The name most commonly used by Jews throughout the world for their ancestral homeland is not one which appears too often in Tanach.

One place where we do find it is in connection with the tremendous effort made by King Yoshiyahu in ridding Eretz Yisrael of the idols which had proliferated during the reigns of his predecessors. He ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Yehudah at the age of eight and in the twelfth year of his reign he undertook this elimination of idolatry, which culminated in “beating the carved idols into dust and cutting down all the sun images throughout all of Eretz Yisrael” (Divrei HaYamim II 34:7).

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