Guest

The guest in Scripture is rarely a casual figure. From the moment Abraham runs from his tent door to meet three travelers (Ge 18:2), the arrival of a visitor places weighty obligations on the host and a corresponding etiquette on the one received. Israel's law binds the household to the sojourner, the prophets press the duty of bread and water on the road, the wisdom writers rehearse the manners of the table, and Jesus reorders both seating chart and guest list. Apostolic letters then turn the practice into a Christian duty, identifying the love for strangers as a mark of the elder, the widow worthy of honor, and the household of faith.

The Arriving Guest

The greeting is the first act of hospitality. Abraham bows to the earth before he knows whom he has met (Ge 18:2). Laban's invitation to Abraham's servant is open-handed: "Come in, you blessed of Yahweh. Why do you stand outside? For I have prepared the house, and room for the camels" (Ge 24:31). Boaz greets his reapers with the formula "Yahweh be with you⁺" and is answered with "Yahweh bless you" (Ru 2:4). Saul receives Samuel with the same currency: "Blessed be you of Yahweh" (1Sa 15:13). David's messengers are taught to say, "To life! Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have" (1Sa 25:6). Jesus codifies the greeting for his sent disciples: "And into whatever house you⁺ will enter, first say, Peace [be] to this house. And if a son of peace be there, your⁺ peace will rest on him: but if not, it will turn to you⁺ again" (Lu 10:5-6).

Washing the feet of the arriving guest is the second act, paired so reliably with the greeting that its absence is a rebuke. Abraham offers, "let now a little water be fetched, and wash your⁺ feet, and rest yourselves under the tree" (Ge 18:4); Lot does the same at the gate of Sodom (Ge 19:2); the man of Joseph's house gives Joseph's brothers water to wash their feet (Ge 43:24); the elders of Timothy's church count it among the marks of an honorable widow that "she has washed the saints' feet" (1Ti 5:10). Jesus turns this duty back on Simon the Pharisee: "I entered into your house, you gave me no water for my feet: but she has wet my feet with her tears" (Lu 7:44). At the Last Supper he himself takes the basin (Jn 13:5).

The Duty of the Host

The Torah binds the household to the sojourner before it speaks of any preferred guest. "And a sojourner you will not wrong, neither will you oppress him: for you⁺ were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Ex 22:21; cf. Ex 23:9). "The stranger who sojourns with you⁺ will be to you⁺ as the home-born among you⁺, and you will love him as yourself" (Le 19:34). Deuteronomy turns the obligation into love: "Love⁺ therefore the sojourner; for you⁺ were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (De 10:19; cf. De 27:19; Je 7:6). The ordinances of refuge, Sabbath, and assembly extend without remainder to the resident alien (Nu 35:15; Ex 20:10; De 31:12).

The household duty becomes a Christian duty in the New Testament. Paul presses the Romans to be "given to the love for strangers" (Ro 12:13). Peter writes, "using hospitality one to another without murmuring" (1Pe 4:9). The overseer must be "given to hospitality" (1Ti 3:2; Tit 1:8), and the widow worthy of the church's honor is one who "has used hospitality to strangers" (1Ti 5:10). Hebrews adds the theological warrant the Genesis stories had already supplied: "Do not forget the love for strangers: for by this some have unknowingly received angels as guests" (He 13:2).

The opposite case, inhospitality, is named and condemned. The men of Gibeah leave the Levite in the street: "for there was no man who took them into his house to lodge" (Jud 19:15). Nabal's refusal to feed David's men — "Who is David? And who is the son of Jesse?" (1Sa 25:10) — frames a chapter that ends with judgment. Edom's denial of passage to Israel (Nu 20:18) and the Samaritan village's refusal of Jesus (Lu 9:53) belong to the same line. Job, defending his integrity, can say, "(The sojourner has not lodged in the street; But I have opened my doors to the traveler)" (Job 31:32).

Conduct at the Table

The wisdom literature gives the guest his manners. Proverbs warns the man who eats with a ruler:

"When you sit to eat with a ruler, Consider diligently him who is before you; And put a knife to your throat, If you are a man who is given to soul. Don't be desirous of his dainties; Seeing they are deceitful food" (Pr 23:1-3).

It warns him again against the host whose hospitality is feigned: "Don't eat the bread of him who has an evil eye, Neither desire his dainties: For as he thinks in his soul, so he is: Eat and drink, he says to you; But his heart is not with you" (Pr 23:6-7). It teaches him not to outstay welcome: "Let your foot be seldom in your fellow man's house, Or else he will be weary of you, and hate you" (Pr 25:17). And it teaches him not to seize the chief seat: "Don't put yourself forward in the presence of the king, And don't stand in the place of great men: For it is better that it is said to you, Come up here, Than that you should be put lower in the presence of the prince" (Pr 25:6-7).

Sirach develops the same instruction at length. "My son, if you sit at a great man's table, Do not be greedy upon it" (Sir 31:12). "Eat like a man what is set before you, And do not eat greedily lest you be despised" (Sir 31:16). The same wisdom names the bitterness of the dependent guest who lives at another's expense: "It is an evil life going from house to house, For where one is a sojourner, One does not open the mouth; You are a stranger and drink contempt" (Sir 29:24-25). The host's voice in this scene is biting: "'Get out, sojourner, from the presence of honor, My brother has come as my guest, I need my house!'" (Sir 29:27). And the watcher at another's banquet is pitied: "A man who looks upon a stranger's table, His life is not accounted life" (Sir 40:29). The same writer counsels guarded speech in the presence of the visitor — "Do no secret thing before a stranger; For you do not know to what end he will bring it" (Sir 8:18) — and warns the host who indiscriminately admits everyone: "Do not bring every man into your house; For how many are the wounds of a scammer!" (Sir 11:29).

Paul closes the loop on the gentile invitation: "If someone who does not believe bids you⁺ [to a feast], and you⁺ are disposed to go; whatever is set before you⁺, eat, asking no question for the sake of conscience" (1Co 10:27).

Christ as Guest

Jesus is repeatedly received into homes — Matthew's, Simon's, Martha's, Zacchaeus's, the Pharisee's, Simon the leper's. "And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he entered into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat" (Lu 7:36); "a certain woman named Martha received him" (Lu 10:38); the Sabbath meal at the ruler's house frames the parable of the chief seats (Lu 14:1); "He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner" is the murmur over Zacchaeus (Lu 19:7). At Cana he is invited to a wedding (Jn 2:2). At Bethany the supper is made for him, with Martha serving (Jn 12:2). Levi makes him "a great feast in his house" (Lu 5:29).

His instruction to those who invited him reorganizes the guest list:

"When you make a dinner or a supper, do not call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors; lest perhaps they also bid you again, and a recompense be made you. But when you make a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and you will be blessed; because they don't have [the means] to recompense you: for you will be recompensed in the resurrection of the just" (Lu 14:12-14).

His instruction to those who came at the invitation reorganizes the seating chart: "When you are invited of any man to a marriage feast, don't sit down in the chief seat... But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place; that when he who has invited you comes, he may say to you, Friend, go up higher" (Lu 14:8,10). The proverb beneath both moves is fixed: "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled; and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Lu 14:11).

The Sent Guest

The sent disciple in Luke is a particular kind of guest: he carries the kingdom's peace into the houses he enters and leaves judgment in the dust of the houses that refuse him. "And stay in that same house, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the worker is worthy of his wages. Don't go from house to house. And into whatever city you⁺ enter, and they receive you⁺, eat such things as are set before you⁺" (Lu 10:7-8). The hospitality offered to such a guest is hospitality offered to the kingdom; the hospitality refused is the kingdom refused: "the dust from your⁺ city, that sticks to our feet, we wipe off against you⁺: nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near" (Lu 10:11). The Christian household repeats this welcome — Lydia constraining Paul and Silas, Phoebe carried by the Roman church, Onesiphorus refreshing Paul, Gaius commended by John — and the New Testament treats it not as decoration but as obedience.

The Sojourner Within

The biblical guest is finally a figure of the people of God themselves. Abraham is the first sojourner (Ge 12:10; Ge 20:1; Ge 21:34); Jacob's family confesses their status to Pharaoh, "To sojourn in the land we have come" (Ge 47:4); the credo of the Israelite presented before Yahweh begins, "A Syrian ready to perish was my father; and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there" (De 26:5); Hebrews names Abraham's tent-dwelling life as faith — "By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a [land] not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob" (He 11:9). The Epistle to Diognetus extends the figure to the church: "They 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 duty toward the guest, in this light, is not charity to an outsider but recognition of a shared condition.