a place of happiness; a longed-for goal that is reached by hard work and patience
—The team believes that their new coach will be able to take them to the promised land of the championship game.

God chose Abraham to be the father of the Hebrew people, later called Israelites, or Jews. God told him to leave his homeland and travel to a place that he promised to give to his descendants. So Abraham, with his wife, Sarah, and his nephew, Lot, went to this “Promised Land,” called Canaan. In the New Testament book of Hebrews, Abraham and Sarah are remembered as people of great faith:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, and he went out without understanding where he was going. By faith he lived as a foreigner in the promised land [land of promise—KJV] as though it were a foreign country. . . . By faith, even though Sarah herself was barren and he was too old, he received the ability to procreate, because he regarded the one who had given the promise to be trustworthy. So in fact children were fathered by one man – and this one as good as dead—like the number of stars in the sky and like the innumerable grains of sand on the seashore. (Hebrews 11:8,9,11,12)

Abraham believed that God would make him the father of a great nation, even though he and Sarah were childless and well past the age for having children. Also in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul writes about Abraham:

Against hope Abraham believed in hope [against hope believed in hope—KJV] with the result that he became the father of many nations according to the pronouncement, “so will your descendants be.” (Romans 4:18)

Today, hope against hope means “to have faith in a good outcome even though it doesn’t seem likely.”