The foreigner as 'brother' or 'sister'

At the heart of the Torah...

 

The biblical theme of the ‘stranger’ is usually perceived in a primarily ethical perspective. This is due to the emphasis given to solidarity with the stranger in both testaments,1  starting with the First Covenant. And the legal parts of the Torah do indeed place great emphasis on protecting those who dwell in Israel as outsiders.

 

– In the Book of Exodus, God repeatedly admonishes his people not to oppress the stranger: "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (Ex 22:20; cf. 23:9).

 

– The Book of Leviticus also repeats the same commandment (Lev 19:33), adding: " The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God." (Lev 19:34).

 

In this central part of the book, which is the third of the Pentateuch, it is legitimate to say that love for the stranger is at the heart of the Torah2. God loves the foreigner, and demonstrated this by freeing Israel from Egypt, where the Israelites were sojourning as aliens. And the people are called to imitate their God, to love the stranger in the same way as they love "their neighbor", that is, their fellow citizen (Lev 19:18).

 

– The Book of Deuteronomy also repeats the commandment of love for the stranger (Deut 10:19), but in the context of an ethic of fraternity, of family ties.  Even if the stranger is not a "brother" or "sister", in the sense that he or she is not fully part of the people of God, they must be treated as such. In fact, no Old Testament book uses the word “alien” (Hebrew: ger) more often than Deuteronomy. No fewer than seven times the Israelites are reminded that they themselves were strangers in Egypt.  

 

In this context, three reasons for love towards the stranger are evident: 3

1. Reciprocity: Jacob, his sons, and their families arrived in Egypt as refugees in a time of starvation and were initially welcomed and treated well by the Egyptians. Thus, the Israelites are called to return this favor, to love all those who live as strangers among them.

2. Imitation of God: God freed Israel from oppression in Egypt. Likewise, the people in turn will avoid all forms of oppression of those most vulnerable.

3. Reversal: The exploitation suffered in Egypt is transformed into Israel's generosity towards foreigners.

 

According to the Torah, it can be said that love for the stranger is a central aspect not only of ethics, but of Israel’s identity. This is because God's love for foreigners is the basis of the liberation of God's people from slavery in Egypt.

 

… and the maternal love of God

 

The New Testament takes up Old Testament precepts regarding the foreigner in an even fuller way. These are two passages that highlight this:

 

– In the Final Judgment discourse (Mt 25:31-46), we hear Jesus say: "I was a stranger and you welcomed me" (Mt 25:35). Just as God does in the Torah, Jesus identifies himself with the stranger and invites his disciples to identify themselves with him-foreigner. Jesus, the Incarnate Word, makes himself a foreigner because he leaves his heaven. By being treated as a foreigner, Jesus welcomes every estrangement and overcomes it with radical, unreserved love. Consequently, love for the stranger is but a continuation of the disciples’ relationship with Jesus, their teacher, whom they welcomed.

 

– In the Good Samaritan parable (Lk 10:25-37), neither the man victimized by, nor the Samaritan, were foreigners in a strict sense. The victim of violence along the road is a Jew and the Samaritans also know and follow the Torah, and thus were part of the people of God. Let us remember, however, that Jesus tells the parable in the context of the question of interpretation of the commandment to love one's neighbor in Lev 19:18. The Doctor of the Law and Jesus agree that the Torah is summed up in love of God and neighbor (cf. Lk 10:25-28). To his interlocutor's provocative question about the identity of one’s neighbor (v. 29), Jesus responds precisely with this parable. The literary context of the commandment to love one's neighbor in Lev 19:18 is, as we saw above, love for the stranger. According to Lev 19, to love one's neighbor (v. 18) means to love also the stranger (v. 34).

 

Jesus speaks explicitly of this correspondence between one's neighbor and the stranger in the parable of the Samaritan: one loves one's neighbor by becoming a neighbor to the needy. The key to fulfilling the commandment of love of neighbor lies in "having compassion" (Lk 10:33). It is compassion for the victim of violence that distinguishes the Samaritan from the Levite and the priest who both "see" and then "pass by" (Lk 10:31-32).

 

The Greek verb for the Samaritan's compassion is splanchnizomai, a term that in turn resembles the Hebrew word rachamim: "mercy." Literally, rechem denotes the mother's womb (Job 3:11; Is 49:15). But in the Old Testament the term is often used for God's mercy (Ps 25:6; Is 54:7, etc.). God's love for the stranger is therefore an expression of his most intimate, divine-maternal love. It is the love that all of us, created in the image of God, find inscribed in our hearts.

 

We are all foreigners

 

The theme of the Biblical foreigner, however, also has an important anthropological aspect. In Genesis, the "garden in Eden" (Gen 2:8) is our original homeland. It is the place where we are true indigenous peoples, and it was planted especially for humankind. The Hebrew term for the human person, adam, in fact denotes his close relationship with the adama, the soil from which he was shaped. But outside the Garden, man finds himself an alien, far from his homeland.

 

This estrangement is further reinforced by the first murder in human history, committed by Cain who kills his brother, Abel. The blood – dam in Hebrew – of the slain cries out from adama, from the ground. Thus, the earth with which man is closely connected, will now always serve as a remembrance of his guilt. Cain's existence is one of a "wanderer and fugitive" (Gen 4:14), a person who feels like a stranger, who is out of place wherever he goes. 

 

In this light, salvation history presents itself as a return to one’s homeland. The ethnic identity of God's people is not so much constituted by common descent, but by the collective experience of having been brought back by God to one's own land. This land is in God's possession and entrusted to Israel as a gift. The founding experience of the People of God is therefore repatriation-given. The Israelites in the promised land are the expelled who have been recovered, and the stranger brought home is the paradigm of the saved human person. We are all foreigners with the divine promise of returning home.

 

In conclusion, I suggest that we consider the foreigners of our time in this anthropological context, as both messengers and witnesses:

– Foreigners bring to us the message of another homeland, reminding us that we, too, are all foreigners;

– Foreigners bear witness to a passage, a passage from one place to another.

 

Thus, strangers reveal to us in some way our own identity as foreigners, as aliens in exile. And in this way they remind us of the need to try to overcome every estrangement in order to journey towards the promised homeland.

 

 

 

 

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1 Cf. M. Zehnder, Bibel und Migration. Eine kritische und empirische Neubewertung, Bibel und Ethik 8, LIT Verlag, Berlin 2023.

2 Cf. G. Braulik, Der blinde Fleck – Das Gebot, den Fremden zu lieben. Zur sozialethischen Forderung von Deuteronomium 10, 19, in: I. Klissenbauer and others, Menschenrechte und Gerechtigkeit als bleibende Aufgaben. Beiträge aus Religion, Theologie, Ethik, Recht und Wirtschaft, Vienna University Press, Göttingen 2020, pp. 41–64.

3 Cf. M. Awabdy, Immigrants and innovative law. The Theological and Social Vision of Deuteronomy for Greek, Forschungen zum Alten Testament II, 67, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2014, p. 162.