“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)
“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You 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.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)
“You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 24:22)
“You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land.” (Deuteronomy 23:7)
Exhortations like these occur repeatedly in the Pentateuch. The idea was clearly important: People from other countries who have come to Israel and Judah should be treated by the same standards as natives. They shouldn’t be oppressed. Christian nationalists think otherwise, though I’ve never heard them explain why.
Perhaps they think this rule expired with Jesus’s coming, like the kosher rules. It’s a standard part of Christian doctrine that the Mosaic Law doesn’t apply to Christians, though these same people insist on posting the Ten Commandments everywhere. Maybe they’d say, “Hey, we never had ancestors living in Egypt!”
You won’t convince any MAGAs by citing these verses that their hatred of immigrants is wrong. Trying to win an argument by accepting your opponent’s premises is usually a bad idea anyway. It’s just interesting to observe the hypocrisy.
They might say, “We don’t hate all immigrants, just those who haven’t managed to negotiate a years-long bureaucratic labyrinth!” But the verses I quoted don’t say anything about welcoming only government-approved sojourners. The travelers in the Biblical lands hadn’t gone through border checkpoints, applied for visas, tried to get green cards, or live in fear that their permissions might be revoked or they might arbitrarily be grabbed off the street. They just came. Today they would be considered illegal aliens.
Even if the nativists consider the Mosaic Law past its use-by date, there are the words attributed to Jesus in Matthew chapter 25. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” He’s literally telling those who harm strangers to go to Hell.
Religions change, and I get annoyed when outsiders tell followers of a religion, “You’re doing it wrong.” But we can ask why people claim to be devoted to a religion yet selectively ignore some parts of their holy text while insisting on the importance of adjacent verses. It’s almost as if they choose their conclusions first, then go looking for Bible verses to support them.
Hi Gary,
I’ve been sitting on this one for a few weeks. I appreciate your motivation. But.
IMO there are two flaws.
The first is your use of the Pentateuch with the reference to “sojourners”. The Israelites in question weren’t merely traveling in/through Egypt. They were held in bondage there. That was a temporary condition. People arbitrarily migrating to a new country are not “sojourning”. They are re-locating. In some cases, it would be correct to use the word “invading” as the net result sometimes is to negatively impact the existing nation/culture.
higher rental costs
lower wages
lack of desire by some to not conform to our laws
This is a category error. We should always be hospitable and caring to travelers/sojourners. Those that are re-locating should be treated in-kind; as they abide by our laws and culture, we should be caring and welcoming in turn.
The second is your use of the verse from Matthew. Among other things, Jesus brought about a new relationship with God. It was no longer a collective relationship but is instead an individual one. His instructions were always personal – you, my follower, go do these things. It was never “Seek Caesar. Demand higher taxes and a government program.” It was always an instruction to the individual to take individual action to solve problems. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the superior results from the American response to that instruction at length.
As our nation is Constitutionally prevented from establishing a state religion, it is inappropriate to convert a private, religious, moral imperative into a national, legal requirement.
Another “but”…I do think we need to revisit our immigration laws with an eye towards allowing more legal immigrants. We need to be able to exclude those who mean our country harm and thereby include those who want to assimilate our nation’s legal values and traditions; liberal, democratic, Constitutionally-limited government focused on the preservation and extension of individual rights. One of the reasons that legal immigrants frequently make better Americans than people who were born here is because they have experienced the oppression present in other cultures and have a strong motivation to adopt our culture. Illegal aliens generally are not motivated towards that same objective.
There are lots of legitimate options for changing our immigration system. The first step is for Congress to engage in good faith on the issue. Not for Presidents to arbitrarily elect to not enforce laws passed by Congress and signed into law.
FWIW, I am currently a religious skeptic but was raised in a church environment and participated some into adulthood.
Regards,
Dann
The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. – Isaac Asimov
Thanks for the comment. Addressing some of the main points:
Yes, the Israelites as described in the Bible were fleeing slavery. They were also invaders, murdering whole cities to claim their new territory. Impacting the economy by peacefully moving into an area isn’t invasion, but exterminating the populations of Jericho and Ai is. At the same time, any view of these tales should take into account the fact that they were written much later than the events were supposed to have happened, and they’re more of a national epic than reliable history.
Without extensively studying the historical context, I can’t say for sure whether the passages I cited were intended to apply to all visiting travelers or just to refugees. Bible Gateway takes the view that “sojourner” was roughly equivalent to “resident alien.”
I hope it was clear to everyone that I was addressing people’s personal attitudes toward foreigners, and not suggesting in any way that the Bible should be a basis for government policy.
Most “illegal aliens” aren’t people who sneaked into the country, but ones who came here legally and have failed to keep up with the arduous procedures which are required to maintain legal status, or ones who came applying for legal status and not getting it.
By presidents arbitrarily electing to not enforce laws, I assume you’re referring to things like DACA. That was a bad way of implementing a good intention. Letting the president create exceptions to laws sets a precedent for future presidents (fingers, stop mixing up those words!) — or I should say the current president — to do the same on a bigger and more arbitrary scale. The imperial presidency is a long-standing problem, and Trump is just its culmination.