Scripture Daily

Context No. 1661 of 4322 · Leviticus

Context · Reflection

Leviticus 19:31-37: in context

31“‘Don’t turn to those who are mediums, nor to the wizards. Don’t seek them out, to be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God. 32“‘You shall rise up before the gray head and honor the face of the elderly; and you shall fear your God. I am the LORD. 33“‘If a stranger lives as a foreigner with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34The stranger who lives as a foreigner with you shall be to you as the native-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you lived as foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. 35“‘You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in measures of length, of weight, or of quantity. 36You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37“‘You shall observe all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them. I am the LORD.’”

This part of the holiness code gathers a cluster of commands about how to treat others. Rise before the aged and honor the old. Do not wrong the foreigner who lives among you; rather, love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. Do no injustice in your dealings, but keep just weights and honest measures. Each command is sealed with the refrain: I am the LORD your God.

At the center of this cluster stands a striking command: love the foreigner as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. The stranger, the immigrant, the outsider without the protections of kin and citizenship, was easy to wrong and easy to overlook; and God commands Israel not merely to tolerate the foreigner but to love him as they love themselves. The ground he gives is memory: you know what it is to be a stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt; you know the vulnerability, the mistreatment; therefore treat the stranger among you as you wish you had been treated. God ties the command to Israel's own experience of being outsiders, so that their memory of vulnerability becomes the root of their compassion. And this sits among the other commands here, honoring the old, dealing honestly in business, a whole ethic of treating rightly those who could be exploited: the aged, the outsider, the customer who trusts our scales. Running through it all is the refrain, I am the LORD your God; the reason for this justice and love is not mere social decency but the character of the God who gives the command, who himself watches over the stranger and the vulnerable. The passage presses a question about how we treat the outsider and the vulnerable in our own lives, whether we love the stranger as ourselves, remembering our own vulnerability, or wrong and overlook those who lack the power to demand better.

How do I treat the outsider and the vulnerable, the stranger, the newcomer, the one without power to demand fair treatment, and can I love the foreigner as myself, as God commands, remembering that I too have known vulnerability, rather than wronging or overlooking those who cannot demand better?

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