(Exodus 13:5) states, "And it shall be, when the Lord brings you to the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Hivvite, and the Jebusite." That is five nations. But Jewish tradition consistently speaks of seven nations inhabiting the Promised Land. So which is it — five or seven?
The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael resolves the discrepancy through a technique called gezerah shavah — linking two passages that share a common word. The verb "bringing" appears both in (Exodus 13:5) and in (Deuteronomy 7:1), which lists all seven nations: "When the Lord your God brings you into the land... the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivvite, and the Jebusite — seven nations greater and mightier than you."
Because both verses use the word "bringing," the Mekhilta concludes that wherever the Torah speaks of God bringing Israel into the land, all seven nations are intended — even when only five are named explicitly. The two unlisted nations — the Girgashites and the Perizzites — are included by implication.
This method of interpretation reveals how the rabbis understood the Torah as a single, self-referencing document. No verse stands alone. Every word echoes against every other instance of that word across all five books. When the Torah says "bringing" in Exodus, it carries the full weight of "bringing" in Deuteronomy. The promise was always for the whole land, all seven nations, the complete inheritance.