By Water & Blood

Questions on Exodus 59: The promise of land as far as the Euphrates

How is it that God, having promised to hand over the land to them as far as the river Euphrates, did not fulfill the promise?

Through the prophet Jeremiah God made this clearer: “I will speak,” he says, “a limit concerning a nation and a kingdom, to build and to plant; and it will be that if that nation turns and does evil, I will not bring upon it all the good things that I spoke,” and what follows. God therefore brought them into the land he had promised. But since they were unwilling to keep the divine law, he did not hand all of it over to them, but left some continually making war on them, so that when they were under attack they might ask for divine help. The history of the Judges especially teaches this. Yet David the king also subdued these peoples. For the foreigners paid tribute, and Syria of Damascus, and Syria of Zobah. And Solomon too, as long as he was pious, held this dominion; but when he turned aside into impiety, he fell from the authority. And he promised to give these things to them if they kept the commandments and the law.