And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not molest him.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
As one born among you shall the stranger who sojourneth with you be unto you; and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt I am Jehovah your God.
Leviticus 19 gathers a long list of everyday duties — harvesting, wages, courts, weights. Into that list God places the foreigner living among Israel. He gives him the standing of a native and the same love a man owes himself. The command rests on two things: who God is, and what Israel had once been in Egypt.
One refrain keeps returning through the chapter. "I am the LORD your God" is not a signature at the end of a rule. It is the reason for the rule. Israel was to act like the God who had taken them up, not like people who counted themselves better than their neighbours.
God had brought them into a relationship with Himself. That relationship had its own privileges and responsibilities. "I am the LORD your God." This was to be the ground of their conduct. They were to act in a way worthy of the One who had become their God, and made them His people. It was not that they were the least bit better than other people. Not at all.
The verse does two things at once. It settles where the foreigner stands, then goes far past that. God does not simply tell Israel to leave him alone. He asks for the love a man spends on himself.
A "stranger" who might live for a time in their land was not only to be allowed there unmolested, but to be loved as one born among them. "You shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" (33, 34). How touching to remember their oppression in Egypt, not for resentment but for compassion!
Kelly adds that the command, given so early, cuts off in advance the narrow, mean pride found later in the Talmud, the great collection of Jewish teaching.
Israel had lived on the wrong side of the word "stranger." God turns that memory into the measure of their kindness. He also reminds them that they hold their own land only as His guests.
Israel themselves had known "the heart of a stranger" by bitter experience. God declared Himself to them as One who "loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing." He urges them, "Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Deut. 10:18-19). More than that, they were taught still to count themselves as strangers, even in their own land: "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. 25:23).
Commentators see in this command the direction God's heart has always taken — outward, past the borders of His chosen nation.
"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" (Num. 15:15). So the heart of God always travelled out, in His indescribable grace, beyond His chosen people. It reached out to provide for the blessing of those who were "alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." We ourselves owe this to the sovereignty of His grace. It gave us that wonderful place of nearness, and the close relationship into which He has brought us through the death and resurrection of Christ.
If a people under law were bound to this, those who live under grace cannot claim less.
When a stranger came to live in Israel, Israel was to treat him with respect and courtesy. In fact, Israel was told to "love him as yourself" (v. 34). If this was true in Israel under law, how much more emphatic it should be for Christians who are "under grace."
That love has a direction:
We are to display the love that has reached us by seeking others with the Gospel of the grace of God.
- Ground — The command stands on "I am the LORD your God"; behaviour follows from who God is, never from being better than others.
- Memory — Israel had known the heart of a stranger in Egypt; that memory was to produce compassion, not resentment.
- Status — The stranger is not just left unharmed. He receives the place of the native-born, and the love you owe yourself.
- Reach — One statute covered Israelite and stranger alike. God's grace always travelled beyond the chosen nation. That is why we are near to God today.
- Result — What the law required of Israel, grace presses harder on Christians. We show the love that reached us by carrying the gospel to others.