Ezekiel 20:15

20:15 I also swore ¹  to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them to the land I had given them – a land flowing with milk and honey, the most beautiful of all lands.

Psalms 48:2

48:2 It is lofty and pleasing to look at, ² 

a source of joy to the whole earth. ³ 

Mount Zion resembles the peaks of Zaphon; ⁴ 

it is the city of the great king.

Daniel 8:9

8:9 From one of them came a small horn. ⁵  But it grew to be very big, toward the south and the east and toward the beautiful land. ⁶ 

Daniel 11:16

11:16 The one advancing against him will do as he pleases, and no one will be able to stand before him. He will prevail in the beautiful land, and its annihilation will be within his power. ⁷ 

Daniel 11:41

11:41 Then he will enter the beautiful land. ⁸  Many ⁹  will fall, but these will escape: ¹⁰  Edom, Moab, and the Ammonite leadership.

Zechariah 7:14

7:14 ‘Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.’ Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful ¹¹  land a waste.”

¹ tn Heb “I lifted up my hand.”

² tn Heb “beautiful of height.” The Hebrew term נוֹף (nof, “height”) is a genitive of specification after the qualitative noun “beautiful.” The idea seems to be that Mount Zion, because of its lofty appearance, is pleasing to the sight.

³ sn A source of joy to the whole earth. The language is hyperbolic. Zion, as the dwelling place of the universal king, is pictured as the world’s capital. The prophets anticipated this idealized picture becoming a reality in the eschaton (see Isa 2:1-4).

⁴ tn Heb “Mount Zion, the peaks of Zaphon.” Like all the preceding phrases in v. 2, both phrases are appositional to “city of our God, his holy hill” in v. 1, suggesting an identification in the poet’s mind between Mount Zion and Zaphon. “Zaphon” usually refers to the “north” in a general sense (see Pss 89:12; 107:3), but here, where it is collocated with “peaks,” it refers specifically to Mount Zaphon, located in the vicinity of ancient Ugarit and viewed as the mountain where the gods assembled (see Isa 14:13). By alluding to West Semitic mythology in this way, the psalm affirms that Mount Zion is the real divine mountain, for it is here that the Lord God of Israel lives and rules over the nations. See P. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 353, and T. N. D. Mettinger, In Search of God, 103.

⁵ sn This small horn is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who controlled the Seleucid kingdom from ca. 175-164 B.C. Antiochus was extremely hostile toward the Jews and persecuted them mercilessly.

⁶ sn The expression the beautiful land (Heb. הַצֶּבִי [hatsÿvi] = “the beauty”) is a cryptic reference to the land of Israel. Cf. 11:16, 41, where it is preceded by the word אֶרֶץ (’erets, “land”).

⁷ tn Heb “hand.”

⁸ sn The beautiful land is a cryptic reference to the land of Israel.

⁹ tn This can be understood as “many people” (cf. NRSV) or “many countries” (cf. NASB, NIV, NLT).

¹⁰ tn Heb “be delivered from his hand.”

¹¹ tn Or “desirable”; traditionally “pleasant” (so many English versions; cf. TEV “This good land”).