A people who lay claim to a land almost invariably depict or mythologise themselves as indigenous to it. The Torah explicitly states the contrary: Abraham came originally from Ur of the Chaldees, and when he sought to buy the cave of Machpelah to bury his wife he described himself to the local people as “a stranger and a sojourner” - Genesis 23.4. When his descendants, the Children of Israel, were given the Promised Land the Torah explicitly states in Exodus 3.8 that this was “the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite”
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– Chief Rabbi Dr JH Hertz, Pentateuch & Haftorahs (Second Edition) on page 396.


Author’s Note: Initially this text was blue indicating that Chief Rabbi Hertz was the writer. Although he makes the point on page 396 the words here are not his, leading me to conclude, with some doubt, that they must be mine, and so the text is now black.