Jump To:

• chosen people
  chosen people

  noun

  Often Chosen People (in the Bible) the Israelites.
• Chosen People
  Chosen People

  A term applied to the Jews (see also Jews). According to the Old Testament, God chose the descendants of Abraham through the line of Isaac and Jacob — the ancestors of today's Jews — as the people through whom he would reveal himself to the world. God therefore freed them from slavery in Egypt (see also Egypt) and led them into the Promised Land.

chosen people

American  

noun

1. Often Chosen People (in the Bible) the Israelites.

---

chosen people British  

plural noun

1. any of various peoples believing themselves to be chosen by God, esp the Jews

---

Chosen People Cultural  

1. A term applied to the Jews (see also Jews). According to the Old Testament, God chose the descendants of Abraham through the line of Isaac and Jacob — the ancestors of today's Jews — as the people through whom he would reveal himself to the world. God therefore freed them from slavery in Egypt (see also Egypt) and led them into the Promised Land.

---

Etymology

Origin of chosen people

First recorded in 1525–35

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

chosen people Chosen People

God said to his chosen people: “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 13, 2025

Some Christians support Israel due to Old Testament writings that Jews are God’s chosen people and that Israel is their rightful homeland.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 24, 2023

The ONS ran a regular survey through the pandemic: testing randomly chosen people in order to estimate the number of people who had the virus.

From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2023

Then he went through his painful presidency, a single term only, which made him even more bitter: "There is no special Providence for us. We are not a chosen people that I know of."

From Salon ● Sep. 19, 2020

I felt such intense pride at that point, not as an African, but as a Xhosa; I felt like one of the chosen people.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela

In America’s case, the sociologist Robert Bellah described the country’s civil religion through its symbols: the Exodus, Chosen People, Promised Land, New Jerusalem, and Sacrificial Death and Rebirth.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 8, 2016

No concept of Judaism has been more persistently misunderstood than that of the Chosen People.

From Time Magazine Archive

It has always been irresistibly tempting, Toynbee says, for a great or ancient body of human beings to think of itself as "The Chosen People."

From Time Magazine Archive

Everything anyone ever wanted to know about the Chosen People, brilliantly organized, interpreted and narrated by one of Britain's most distinguished journalist-scholars.

From Time Magazine Archive

Moreover, the punishment of England may safely be left in the hands of her politicians, who are also in one sense or another "Chosen People."

From From a Terrace in Prague by Baker, Lieut.-Col. B. Granville