The name "Israel" first appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name given by God to the patriarch Jacob.

The first definition of the promised land calls it "this land". (Genesis 15:13–21) In Genesis 15, this land is promised to Abraham's "descendants", notably Isaac, while in Deuteronomy 1:8, it is promised explicitly to the Israelites.

A slightly more detailed definition is given in Exodus 23:31, which describes the borders as "from the sea of reeds (Red Sea) to the Sea of the Philistines (Mediterranean sea) and from the desert to the Euphrates River", though the Hebrew text of the Bible uses the name, "the River", to refer to the Euphrates.

The city Samaria was established as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel during the reign of Omri circa 884 BC.

In Biblical times the government of the Ammonites was known as the Kingdom of the Ammonites. The kingdom basically centered on the city-state of Rabbah located at the headwaters of the Jabbok River.

The Bible explains the origins of the Ammonite people from the incestuous event between Lot and his daughters following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Both daughters had children and the Moabites and Ammonites were decendents of the unions. Their admitted kinship through the centuries and close ties in language development attest to kinship. Genesis 19: 36-38 states So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by by their father. The firstborn gave birth to a son and named him Moab. He is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger also gave birth to a son, and she named him Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites of today.

Moab had become a tributary of Assyria by the late 8th century bc and was conquered by the Babylonians in 582 bc, upon which the Moabites disappeared from history.

According to Genesis, the Moabites were related to the Israelites, with both peoples tracing their descent back to a common ancestor, Terah, who is named as the father of Abraham and Haran, and Haran being the father of Lot.

The story of Ruth, on the other hand, testifies to the existence of a friendly intercourse between Moab and Bethlehem, one of the towns of the tribe of Judah. By his descent from Ruth, David may be said to have had Moabite blood in his veins.

In the time of Nebuchadnezzar II the Edomites helped plunder Jerusalem and slaughter the Judaeans.

When the King of Edom refused to allow the children of Israel^[20] to pass through his land on their way to Canaan, they detoured around the country because of his show of force^[21] or because God ordered them to do so rather than wage war.^[22] The King of Edom did not attack the Israelites, though he prepared to resist aggression.

1550–1200 (Late Bronze): Egyptian hegemony

1200–586 (Iron Age, divided into Iron Age I and II): village societies in Iron I giving way to kingdoms in Iron II.

After the Iron Age the periods are named after the various empires that ruled the region: Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek (Hellenistic) and Roman.

Canaan first appears as one of Noah's grandsons, cursed with perpetual slavery because his father Ham had "looked upon" the drunk and naked Noah; God later promises Canaan's land to Abraham and eventually delivers it to the Israelites.

Canaanites as being descended from an ancestor called Canaan The son of Ham, the Grandson of Noah.

According to the Bible, the kingdom of Judah resulted from the break-up of the United kingdom of Israel (1020 to about 930 BC), created bySaul, David and Solomon, which was a union of the twelve Israelite tribes.

The major theme of the Bible's narrative is the loyalty of Judah, and especially its kings, to "Yahweh", the God of Israel. According to the Bible, all the kings of Israel and almost all the kings of Judah were "bad", which in terms of Biblical narrative means that they failed to enforce worship of Yahweh alone. Of the "good" kings,Hezekiah (727–698 BCE) is noted for his efforts at stamping out idolatry (in this case, the worship of Baal and Asherah, among other traditional Near Eastern divinities),^[4] but his successors, Manasseh of Judah (698–642 BCE) and Amon (642–640 BCE), revived idolatry, drawing down on the kingdom the anger of Yahweh. King Josiah (640–609 BCE) returned to the worship of Yahweh alone, but his efforts were too late and Israel's unfaithfulness caused God to permit the kingdom's destruction by the Babylonians in c.587/586 BCE.