Aliens
The alien in Scripture is the non-Israelite who lives among the covenant people — the sojourner, the foreigner, the stranger inside the gates. Mosaic law treats this person as a distinct legal status: parity with the home-born in many areas, exemption in others, and protection against oppression as a recurring covenant demand. The whole framework rests on the memory that Israel itself was once a sojourner-people in Egypt.
Israel's Own Sojourn-Memory
Before the law speaks of how Israel must treat the stranger, the patriarchal narrative establishes that Israel began as one. Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there because of famine (Gen 12:10), then journeyed south and sojourned in Gerar (Gen 20:1), then sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days (Gen 21:34). When the famine returned, Jacob's sons told Pharaoh, "To sojourn in the land we have come; for there is no pasture for your slaves' flocks" (Gen 47:4). The historical creed Israel recited at the firstfruits offering preserves this: "A Syrian ready to perish was my father; and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous" (Deut 26:5). Hebrews picks up the same reading of Abraham — "By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a [land] not his own" (Heb 11:9). The Levite of Judges 17:7 and Naomi's family in Moab (Ruth 1:1) carry the pattern forward. Sojourning is not foreign to Israel; it is Israel's first vocabulary for itself.
Justice and Non-Oppression
The legal core of the topic is a repeated command not to wrong or oppress the sojourner, grounded each time in Israel's Egypt-experience. "And a sojourner you will not wrong, neither will you oppress him: for you⁺ were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Ex 22:21). The next chapter sharpens the rationale: "And a sojourner you will not oppress: for you⁺ know the soul of a sojourner, seeing you⁺ were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Ex 23:9). Leviticus presses the parity all the way to love-of-neighbor: "The stranger who sojourns with you⁺ will be to you⁺ as the home-born among you⁺, and you will love him as yourself; for you⁺ were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Lev 19:34).
The same demand runs through Deuteronomy's judicial charge — "judge righteously between a man and his brother, and the sojourner who is with him" (Deut 1:16) — and out into a plural-imperative command to the whole community: "Love⁺ therefore the sojourner; for you⁺ were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Deut 10:19). Wage-protection extends to the sojourner-laborer (Deut 24:14). The orphan-widow-sojourner triad recurs: justice for the fatherless sojourner is not to be wrested (Deut 24:17), and the Mount-Ebal liturgy curses the man who does so: "Cursed be he who wrests the justice [due] to the sojourner, fatherless, and widow. And all the people will say, Amen" (Deut 27:19).
The prophets restate this as the live measure of covenant-faithfulness. Jeremiah names oppression of the sojourner alongside shedding innocent blood and idolatry as the conditions that decide the temple's fate (Jer 7:6); his charge to the royal house repeats it: "do no wrong, do no violence, to the sojourner, the fatherless, nor the widow" (Jer 22:3). Malachi places the same offense in his judgment-list: Yahweh will be a swift witness "against those who unjustly reduce the wages of the hired worker, the widow, and the fatherless, and who turn aside the sojourner [from his right]" (Mal 3:5). Ezekiel renders it as historical indictment: "they have vexed the poor and needy, and have oppressed the sojourner wrongfully" (Ezek 22:29).
One Statute for Sojourner and Home-Born
Across ritual and civil law a refrain emerges: one rule for both. "One law will be to him who is home-born, and to the stranger who sojourns among you⁺" (Ex 12:49). The leaven-prohibition of Passover binds "whether he is a sojourner, or one who is born in the land" (Ex 12:19). The Sabbath rest covers "your stranger who is inside your gates" (Ex 20:10; Deut 5:14). The Day-of-Atonement affliction of soul applies equally to "the home-born, or the stranger who sojourns among you⁺" (Lev 16:29). Levitical purity for eating what dies of itself (Lev 17:15) and the high-handed-blasphemy penalty (Num 15:30) make no distinction. Numbers states the rule explicitly: "For the assembly, there will be one statute for you⁺, and for the stranger who sojourns [with you⁺], a statute forever throughout your⁺ generations: as you⁺ are, so will the sojourner be before Yahweh" (Num 15:15). Even the death penalty for blaspheming the Name binds "the foreigner as well as the home-born" (Lev 24:16). The principle of one statute does not soften the law for the alien; it extends it.
Religious Privileges
Within that one-statute frame, the sojourner who turns to Yahweh is granted access to the worship. Ex 12:48 lays down the Passover-access procedure: "And when a stranger sojourns with you, and [before he] keeps the Passover to Yahweh, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he will be as one who is born in the land." Numbers 9:14 confirms it from the wilderness side, again with "one statute" for sojourner and home-born. Burnt-offering and free-will sacrifice are open to the stranger: "Any man of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among them, who offers a burnt-offering or sacrifice" (Lev 17:8); and Num 15:14 extends sweet-savor offerings on the same parity terms. Ezra's post-exilic Passover lists "the sons of Israel who had come again out of the captivity, and all such as had separated themselves to them from the filthiness of the nations of the land, to seek Yahweh, the God of Israel" eating together (Ezra 6:21). John records the principle still in operation in the Second-Temple feasts: "Now there were certain Greeks among those who went up to worship at the feast" (John 12:20).
Ritual Boundaries
Religious access is real but not unlimited. Without circumcision the foreigner is barred from the Passover lamb itself: "no foreigner will eat of it" (Ex 12:43); and even the resident sojourner and hired worker, as such, "will not eat of it" (Ex 12:45). Approach to the tabernacle's sancta is more restricted still: "the stranger who comes near will be put to death" (Num 1:51), and incense before Yahweh is barred to the stranger (Num 16:40). Ezekiel's temple vision tightens this further on the moral side: "No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, will enter into my sanctuary" (Ezek 44:9). The line is not racial but ritual — circumcision, clean-status, and Aaronic descent draw it.
Partial Exemptions
A handful of laws fall on Israel only. Carrion that an Israelite may not eat may be given to "the sojourner who is inside your gates" or sold to "a foreigner: for you are a holy people to Yahweh your God" (Deut 14:21). The release of the seventh year applies to brother-Israelites; "of a foreigner you may exact it" (Deut 15:3). Likewise interest: "to a foreigner you may lend on interest; but to your brother you will not lend on interest" (Deut 23:20). The kingship is closed to the foreigner: "you may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother" (Deut 17:15).
Slavery and Sojourning
Lev 25 protects Israelite-on-Israelite indenture by directing that Israelite labor be only as a hired worker and a sojourner, serving until the jubilee (Lev 25:40); permanent chattel purchase is restricted to the surrounding nations and to "the sons of the strangers who sojourn among you⁺" (Lev 25:44-45). Lev 20:2 extends the Molech-death-penalty to "the sons of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel," and Lev 18:26 binds both home-born and resident stranger to the moral statutes alike. The legal system thus distinguishes between the alien as protected resident and the alien as person purchasable under the property law without collapsing one into the other.
Edomites and Egyptians
Two specific peoples are singled out for non-disgust: "You will not be disgusted by an Edomite; for he is your brother: you will not be disgusted by an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land" (Deut 23:7). The reasoning is twofold — kinship in the case of Esau's line, and Israel's own sojourn-memory in the case of Egypt.
Rights of the Stranger
Beyond protection from oppression, the law confers positive rights. The cities of refuge are appointed "for the sons of Israel, and for the stranger and for the sojourner among them, will these six cities be for refuge; that everyone who strikes any soul unintentionally may flee there" (Num 35:15); Joshua's implementation repeats the right verbatim — open to "the stranger who sojourns among them" (Josh 20:9). Ezekiel's eschatological land-distribution goes further still: "you⁺ will divide it by lot for an inheritance to you⁺ and to the strangers who sojourn among you⁺, who will beget sons among you⁺; and they will be to you⁺ as the home-born among the sons of Israel; they will have inheritance with you⁺ among the tribes of Israel" (Ezek 47:22). In what tribe the stranger sojourns, there his inheritance is given (Ezek 47:23). The stranger's claim is not only on Israel's protection but on Israel's land.
Numerous Under David and Solomon
The historical books register a large foreign population inside Israel by the united-monarchy period. David's song praises Yahweh that "the foreigners will submit themselves to me: As soon as they hear of me, they will obey me. The foreigners will fade away, And will come trembling out of their close places" (2 Sam 22:45-46). Solomon "numbered all the sojourners who were in the land of Israel, after the numbering with which David his father had numbered them; and they were found a hundred and fifty thousand and three thousand and six hundred" (2 Chr 2:17). Asa's revival likewise drew sojourners from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon down to Judah "in abundance, when they saw that Yahweh his God was with him" (2 Chr 15:9).
David's Kindness to Ittai
The narrative example most closely fitting the umbrella is David's release of Ittai the Gittite during Absalom's revolt. "Then the king said to Ittai the Gittite, Why do you also go with us? Return, and remain with the king: for you are a foreigner, and also an exile; [return] to your own place. Whereas you came but yesterday, should I this day make you go up and down with us, seeing I go where I may? Return, and take back your brothers with you; and may Yahweh show you mercy and truth" (2 Sam 15:19-20). The king will not press a foreigner-exile into his own danger.
The Sojourner's Lot in Sirach
Ben Sira treats the topic from inside the experience rather than from the law-giver's seat. He warns the householder against confidences with strangers — "Do no secret thing before a stranger; For you do not know to what end he will bring it" (Sir 8:18) — and against indiscriminate hospitality: "Do not bring every man into your house; For how many are the wounds of a scammer!" (Sir 11:29). His extended meditation on dependence in chapter 29 sets out the social position of the sojourner in stark terms: "Be content with little or much, [and you will not hear the reproach of sojourning.] It is an evil life going from house to house, For where one is a sojourner, One does not open the mouth" (Sir 29:23-24). The host's hospitality turns on him: "'Come here, sojourner, furnish the table, And if there is anything in your hand, feed me'; [Or]: 'Get out, sojourner, from the presence of honor, My brother has come as my guest, I need my house!'" (Sir 29:26-27). The summary verdict: "These things are grievous to a man who has understanding: Upbraiding [concerning] sojourning, and the reproach of a money lender" (Sir 29:28). Sirach also names the sting from the other side — "You are a stranger and drink contempt; Besides this you will bear bitter things" (Sir 29:25) — and the indignity of eating at another's table: "A man who looks upon a stranger's table, His life is not accounted life. A pollution of his soul are the dainties presented, And to a man of knowledge [they are] a cause of suffering" (Sir 40:29). Sir 36:3 turns the term against hostile foreign powers in a national-deliverance prayer: "Shake your hand against the strange people, That they may see your power."
Strangers in the Maccabean Conflict
In 1 Maccabees the word shifts decisively to the hostile sense — the foreign occupier and the Hellenistic settler. The lament is that "the holy places have come into the hands of strangers: Her temple has become as a man without honor" (1Ma 2:8). The Seleucid plan to "settle foreigners to live in all their coasts, and divide their land by lot" (1Ma 3:36) inverts the Ezekiel-promise of stranger-inheritance — here the inheritance is taken, not given. Slave-traders from "the land of the strangers" follow the army to buy Israelite captives (1Ma 3:41). Battle reports use the language repeatedly: "And the strangers lifted up their eyes, and saw them coming against them" (1Ma 4:12); "they all fled away into the land of the strangers" (1Ma 4:22); Judas "turned to Azotus into the land of the strangers, and he threw down their altars" (1Ma 5:68); "the army of the strangers met him in the plain" (1Ma 11:68); and Demetrius keeps "the foreign army, which he had drawn together from the islands of the nations" (1Ma 11:38). The same vocabulary that names the protected resident in Mosaic law now names the armed pagan abroad.
Christian Self-Understanding as Sojourners
The Epistle to Diognetus folds the whole topic back onto the church. Christians, the author says, "dwell in their own countries, but as sojourners; they partake of all things as citizens, and endure all things as strangers; every foreign land is their country, and every country a foreign land" (Gr 5:5). The vocabulary that Mosaic law applied to the non-Israelite in Israel becomes, in Christian self-description, the posture of the people of God in the present age — heirs of the same promise that made Abraham himself "a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a [land] not his own" (Heb 11:9).