Does Genesis 13's land promise to Abraham contradict Hebrews 11, which says he never received it?
A viewer reads Genesis 13:14-15 as promising the land of Canaan forever to Abraham, but Hebrews 11:10-16 speaks of a heavenly land, and he asks how the Genesis text does not contradict the stipulation of Hebrews.
Answer
You have to separate the physical land from the heavenly land; Genesis does a lot of mixing and matching of the two, but you cannot make it a both-and. When God tells Abraham to look north, south, east, and west, there is no reason the new heaven and new earth cannot be the fulfillment, because the very place where Abraham is standing could be the place he looks out over in the new heaven and new earth after he is raised from the dead. North, south, east, and west is purely directional; it does not depend on where you are standing or what century or dimension you are in. And here is the immovable fact: Abraham never received any land on this earth. The only land he ever got was the burial plot he bought with his own money for Sarah. So Genesis 13 cannot apply to Abraham in this life, otherwise Hebrews 11 makes no sense, because Hebrews plainly says Abraham and the patriarchs did not receive the land they were promised. His descendants received an earthly land four hundred years later, but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not. So there is no contradiction: God admits they were promised a land, but He is holding it off to the future, to the new heaven and new earth. God does not have to tell you everything He is doing right away.