Saying,
Unto you will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance:
Read Chapter 105
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
6. "He hath been alway mindful of His covenant" (ver. 8). Other copies read, "for evermore;" and this arises from the ambiguity of the Greek. But if we are to understand "alway" of this world and not of eternity, why, when he explaineth what covenant He was mindful of, doth he add, "The word that He made to a thousand generations"? Now this may be understood with a certain limitation; but he afterwards saith, "Even the covenant that He made with Abraham" (ver. 9): "and the oath that He sware unto Isaac; and appointed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting, testament" (ver. 10). But if in this passage the Old Testament is to be understood, on account of the land of Canaan; for thus the language of the Psalm runneth, "saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan: the lot of your inheritance" (ver. 11): how is it to be understood as everlasting, since that earthly inheritance could not be everlasting? And for this reason it is called the Old Testament, because...
Lot. Literally, "line "with which land was measured. (Calmet) -- The descendants of the patriarchs would never have lost this inheritance if they had observed the law. The promise was therefore conditional; though it was absolute, in as much as all were to be blessed in their seed: as they had begun to be, when Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus.
