The essay challenges the use of biblical “sojourner” texts to justify an unqualified pro-migration stance. While Scripture commands justice and humane treatment for sojourners, it presents a complex, conservative model: sojourning was usually temporary, migrants held subordinate status, and Israel’s hospitality served a larger narrative of divinely mandated land possession and identity preservation. Migrants were protected but not fully assimilated, and foreign influence was often seen as a threat. The author argues that modern churches oversimplify this context, ignore limits and consequences of migration, and fail to account for vast differences between ancient Israel and contemporary societies.
In part one, we looked at the argument that the Christmas stories, the career of Jesus more generally, and the mission of his followers support the view that the church and the societies in which it bears witness are obligated to welcome and include the refugee and migrant. Here we will consider the one large biblical concept to which appeal is made in support of the inclusive agenda—the hospitality extended to the “sojourner” in ancient Israel.
My overall argument is that the church has got itself boxed in to one way of viewing the problem, and that scripture is both less interested and more complicated. Part 1 dealt with the less interested, part 2 deals with the more complicated.
In a transcribed conversation with Jim Wallis of Sojourners, “theologian and immigrant advocate” Karen González says:
The story of the Bible isn’t just a story of moving from being lost to being saved, but its one of being a foreigner and moving toward being part of the family of God to belonging. And that’s a trajectory we can see throughout the scriptures from the very beginning when we meet Abraham — God is asking him to migrate, and we see he and Sarah’s vulnerability in Egypt. Over and over again the scripture restates some 83 times… that we’re to treat the immigrant as ourselves, we’re to love the immigrant as ourselves, we’re to do justice for the immigrant. And there’s judgment. There’s a whole book of the Bible, Obadiah. And it’s judgment for those who did not treat the refugee and immigrant well, for those who did not do justice for the immigrant.
Translating the Hebrew word ger “immigrant” rather than the dated “sojourner” may not be a bad idea, but I’ll stick with sojourner. The question is whether González has given us the whole picture. I don’t think she has. I’m not an Old Testament scholar, but really this is just an exercise in putting the “sojourner” texts back in context.
The status of the sojourner in the Old Testament
1. The patriarchs are often held up as archetypal migrants and sojourners. That’s right. But the stories of migration in Genesis presuppose the eventual possession of the land by the descendants of Abraham. So if these stories are going to be used in support of the embrace of migrants, they should not be lifted out of the larger narrative that will culminate in the violent conquest of Canaan and eradication or expulsion of its peoples. The patriarchs are theologically privileged migrants. That has to be factored into the moral argument.
2. Sojourning is rarely understood as a permanent arrangement. The patriarchs lived for a period as sojourners in Canaan (1 Chron. 16:19; Ps. 105:12, 23), then the families travelled to Egypt to escape famine, not intending to stay there indefinitely (Gen. 12:10; 47:3; Exod. 6:4). Abraham “sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines” (Gen. 21:34). A “stranger” may “sojourn” among the Israelites or a person may live “for a generation” among them—in other words, long term (Num. 9:14; 15:14). Elimelech sojourned temporarily in Moab because there was famine in Israel (Ruth 1:1). Elijah sojourned with a widow in Zarephath (1 Kgs. 17:20). Elisha sent a woman to sojourn in the land of the Philistines for seven years to escape famine (2 Kgs. 8:1-3). The exiles were sojourners in Babylon but hoped to return to Judea (Ezek. 20:38).
3. Sojourning is a word for a fairly normal social mobility within Israel (Judg. 17:7-9; 19:1, 16).
4. The prosperity of the Israelites and their growth in numbers as sojourners in Egypt proved a socially destabilising force, the cause of considerable resentment (Deut. 26:5-6). By the same token, the economic success of the sojourner in Israel would be a sign that YHWH has cursed his people:
The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. (Deut. 28:43-44)
5. Sojourners in Israel should receive the same justice as the native because the people of Israel were sojourners in Egypt (Exod. 22:21; 23:9; Lev. 19:33-34; 24:22). The Israelites were exhorted to “Love the sojourner… for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:19). The sojourner as well as the native Israelite was permitted to flee to a city of refuge in the event of an accidental killing (Num. 35:15).
Here we have the heart of the argument that a “Christian” society should treat migrants justly and hospitably.
6. But sojourners were not equal to natives of the land unless the males were circumcised (Exod. 12:48-49); their status was similar to that of the “temporary resident” (toshav) or “hired worker” (Lev. 25:35; 39); they received charity along with widows and the fatherless, they had a similar social status (Deut. 14:29 ; 24:17, 19-21; 26:12; 27:19; Ps. 94:6; 146:9; Jer. 7:6; Ezek. 22:6, 29; Zech. 7:9; Mal. 3:5). The sojourner was, in practice, a second class citizen.
Third generation sojourners might enter the assembly of the Lord (Deut. 23:7-8). In the case of the post-exilic community, the “sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you” were to be allotted an inheritance in the land (Ezek. 47:22).
7. The sojourner was not expected to keep the whole Law but was required to observe certain religious restrictions. The sojourner who ate leavened bread during Passover would be cut off from the land (Exod. 12:19). He should observe the Sabbath (Exod. 20:10; Lev. 16:9; Deut. 5:14), should not eat blood (Lev. 17:12), should not commit any of the “abominations” listed in the Holiness Code (Lev. 18:26); he would be put to death for blaspheming the name of YHWH (Lev. 24:15; Num. 15:30). The sojourner was expected to “hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law”—perhaps all the words that were applicable to resident aliens (Deut. 31:12; Josh. 8:35).
8. Foreigners in the country were perceived as a threat to Israel’s religious integrity. The gods of the Canaanites were to be removed from the land; marriage with Canaanites was prohibited (Ex. 34:11-16); Solomon was censured for taking foreign wives, “who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods” (1 Kgs. 11:8). Ezra demanded that the returned exiles separate themselves from the people of the land and their “foreign wives” (Ezra 10:10-11).
The treatment of refugees
Following perhaps a military disaster in Moab, the Judeans are told to “grant justice; make your shade like night at the height of noon; shelter the outcasts; do not reveal the fugitive; let the outcasts of Moab sojourn among you; be a shelter to them from the destroyer”—but in the expectation that Moab would then be assimilated into the Davidic kingdom (Is. 16:3-5). This is one of the few examples of refugees, as opposed to migrants, coming to Israel.
And here’s where we may briefly consider the much neglected oracle of Obadiah against Edom, mentioned by González. At the heart of the book is the complaint that Edom stood by and watched when Jerusalem was sacked by foreigners, and failed to offer sanctuary for fleeing Judeans (Obad. 10-14). Therefore, Edom will suffer the same fate on a day of the Lord (15-18), but eventually the “exiles of this host of the people of Israel” will repossess the land and the kingdom will be extended to include Edom (19-21).
So Israel’s welcome of refugees from Moab and Edom’s lack of compassion towards the refugees from Judea have the same outcome—Israel’s occupation of the territory of its neighbours. González didn’t mention that. The story of Israel’s theologically privileged possession of the land remains determinative and should not be redacted from the moral argument.
Conclusions
The sojourner template is complex and perhaps not entirely coherent. Israel’s borders were not closed—no borders were. Non-Jewish resident aliens were tolerated and were treated fairly, humanely. But they were mostly not fully assimilated; they were assigned a subordinate status, along with widows, orphans, and hired labourers. They were not required to be circumcised and keep the whole Law, but they were subject to some quite stringent religious rules to ensure that they did not contaminate the land. Israel had been a migrant people, and the memory of it was to be preserved; but they migrated at God’s command, and the journey culminated in the occupation of the land.
Where the sanctity of the land is not at issue, as here in the UK, such restrictions and marginalisation would presumably not apply. But then we have a situation in which the covenant people—the church—is not in a position to dictate social policy and is bound to defer to the interests of the host culture.
We don’t get the impression that foreigners entered Israel in large numbers—with the exception of foreign wives, Moabites fleeing whatever disaster had befallen them, and invading armies. It seems likely that most sojourners did not settle permanently. The detrimental effects of mass migration is marginally acknowledged. Immigrant social and economic success is a curse, not a blessing.
If anything, then, the sojourner paradigm is a conservative one: migration created the nation and should not be allowed to change its divinely instituted identity and vocation.
So is it right for churches to hold up Israel’s obligations towards the sojourner as a biblically grounded argument for supporting migration? Can it not be turned on its head to protect “native” communities from the erosion of traditional values?
Should we not take into account the immense social, political, legal, and demographic differences between ancient Israel and modern, democratic, post-Christian nations?
Is there no upper limit on the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers that can be—or must be—accommodated? Should we not be concerned about the impoverishment of the societies from which people are coming? Does our moral obligation to those who arrive override any obligation to those left behind?
And if migration is likely to increase dramatically in the coming decades as a consequence of climate change, should we not already be developing a theological response that locates the immediate demands for compassion and neighbourliness within a narrative of global crisis and disorder?
After all, compassion didn’t do the flood generation any good. As far as the story goes, no one successfully migrated away from the catastrophe.
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