Israel (Disambiguation)

The principal meanings of Israel span a person, a people, a land, and political entities: Jacob bears the name in biblical tradition; his descendants are called the children of Israel; the Land of Israel denotes their ancestral land; and the name also identifies ancient kingdoms and the modern country.[1][2] Its use for the Jewish collective is not limited to references to either ancient government or the contemporary state.[5]

The political meanings themselves require distinction: Israel can designate the united biblical kingdom associated with Saul, David, and Solomon, or the subsequent northern kingdom, contrasted with Judah.[2][6] For the modern country, “State of Israel” is the formal name and “Israel” the short form.[7] The Land of Israel, by contrast, is a geographical and religious-historical term used in accounts of the biblical homeland, rather than simply another name for the state established in 1948.[4]

The earliest widely accepted mention of Israel occurs in an inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, dated to about 1205 BCE.[8] The inscription lists peoples and cities encountered during campaigns in Palestine; the determinative signs accompanying Israel indicate a people group, likely nomadic, rather than a country.[8]

In biblical tradition, Israel is another name for Jacob, Abraham’s grandson. Jacob receives the name after wrestling with a mysterious adversary, and his descendants become known as the children or People of Israel.[5][9] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes that the narrative explains the name with the words “you have striven with beings Divine and human, and have prevailed”; he also distinguishes the unnamed adversary in the biblical text from the angel identified in rabbinic tradition.[10]

The ancient political uses encompass both a united kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon and a later northern kingdom.[2][6] The monarchy began in approximately the eleventh century BCE and reached its height under David and Solomon.[6] David made Jerusalem his capital, and Solomon built the Temple there.[4][6] After Solomon’s reign, the country divided into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah.[4][6] Jeroboam I led the northern tribes into the schism establishing the northern kingdom, while the Davidic dynasty continued to rule Judah.[2]

Samaria served as the northern kingdom’s capital, while Jerusalem was the capital of Judah.[4][6] The division is dated around 931 BCE in one chronology and around 922 BCE in another.[2][4] Assyria conquered the northern kingdom in 722 BCE, while Judah continued until the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE.[4]

Israel remained a name for the Jewish people and their ancestral land during nearly two millennia in which most Jewish history unfolded outside the land.[5][6] Zionism turned the aspiration to return into an organized political movement that contributed to the establishment of an independent state.[1][4] On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion read the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv.[3] The declaration named the new Jewish state “the State of Israel” and referred to its provisional government as that of the Jewish state “to be called ‘Israel.’”[3]

“Children of Israel,” “People of Israel,” and “house of Israel” are collective uses referring to Jacob’s descendants, rather than to the population or institutions of the modern state.[2][5] In biblical usage, the name more often denotes the descendants collectively than the patriarch himself.[2] Its scope also changes with historical context: it can mean the whole people before the northern tribes’ secession and again after the southern kingdom’s restoration, but during the northern kingdom’s existence it identifies that kingdom in contrast with Judah.[2] Some postexilic passages use Israel more narrowly for the laity, distinguished from priests, Levites, and Temple servants.[2]

The collective meaning continued beyond biblical writing.[5] A 1929 book by journalist Albert Londres used the expression “Israel has been resuscitated!” in reference to the Jewish people, illustrating a use that preceded the modern state and did not denote it.[5]

The Land of Israel, or Eretz Yisrael, is the ancestral land associated with Jewish history, identity, and religious tradition.[4][3] Biblical accounts describe it as the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Exodus recounts Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt with the promise of a return to their forefathers’ land.[4] This territorial and ancestral meaning is distinct from Israel as the name of Jacob or of the Jewish collective.[2][4]

In contemporary political usage, Israel names the sovereign state established in 1948.[1][7] The country lies in the Middle East along the eastern Mediterranean coast, bordered by Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.[11] The declaration was made on May 14, while its provisional arrangements were to operate from the end of the British Mandate at midnight beginning May 15.[3][12] Arab states in the region then attacked the newly established state, beginning the War of Independence.[1]

The name’s continued application to both the Jewish people and their ancestral land links its biblical, historical, and contemporary meanings.[5][6] Its use during the centuries of exile preserved a vocabulary of Jewish collective identity and connection to the Land of Israel before its adoption as the name of the modern state.[5][6]

The wording of the Declaration of Independence places two meanings alongside one another: it announces a Jewish state “in Eretz-Israel” and names that state “the State of Israel.”[3] The first expression identifies the ancestral land, while the second supplies the formal name of the newly established political entity.[3] The modern name thus participates in a longer history of Jewish peoplehood and attachment to the land without making the patriarch, people, ancient kingdoms, territory, and contemporary state interchangeable.[2][5]

The origins of early Israel, settlement in Canaan, and development of an organized kingdom are subjects of scholarly debate drawing on biblical, historical, archaeological, anthropological, and comparative Near Eastern evidence.[13] Debate also concerns the historicity and scale of the united monarchy, including whether monumental remains at Megiddo and Gezer should be attributed to Solomon and a strong united kingdom.[8]

The name’s etymology is uncertain, with proposed meanings including “God contends,” “God is strong,” “God shines forth,” and “God heals.”[2] The biblical naming narratives place Jacob’s receipt of the name in differing settings, including the wrestling episode near the Jabbok and a later naming at Bethel.[2] Interpretations of the historical and political significance of the Land of Israel are also contested.[11]