Israel Is the Land of the Children of Israel

The name “Israel” is not a modern political invention. It is the name given to the biblical patriarch Jacob 3,500 years ago, and it has identified both a people and their land ever since. According to Genesis 32:29, after Jacob wrestled through the night, he was told:

“Jacob will no longer be said to be your name, but Israel (God-struggler), for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

 From that moment, Jacob’s descendants became known as Bnei Yisrael — the Children of Israel — and the land promised to them has carried that same name throughout history.

One Continuous Thread

The connection between the people and the land forms a single, continuous historical thread spanning three thousand years seven hunded years. It begins with the Israelite settlement and dominance in the land during the biblical period, continues through the transformation of the Twelve Tribes into a nation and kingdom, and remains visible in the unbroken Jewish presence documented through exile, revolt, medieval scholarship, liturgy, and daily life. The modern State of Israel carries the patriarch’s name into the present day. The people did not adopt a new identity, and the land did not acquire a new meaning. When Genesis names Israel, when Jews in later centuries continue to pray for and return to the land they call Israel, and when citizens of the modern State of Israel refer to their state as Israel, these are successive links in the same chain — not disconnected episodes that merely share a name by coincidence.

Modern Jews Are That Same People

A common rhetorical move in modern debates is to treat “ancient Israelites” and “modern Jews” as though they were two different peoples, only loosely related — as if the passage of time has reduced the connection to something purely symbolic. The historical, religious, textual, and archaeological record shows continuity rather than replacement. The same scriptures, the same festivals tied to the land’s seasons, the same prayers directed toward the same city, the same legal tradition transmitted in an unbroken chain, and a physical presence in the land that was never fully extinguished all point to the same people. Modern Jews are not claiming a distant symbolic inheritance from a vanished ancient nation. They are that nation, continuing.

Conclusion

The name “Israel” was never neutral or interchangeable. It has always been the name of a specific people, descended from Jacob, bound to a specific land by covenant, history, law, and lived experience. The Land of Israel is the land of the Children of Israel because the two have never been truly separated — only, at times, kept apart by force, and always, eventually, reunited.