Bible

Bible

The Bible tells the story of how the link between Abraham’s descendants and the Land of Israel began. The Lord directed Abraham to travel to the Land of Canaan, and when he arrived, God told him, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Genesis 12-7).

Although he and his descendants occasionally left the Land of Israel in search of more fertile land in the Nile delta of Egypt, they ultimately returned to the Promised Land. After the great Exodus from Egypt, the nation of Israel settled in the Land where they set up a kingdom called Israel and built the Temple.

The earliest forced exile from the land occurred when the Assyrians exiled the northern Israelite tribes (known as the “Ten Lost Tribes”) in 722 BCE. King Jehoachin and his government officials were exiled by the Babylonians in 597 BCE. When the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in 586 BCE, they took many captives and led them off in chains to Babylon. During the Babylonian attacks on Judea some small numbers of Jews seem to have migrated to Egypt.

A minority of the Israelites returned under the auspices of Cyrus the Great and rebuilt the Temple. After the fall of the Persian Empire, Jews lived under the rule of Alexander the Great and then as part of the Roman Empire. The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans led to an almost complete exile from the Land. A very small number of the citizens of Judah (Jews) inhabited the Land of Israel, while the rest settled around the world.