of Israel, but his dramatic declaration of YHVH’s rule here encompasses the entire globe, as symbolized by God’s control over the world’s seas and the planet’s rivers.
King David’s son Solomon notes in Psalm 72:8-11 that Messiah (the greater Son of David) will “rule from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth. May the nomads of the desert bow before him, and his enemies lick the dust. May the kings of Tarshish and of the islands bring gifts. May the kings of Sheba and Seba offer tributes, and may all kings bow down before him, all nations serve him.” The God of the Hebrews speaks of a day when all the nations of the globe will render fealty to Him with a full heart. And from Jerusalem His holy City YHVH will rule over the seas and the rivers.
The Great Sea and the Great River
Messiah’s Jerusalem will be populated by the Jewish people – His Jewish vine – as the musician-seer Asaph eloquently states in Psalm 80:8-11:
- “You removed a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground before it, and it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shadow, and the cedars of God with its branches. It was sending out its branches to the Sea and its shoots to the River.”
The sea mentioned here is what Numbers 34:6 calls ‘the Great Sea’ – today we call it ‘the Mediterranean.’ The ‘River’ referred to here is described in Genesis 15:8 as “the Great River, the Euphrates [in Hebrew, Perat].” The four mighty Rivers of pro-Noahic days are elucidated in Genesis 2:10-14, where the fourth great River is named as the Euphrates (in Hebrew, the Perat).
The Sea and the River are respectively the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates River. ‘From the River to the Sea’ is a poetic way of describing the territory of a Jewish kingdom whose western border is the Mediterranean, and whose eastern border follows the flowing Euphrates River – that would include portions of Turkey (the Armenian Highlands of eastern Turkey), Syria (northern and central) and Iraq (where the Euphrates meets the Tigris to form the Shatt al-Arab).
- According to the God of Israel’s prophetic viewpoint, ‘From the River to the Sea’ does not refer to an imaginary Arab Palestine. It actually refers to a Greater and Messianic Israel. Today’s anti-Semitic marchers are championing a counterfeit prophetic vision.
Ethan the Ezrahite (one of the wisest men in his day; see 1 Kings 4:31) underscores this same message in Psalm 89:24-29 when he prophesies God’s heart about the future reign of David’s dynasty, according to the Davidic Covenant in 2 Samuel 7:8-17:
- “My faithfulness and My favor will be with him, and in My name his horn will be exalted. I will also place his hand on the sea, and his right hand on the rivers. He will call to Me, ‘You are My Father, My God, and the Rock of My salvation.’ I will also make him My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. I will maintain My favor for him forever, and My covenant shall be confirmed to him. So I will establish his descendants forever, and his throne as the days of heaven.”
How long is ‘forever’?
Over 3,800 years ago YHVH made a promise to Abram and to his covenant descendants through Isaac and Jacob: “On that day YHVH made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the River of Egypt as far as the Great River, the River Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18).
YHVH promises that this Abrahamic covenant will last forever, and that it will have a priority and eternal focus – between the God of Israel and the people of Israel:
- “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land where you live as a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:7-8)
Moses re-emphasizes this point in his fifth book, making it crystal-clear that the land between the River and the Sea – between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean – is a divinely appointed possession given to the entire Jewish people for eternity:
- Across the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses began to explain this Teaching, saying, “YHVH our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and set out on your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country, in the lowland, in the Negev, by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. See, I have placed the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which YHVH swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and their descendants after them.’” (Deuteronomy 1:5-8)
Signed, sealed, delivered – it’s yours!
Moses declares that every step which the Jewish people will take – as their sandals make contact with the soil of that Promised Land – will be a prophetic action validating the unshakeable and irrevocable connection between that Land and the Jewish people:
- “Every place on which the sole of your foot steps shall be yours; your border will be from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the river, the river Euphrates, as far as the western sea. No one will be able to stand against you; YHVH your God will instill the dread of you and the fear of you in all the land on which you set foot, just as He has spoken to you” (Deuteronomy 11:24-25)”
YHVH affirms this same promise to Joshua – the same one which He had previously declared to Moses:
- “Moses My servant is dead; so now arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your footsteps, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory” (Joshua 1:1-4)
In later years, Zechariah prophesied about the coming of Messiah the Son of David, declaring: “And He will speak peace to the nations, and His dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Zechariah 9:10). This biblical passage symbolizes Yeshua’s Messianic international rule from Zion, extending over the entire planet. The shout ‘From the River to the Sea’ is God’s bold and Zionist declaration of His sovereign reign over the world He created.
On the border
The God of Jacob specifies the borders of the Promised Land in many places: Genesis 15:18; Genesis 17:8; Numbers 26:52-56; Numbers 34; Deuteronomy 3; Deuteronomy 11:24; Joshua 13-22; Ezekiel 47:15-17; Psalm 78:54-55.
- “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of mankind, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. For YHVH’s portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the howling wasteland of a wilderness. He encircled him, He cared for him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye” (Deuteronomy 32:8-10)
For YHVH, the Promised Land is not some ‘pie in the sky’ abstraction. It is a highly specific promise – stage center in world affairs, and directly in the divine spotlight. And it is the Jewish Promised Land – central to the God of Jacob’s word. It is a forever inheritance with real and measurable borders – a tangible physical land between the River and the Sea.
What’s the big deal?
Some people might be put off by the physicality of the challenge here – why is God’s spiritual kingdom connected to a physical people – the Jews? What’s so important about a sliver of territory on the east side of the Mediterranean? Some of these objections might be phrased like this:
- “Why do you Jews think that it’s necessary for you to live in what you call ‘your own home?’ Who cares if other peoples have squatted on your patrimony over the past centuries? Let it be! It’s no big deal! That’s just the way it is in life! So what if these Palestinians are claiming the land which God promised to the Jewish people for eternity? Who cares if their jihadi souls are chock full of malice and murder toward Jacob’s children (see Ezekiel 25:6,15). Why make so much trouble, little Israel? Don’t you want real peace to break out in the Middle East?”
In the Book of Ezekiel, the God of Jacob declares that His wrath is directed against those nations who claim that the Land between the River and the Sea (i.e., the Jewish state) belongs not to the Jewish people but to Edom (the forebears of today’s Palestinians). Those who chant ‘From the River to the Sea’ and ridicule Israel, will soon be facing the ridicule and wrath of YHVH on the Day of His visitation (see Isaiah 59:15-18):
- Now you, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel and say, “You mountains of Israel, hear the word of YHVH. This is what ADONAI YHVH says: ‘Since the enemy has spoken against you, ‘Aha!’ and, ‘The everlasting heights have become our possession,’ therefore prophesy and say, ‘This is what ADONAI YHVH says: “For good reason they have made you desolate and harassed you from every side, so that you would become a possession of the rest of the nations; and you have been taken up in the talk and the rumor of the people.” Therefore, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of ADONAI YHVH. This is what the ADONAI YHVH says to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, to the desolate ruins and to the abandoned cities which have become plunder and an object of ridicule to the rest of the nations which are all around— therefore ADONAI YHVH says this: “Certainly in the fire of My jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations, and against all Edom, who appropriated My land for themselves as a possession with wholehearted joy and with contempt of soul, in order to make its pastureland plunder.” Therefore prophesy in regard to the Land of Israel and say to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, “This is what ADONAI YHVH says: ‘Behold, I have spoken in My jealousy and in My wrath because you have endured the insults of the nations.’ Therefore ADONAI YHVH says this: ‘I have sworn that the nations that are around you will certainly endure their insults themselves’” (Ezekiel 36:1-7)
The God of Isaac responds directly to the carping of the nations. He lays out exactly what He is doing and why He is doing it. The lost sheep of the House of Israel are coming back home, and even if the entire planet opposes this return, YHVH is going to have His way:
- Therefore this is what ADONAI YHVH says: “Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on all the House of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name. They will forget their disgrace and all their treachery which they perpetrated against Me, when they live securely on their own land with no one to make them afraid. When I bring them back from the peoples and gather them from the lands of their enemies, then I shall show Myself holy through them in the sight of the many nations. Then they will know that I am YHVH their God – because I made them go into exile among the nations, and then I gathered them again to their own land. And I will leave none of them there any longer. I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I will have poured out My Spirit on the House of Israel,” declares ADONAI YHVH (Ezekiel 39:25-29)
Give me four good reasons!
The Scriptures gives us at least four reasons for why the God of Israel is bringing His people home, back to their Promised Land:
- There He will heal His people from the wounds inflicted by the nations (see Jeremiah 30:13; Jeremiah 33:6; Malachi 4:2)
- There He will re-settle His Jewish flock back on their own Jewish mountains and hills (see Isaiah 14:1; Isaiah 32:18; Hosea 11:11)
- There He will launch His boot camp – equipping, training and empowering His Ezekiel 37 army (Ezekiel 37:9-14)
- There He will establish a center for ministry, worship and teaching which will touch the farthest corners of the world (see Isaiah 2:3-4 and Zechariah 8:20-23)
YHVH is committed to doing these above-mentioned things – not because He enjoys a strategic gambit in a cosmic chess game. For the God of Jacob, Israel is not simply a divine canvas upon which He paints abstract art. His goal is not basically to prove to the world’s rebellious nations that He is adamantly sticking to His prophetic priorities. Israel is a matter close to His heart:
- “And He has raised up for His people a horn, the praise of all his faithful servants – Israel, the people close to His heart” (Psalm 148:14)
- “And now YHVH says – He who formed Me in the womb to be His Servant to bring Jacob back to Him and gather Israel to Himself . . . ‘In the time of My favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances’” (Isaiah 49:5, 8)
- “You are My Servant, Israel, In whom I will show My glory” (Isaiah 49:3)
- “I bring near My righteousness, it is not far off. And My salvation will not delay. And I will grant salvation in Zion, and My glory for Israel” (Isaiah 46:13)
How shall we then pray?
- Pray for the release of revelation and vision for the spiritual and governmental leaders of Israel – that they will comprehend the depth, height and breadth of YHVH’s love and calling on His Jewish people – and act accordingly!
- Pray for the entire people of Israel to seek and find salvation in Messiah Yeshua
- Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth!
Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.
In Messiah Yeshua,
Avner Boskey
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