Q&A: Does the Bible state that the original land of Israel extended into Iraq and Egypt?

Actually, no. The Book of Deuteronomy is very explicit on the issue, with the expression avor et-hayarden el-ha’aretz asher Adonai eloheinu noten (‘pass the [River] Jordan to the land which the Lord our God has given’) repeated (in various permutations) a dozen times (2:29 / 3:27 / 4:21, 23, 26 / 9:1 / 11:31 / 12:10 / 27:2,4, 12 / 30:18).

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Q&A: Were there also checkpoints in ancient Israel?

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Oh, yes. Here are a few examples, just from the first few books of the Hebrew Bible:

The most obvious instance of a checkpoint was the one set up by the Gileadites to catch retreating Ephraimite soldiers, after the Ephraimites’ defeat in battle. Since Ephraimites were known to have a particular kind of lisp—pronouncing /sh/ as /s/—the Gileadites put a simple test to every man they caught:

Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. [Judges 12:6]

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Q&A: When did the term “Jews” come to refer to the Jewish people as opposed to “Israelites” or “Hebrews”?

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Image source: myjewishlearning.com

Answer: probably with the fall of the (northern) kingdom of Israel and the scattering of its population by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, when Judea became the sole sovereign Israelite entity.

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Q&A: Which commandment was the most difficult for the Israelites to accept when they received the Torah at Mt. Sinai?

As the Book of Exodus itself suggests, it was the probably the second:

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In modern Square Hebrew script: לא תעשה לך פסל וכל תמונה
Phonetically: Lo ta’aseh lekha pesel vekhol tmunah

—i.e. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness’

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