The children of Israel were long oppressed in Egypt as strangers (foreigners) in a strange land. Even their ancestors Abraham and Jacob/Israel were Syrians dispossessed from their homeland. This fact was a regular part of an Israelite testimony as expressed during solemn worship services of thanksgiving and gratitude to God at the Jerusalem temple, “A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous” (Deuteronomy 26:5).
