Hebrews 11:9 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country; by the same Divine faith he passed from tent to tent, moving it from place to place, as God ordered; so as he rather sojourned than dwelt in any. His journal is legible in Moses's history, moving from Charran to Shechem, from thence to Beth-el, and then more southward, and thence to Egypt; see Genesis 12:1-20: so that he sojourned in Canaan, and the adjoining countries, which God had covenanted to give for an inheritance to him and his seed, Genesis 15:18-21; yet by faith he would stay God's time for it, but lived in it as a stranger, not having in possession one foot of ground, but what he bought for a burying place, Genesis 25:9,10 Ac 7:5. Dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: here he, with his son Isaac, and grandson, and their seed, coheirs with him of Canaan, built no houses, but lived in tents, which they might pitch or remove at God's pleasure, and as he called them, as who were strangers to this country, and to the inhabitants of it, with whom they were to have no spiritual society, as travelling to a better; being in this world, but neither citizens nor inhabitants of it, but as denizens of a more excellent one, Genesis 26:3 Genesis 28:13,14.