Scripture Daily

Context No. 1312 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 10:12-22: in context

12Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13to keep the LORD’s commandments and statutes, which I command you today for your good? 14Behold, to the LORD your God belongs heaven, the heaven of heavens, and the earth, with all that is therein. 15Only the LORD had a delight in your fathers to love them, and he chose their offspring after them, even you above all peoples, as it is today. 16Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked. 17For the LORD your God, he is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty, and the awesome, who doesn’t respect persons or take bribes. 18He executes justice for the fatherless and widow and loves the foreigner in giving him food and clothing. 19Therefore love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. 20You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him. You shall cling to him, and you shall swear by his name. 21He is your praise, and he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things which your eyes have seen. 22Your fathers went down into Egypt with seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as the stars of the sky for multitude.

Moses reaches one of the great summaries of what God asks. And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you but to fear him, to walk in all his ways, to love him, and to serve him with all your heart and soul, keeping his commandments for your own good? He reminds them that everything belongs to God, that God set his love on their fathers and chose them, and calls them to circumcise their hearts and stop being stubborn. Then he describes the God they serve: one who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. And so, Moses says, you shall love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

One line in this summary reaches straight into the heart: love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. God grounds the command to love the outsider in Israel's own memory of being outsiders. They knew, in their bones, what it was to be strangers in someone else's land, vulnerable, without standing, at the mercy of others; and God tells them to let that memory become compassion rather than forgetting. The God who loves the foreigner and gives him food and clothing asks his people to do the same, precisely because they were once in the foreigner's place and were shown mercy. It is a pattern that runs all through scripture: the mercy we have received is meant to become the mercy we extend. We love because we were first loved; we forgive because we were forgiven; we welcome the stranger because we ourselves were once strangers whom God took in. To remember our own rescue rightly is to become gentle with those who are now where we once were. Forgetting that we were foreigners is how hearts grow hard; remembering it is how they stay soft toward the vulnerable.

Do I remember that I was once a stranger shown mercy, and does that memory soften me toward the foreigner and the vulnerable now, or have I forgotten my own rescue and grown hard toward those who stand where I once stood?

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