Matthew Poole and continuators on Exodus 3:8

8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land, unto a good land and a large , unto a land flowing with milk and honey , unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites .

This word notes Gods manifestation of himself and his favour, and giving help from heaven. See Gen. 18. 21.

So it was not onely comparatively to Goshen, where they now dwelt, and to the number of the Israelites at that time, but absolutely, if you take the land of promise according to its true and first and antient bounds of it, as you have them described, Gen. 15. 18. Deut. 1. 7. and 11. 24. and not according to those narrow limits to which they were afterwards confined for their unbelief, floth, cowardize and impiety.

(i. e) Abounding with the choicest fruits both for necessity and for delight. The excellency, and singular fruitfulness of this land, howsoever denied or disputed by some ill minded persons is sufficiently evident, 1. from express testimony not onely of Moses, Deut. 8. 7, 8, 9. but also of the spies who were sent to view it, and, though prejudic'd against it, yet acknowledged it, Numb. 13. 27. and of the holy Prophets that lived long in it, as David, Psal. 106. 24. Ioel chap. 2. 3. and Ezekiel, who calls it the glory of all lands, Ezek. 20. 15. Which if it had not been true, it is ridiculous to think that they durst have said and writ so, when the people with whom they contested, and thousands of other persons there and then living, were able to confute them. After them Iosephus, and St. Hierom, and others since who lived long in that land, have highly commended it. And whereas Strabo speaks of the barrenness of the so[illegible: 1+ letters]l about Ierusalem, that is true, but by himself it is limited to the compass of 60 furlongs from Ierusalem. And if at this day the land be now grown barren in a great measure, it is not strange considering both the great neglect and sloth of the people as to the improvement of it, and the great wickedness of its inhabitants, for which God hath threatned to turn a fruitful land into barren [illegible: 1+ letters], Psal. 107. 34.

These people are divers[illegible: 1+ letters]y numbred, there are ten sorts reckoned, Gen. 15. 19, 20, 21. and seven, Deut. 7. 1. and here but six, because some of them were either destroyed or driven out of their land by others; or d[illegible: 1+ letters]d by choice and design remove to some other place, as many in those times did, though it be not mentioned in Scripture: or by cohabitation and marriages with some of the other people did make a coalition and were incorporated with them and so their name was swallowed up in the other; or because the names of some of these people, as particularly the C[illegible: 1+ letters]ites, and the Amorites, were used sometimes more strictly, and sometimes more largely, so as to comprehend under them the other people, as the Girgashites, &c. whence it comes to pass that all the rest go under the names of the Ca[illegible: 1+ letters]ites, Gen. 13. 7. and of the Amorites in some places of Scripture, as hath been shewed.