After God rescues Israel from Egypt, they camp in the desert at Mount Sinai. Moses goes up the mountain and receives the commandments that God wants Israel to live by. A foundation of Israel’s relationship with God is how they are to relate to the strangers within Israel and the foreign peoples outside Israel, according to the Law of Moses.
God tells Israel that if they listen to God and keep the covenant they are about to make, they will become God’s own people whom he will transform into a holy priesthood:
“5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine;6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
(Ex 19:5-6)
God chose Israel for this, not because they were greater or better than all other nations, but because they were the fewest of all peoples.[i] When the nations around saw how God blessed and protected little Israel, it would arouse a curious interest that would lead them to come to Israel to know God as well. If Israel kept God’s covenant and lived according to God’s will, God would make them “a light for the nations”. Since the whole earth belongs to God, he is not content to save only Israel, but wants to extend his salvation to all peoples:
“6 he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.””
(Is 49:6)
God’s covenant with Israel, in short, was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself.” [ii]
The first part of the summary, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart,” deals with Israel’s relationship with God, i.e., listening to the Word of God, worshiping, sacrificing at the temple, etc. The second part of the summary, to love “your neighbor as yourself”, is about Israel’s relationship with its fellow human beings.
For God’s covenant with Israel is both vertical and horizontal, and involves not only Israel performing sacrifices and ceremonies in the temple in Jerusalem, but also loving her fellow human beings by, as we saw in the last chapter, “rescuing” people out of a vulnerable situation.
Jesus even begins his entire mission as Messiah by proclaiming that he has come to do exactly what Isaiah prophesied God’s people would do, namely, to “proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to the captives and to the oppressed“[iii] . That Jesus causes the blind to see, the lame to walk, the lepers to be cleansed, the deaf to hear, the dead to rise, and the poor to hear a message of joy, becomes for John the Baptist a proof that Jesus is the Messiah.[iv]
So when God makes a covenant with Israel, he instructs them to love not only God, but also their fellow man:
“17 “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 18You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
(Le 19:17-18)
The word “neighbor” is a word that can also be translated as fellow human being, friend[v] or companion,[vi] and primarily refers to a fellow Israelite who is in the same covenant with God. In a similar way, the word is used in the New Testament where a believer is described as a “neighbor”.[vii]
But what makes the word “neighbor” so interesting in this context is that only a few verses later in the same chapter it is used synonymously with the word “stranger”:
“33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
(Le 19:33-34)
For God, therefore, not only natives are our neighbors, but also strangers, and must therefore also be treated as brothers .
But, not only does God want Israel to treat strangers well, God also wants Israel to love the stranger, because God loves the stranger:
“18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. 19Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
(Dt 10:18-19)
If Israel is to be God’s people, it is important that they reflect God’s character. For example, God instructs Israel in the Law of Moses to “be holy, for I am holy.” [viii]
In the same way, we see in the above scripture that God wants Israel to love the stranger, because God loves the stranger.
But it is not only strangers whom God wants Israel to treat as fellow human beings, but also fatherless[ix] and widows[x] . These three groups became like a collective term for socially and economically vulnerable people,[xi] much because they, along with the Levites[xii] , were not able to own land in Israel.
Without land of your own, or without a husband or father to work the land, survival becomes difficult, and God therefore wants Israel to take special financial responsibility by being generous[xiii] to strangers, fatherless and widows:
“19 “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. 20When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. 21When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterwards. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. 22You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this.”
(Dt 24:19-22)
In addition to each person being generous with his own private abundance, tithes would be collected collectively so that those who had no land of their own could share in this social welfare:
“28 “At the end of every three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in the same year and lay it up within your towns. 29And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do.”
(Dt 14:28-29)
Notice that this law was accompanied by a promise of God’s blessing. If Israel wanted to see a good harvest and a blessed economic abundance, they were to give a tenth of their produce to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow. To make sure that the Israelites obeyed this commandment, they would solemnly pledge and publicly confess it at the time of tithing:
“12 “When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, giving it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled,13 then you shall say before the Lord your God, ‘I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me.’ I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them.14 I have not eaten of the tithe while I was mourning, or removed any of it while I was unclean, or offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God. I have done according to all that you have commanded me. 15Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel and the ground that you have given us, as you swore to our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey.’”
(Dt 26:12-15)
In addition to a generous welfare system, Israel would also ensure that foreigners could participate in religious life in the same way as native Israelites:
“14 And if a stranger is sojourning with you, or anyone is living permanently among you, and he wishes to offer a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord, he shall do as you do. 15For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the Lord. 16One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you.”
(Nu 15:14-16)
Foreigners had the same right to a day off, the Sabbath, as native Israelites,[xiv] and if they wished, they could participate in the Jewish Passover celebrations, provided they circumcised themselves. [xv]
But foreigners had not only religious rights, but also obligations. If the foreigners failed to perform the religious sacrifice, they would receive the same punishment as the Israelites.[xvi]
If, against all odds, Israel breaks the covenant by mistreating its fellow human beings, God warns them that he will then side with the weak and vulnerable and listen to their cries for help:
“21 “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 22You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. 23If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry,24 and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless. ”
(Ex 22:21-24)
In sum, God instructs Israel through the Law of Moses to welcome strangers, refugees, and immigrants to their land as guests, to contribute financially to them out of her abundance, to include and integrate them into religious life and society by giving them both obligations and rights, and to treat them as themselves:
“22 You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.”
(Le 24:22)
If Israel treated foreigners in the above way, God would in turn bless Israel. From this I believe that we in today’s society also have much to learn.
After Moses on Mount Sinai makes clear to the Israelite people all of God’s laws and instructions that are part of the covenant, Israel responds with one mouth, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do.“[xvii] Israel thus promises to keep its part of the covenant by loving God with all its heart and its fellow man as itself.
If Israel keeps the covenant, God will let Israel conquer the land of Canaan and then bless them abundantly in their new homeland.[xviii] But if, on the contrary, Israel breaks the covenant, God will curse Israel by driving them out of the land of Canaan.[xix]
In conclusion, we can see two things in particular about Israel’s relationship with foreigners in the Old Covenant. First, that God wants to use Israel as a holy instrument that reaches out with the Word of God to foreign peoples outside ofIsrael, and second, that God wants Israel to welcome and include foreigners within Israel both in society and in the religious community.
In the rest of the book, I call these two approaches to strangers “integration”[xx] if it applies inside Israel or the church, and “mission” if it applies outside Israel or the church.
In the next two chapters, we will look at how integration in Israel is working in practice, and then in chapters 13 and 14 we will see how God intended Israel to missionary among the foreign peoples outside Israel’s borders.
You have read a free chapter of my book Friend of Strangers. If you like this book, please consider purchasing the ebook through Amazon. Since English is not my native language, there may be some linguistic inaccuracies. Please contact me if you find any.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[i] Dt 7:7–8
[ii] Lk 10:27
[iii] Lk 4:18–19, Isa 58:6–7, Isa 61:1–3
[iv] Mt 11:4–6
[v] 2Sam 13:3
[vi] Ex 2:13
[vii] Jas 4:12
[viii] Le 11:44
[ix] “Fatherless”, (yatom), means to be an orphan, but can also be translated as “lonely”.
[x] “Widow”, (almana), refers to a woman whose husband has died and thus no longer has someone to support her.
[xi] Dt 10:18, Dt 14:29, Dt 16:11–14, Dt 24:17–21, Dt 26:12–13, Dt 27:19, Ps 146:9, Je 7:5–7, Je 22:3, Zec 7:10
[xii] The Levites were descendants of Levi, one of the 12 tribes of Israel, and served together with the priests in the temple.
[xiii] Le 19:9–10, Le 23:22
[xiv] Ex 20:8–10
[xv] Ex 12:48–49
[xvi] Le 17:8–16
[xvii] Ex 19:8
[xviii] Dt 4:1–8
[xix] Le 26:33
[xx] The word “integration” is defined as “the joining or bringing together of separate parts into a larger whole”.