YAHWEH, ISRAEL AND THE NEIGHBOURING NATIONS: AN ANALYSIS OF LAND REDISTRIBUTION

Abstract

EMMANUEL TWUMASI ANKRAH1 ABSTRACT The centrality of ‘the promised land’ was and remains the most crucial in the history of Israel. Throughout the Torah, the land that Israel occupies was divinely given to them by Yahweh, the landowner. This theological idea of the land of Canaan instigated the spilling of blood in and around Palestine by the forces of possession and dispossession. Israel’s continuance occupancy on the ‘land’ poses ethical, moral and xenophobic problem on the people living around and on Yahweh himself. This paper analyzed the issue from the moral point of view and has suggested that a rethinking, reinterpretation, reconstruction of the texts containing the issue of land be done. We are of the view that hermeneutics of ‘live and let me live’ on the part of Israel, may go a long way to solving the antagonism going on around Palestine.