Posts Tagged: immigrants

“Fair Distribution of the Land and ‘Those People’ ”

On May 13, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

The Old Testament has a lot to say about “foreigners.”  (Where I grew up, in Adams County, Ohio, we called them “foregners.”  This word referred to anyone from the next county over.)  But, however you spell and pronounce word, the Old Testament has a lot to say about “those people.”

And often, it is “those people,” with the emphasis on the word “those.”  They are the others, the ones not like us, the outsiders.

I have been something of an outsider all my life.  When I was in grade school, my fellow students would ask me, “Where you from?!” in a tone of voice that was more an accusation than it was a question.  The truth was that I lived on a farm, about four miles outside of town.  Apparently, this was far enough to make me one of those people.

So, the Bible warns against intermarrying with foreigners.  Even the great (and wise?) King Solomon married a bunch of foreigners, and started worshiping his wives’ gods.  He went so far as to sacrifice some of his children to these gods.  We need to acknowledge that relationships with outsiders can be quite problematic.  This was known long before “those people” began flying airplanes into skyscrapers.

However, the Bible has other, more positive things to say about foreigners, too.  I stumbled across one a couple of days ago when I was listening through the book of Ezekiel.  I thought that I had heard it wrong, but I went back for another look (including in Hebrew, the original language of the Old Testament), and it was absolutely unequivocal.

It is in a vision that Ezekiel had of the restored boundaries of the land of Israel.  Many folks from Judah were in exile in Babylon.  Israel (which was what the Northern Kingdom was called after it had split off from Judah in 930 B.C.) had been gone for 150 years.

And yet, from the exile in Babylon—which Ezekiel shared with his people—Ezekiel looked forward to a restored Israel and Judah.

“So you shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel. 22 You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. 23 In whatever tribe the sojourner resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, declares the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 47:21-23, English Standard Version).

What?!  The foreigner is supposed to get an inheritance, just like the Israelites?!  You’ve got to be kidding me!

Nope.  That is what it says.

Now admittedly, this is a vision, not a description of immediate reality.  But before anything can become a reality, it has to be a vision.  And to become reality, I must act on the vision.

I’m not quite ready for completely open borders.  In any case, it is not likely, with our current anti-immigrant mindset, that I will have a huge impact on national policy.  But I can begin where I am.  I can begin by sharing the little inheritance that I call “mine”.  I can be generous with my wife’s and my house.  I can share the produce from my garden—assuming that it actually produces some.

Visions are big.  Beginnings are small.  But we all have to begin somewhere.

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