Heathen
In the older English of the KJV/ASV register, "heathen" translates the words for "the nations" — Hebrew goyim, Greek ethne — and the umbrella is defined the same way: under this heading are grouped all who are not embraced under the Abrahamic covenant. Scripture handles this body of nations along several lines at once: as the prior occupants of Canaan whom Yahweh casts out, as the agents and patterns of idolatry against which Israel is warned, as a hostile coalition against the covenant-people, as recipients of divine revelation outside the line of Abraham, and as eventual witnesses to and confessors of Yahweh's acts.
Cast Out of Canaan
A leading register Scripture uses for the heathen as a body is that Yahweh drove them out before Israel. Leviticus grounds the expulsion in their defilement of the land: "Don't defile yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations have been defiled which I am casting out from before you⁺; And the land is defiled: therefore I visit its iniquity on it, and the land vomits out her inhabitants" (Lev 18:24-25). The Psalter restates this as a remembered act of Yahweh's hand: "You drove out the nations with your hand; But you planted them: You afflicted the peoples; But you spread them abroad" (Ps 44:2).
Their Land Given to Israel
The same expulsion is the giving of an inheritance. The historical psalm puts the two halves together in a single verse: "He drove out the nations also before them, And allotted them for an inheritance by line, And caused the tribes of Israel to stay in their tents" (Ps 78:55). The covenant-history psalm uses the same vocabulary — "And he gave them the lands of the nations; And they took the labor of the peoples in possession" (Ps 105:44) — and the Hallel makes it a refrain: "And gave their land for a heritage, A heritage to Israel his people" (Ps 135:12), repeated in the chesed-litany: "And gave their land for a heritage; For his loving-kindness [endures] forever; Even a heritage to Israel his slave; For his loving-kindness [endures] forever" (Ps 136:21-22). Isaiah extends the same motion forward into the post-exilic enlargement-promise: "you will spread abroad on the right hand and on the left; and your seed will possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited" (Isa 54:3).
Excluded from the Sanctuary
Within Israel's law the heathen carry a standing exclusion from the assembly. Lamentations registers the breach of that boundary as part of the catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem: "The adversary has spread out his hand on all her pleasant things: For she has seen that the nations have entered into her sanctuary, Concerning whom you commanded that they should not enter into your assembly" (Lam 1:10).
Wicked Practices and Idolatry
The reason for the expulsion and the exclusion is the same: the worship-patterns of the nations. Ahaz's apostasy is rated explicitly against this baseline — he "made his son to pass through the fire, according to the disgusting behaviors of the nations, whom Yahweh cast out from before the sons of Israel" (2 Ki 16:3). The narrator of the northern kingdom's fall draws the same comparison: Israel "walked in the statutes of the nations, whom Yahweh cast out from before the sons of Israel; and [walked in the statutes] which the kings of Israel made" (2 Ki 17:8). The Psalter sets the heathen's religion under the cleanest indictment in the Old Testament: "The idols of the nations are silver and gold, The work of man's hands" (Ps 135:15).
The Maccabaean material extends the same diagnosis into the Hellenistic crisis. The assimilating party "determined to do this, and went to the king: and he gave them license to do after the ordinances of the nations" (1Ma 1:13); "they built a place for men to prey upon naked boys in Jerusalem, according to the customs of the nations" (1Ma 1:14); "all nations accepted according to the word of the king" (1Ma 1:42); and the king commands Jerusalem and the cities of Judah "that they should follow the foreign customs of the land" (1Ma 1:44). Mattathias's sanctuary-dirge names the heathen as the agents: "our sanctuary, and our beauty, and our glory is laid waste, And the nations have defiled them" (1Ma 2:12). The pattern of foreign-cult-and-foreign-rite running through the same verses gathered under "Wicked practices of" is the recurring shape of the umbrella.
Heathen Coalitions Against Israel
Alongside the worship-pattern strand runs a hostile-coalition strand. The Psalter opens its messianic table with it: "Why do the nations rage, And the peoples meditate a vain thing?" (Ps 2:1). The same psalm-tradition reports their self-snaring: "The nations are sunk down in the pit that they made: In the net which they hid is their own foot taken" (Ps 9:15).
In 1 Maccabees the assembly at Mizpah voices the coalition-fear directly: "look, the nations have come together against us to destroy us: You know what they intend against us" (1Ma 3:52). The Judean army at Emmaus sees the heathen's military superiority — "they saw the camp of the nations that it was strong, and the men in breastplates, and the horsemen round about them, and these were trained up to war" (1Ma 4:7) — and the rededication of the altar provokes the surrounding heathen: "when the nations round about heard that the altar was built up and the sanctuary was dedicated as before, that they were exceedingly angry" (1Ma 5:1). The nations in Gilead "assembled themselves together against the Israelites who were in their quarters to destroy them" (1Ma 5:9). The rear-guard captains break Judas's discipline by saying: "Let's also get ourselves a name, and let's go fight against the nations that are round about us" (1Ma 5:57). The Akra-garrison was "seeking their hurt, and to strengthen the nations" (1Ma 6:18). Judas measures internal apostasy against this baseline of external harm — Alcimus and his party did to the sons of Israel "much more than the nations" (1Ma 7:23). Foreign garrisons in Bacchides's Judean strongholds eventually flee at Jonathan's empowerment (1Ma 10:12), and the Philistine Dagon-cult's pagan-shrine becomes the refuge of the routed Apollonius-force, where "those who were scattered about the plain, fled into Azotus, and went into Bethdagon their idol's temple, there to save themselves" (1Ma 10:83), and Jonathan, in turn, "took the spoils of them, and the temple of Dagon: and all those who had fled into it, he burned with fire" (1Ma 10:84).
Heathen Filthiness and the Returning Remnant
The post-exilic Passover registers the heathen-cult as a defining contrast for the renewed assembly. Ezra notes that the Passover was eaten by "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" (Ezr 6:21). The proselytes are received precisely on the basis of separation from the heathen-pattern.
Divine Revelations Given to the Heathen
Yet the same Scripture that catalogues the heathen's idolatry and hostility records a striking pattern of God speaking directly into the heathen world. To Abimelech, a Philistine king, "[the Speech of] God came... in a dream of the night, and said to him, Look, you are but a dead man, because of the woman whom you have taken" (Gen 20:3); the dialogue continues for several verses, with God acknowledging the integrity of his heart and naming Abraham as the prophet who will pray for him (Gen 20:6-7). To Pharaoh of Egypt, Joseph testifies: "The dream of Pharaoh is one: what God is about to do he has declared to Pharaoh" (Gen 41:25, repeated at v28). To the Mesopotamian seer Balaam: "And God came to Balaam, and said, What men are these with you?" — and again, "[the Speech of] God said to Balaam, You will not go with them; you will not curse the people; for they are blessed" (Num 22:9, 12).
The same pattern persists into the imperial period. Nebuchadnezzar himself addresses his decree "to all the peoples, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth" with the words: "It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has wrought toward me. How great are his signs! And how mighty are his wonders!" (Dan 4:1-3). Belshazzar receives the wall-sign: "In the same hour came forth the fingers of a man's hand, and wrote across from the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace" (Dan 5:5), and Daniel reads it: "MENE; God has numbered your kingdom, and brought it to an end... TEKEL; you are weighed in the balances, and are found wanting" (Dan 5:26-27). Cyrus of Persia records his own commission in the same register: "Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth has Yahweh, the God of heaven, given me; and he has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah" (2 Ch 36:23). Ezra's narrator names the agency behind that proclamation: "Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia" (Ezr 1:1).
Pious Instances Among the Heathen
Scripture catalogues a roster of named heathen who, alongside the wider pattern of revelation, function as positive pious-instances. Melchizedek of Salem, outside the line of Abraham, comes forward as priest of God Most High: "And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor [by his Speech] of heaven and earth" (Gen 14:18-19), and Abraham gives him a tenth of all (Gen 14:20). The Midianite priest Jethro, on hearing of the exodus, confesses: "Blessed be Yahweh, who has delivered you⁺ out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh. Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all gods" (Ex 18:10-11), and brings burnt-offering and sacrifices for God (Ex 18:12). The Job-frame names a non-Israelite wisdom-circle of speakers — Eliphaz the Temanite (Job 4:1), Bildad the Shuhite (Job 8:1), Zophar the Naamathite (Job 11:1), and Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram (Job 32:2) — whose speeches are delivered inside the canonical book itself.
The restored Nebuchadnezzar belongs to the same roster: "I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored him who lives forever; for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom from generation to generation" (Dan 4:34). His closing self-summary stands as a sustained heathen-mouth confession: "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven; for all his works are truth, and his ways justice; and those who walk in pride he is able to abase" (Dan 4:37). The Ninevites show city-wide repentance after Jonah's preaching: "And the people of Nineveh believed [the Speech of] God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them" (Jon 3:5); the king joined them (Jon 3:6); and "God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil which he said he would do to them; and he did not do it" (Jon 3:10).
The Gospel narratives carry the same pattern into the apostolic period. The captain at Capernaum is a Gentile officer who approaches Christ through a Jewish intermediary: "when he heard concerning Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him that he would come and save his slave" (Lu 7:3). The intermediary delegation reports that "he loves our nation, and himself built us our synagogue" (Lu 7:5). His message at Christ's approach refuses any presumption of access: "Lord, don't trouble yourself; for I am not worthy that you should come under my roof" (Lu 7:6). The verdict from Christ stands at a high register for heathen faith: "I haven't found so great faith, no, not in Israel" (Lu 7:9). At the cross the captain across from Christ says "Truly this man was the Son of God" (Lu 23:47) — a Gentile confession given on the strength of what he saw at the moment of Christ's expiration.
The Heathen as Witnesses to Yahweh's Acts
Beyond the Abimelech-Pharaoh-Balaam pattern of private revelation and beyond the named-pious roster, the heathen also appear as the corporate witnesses to Yahweh's public works. Ezekiel's Gog-judgment closes with the universal-witness verdict: "And I will set my glory among the nations; and all the nations will see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid on them" (Ezek 39:21). The pilgrim-song registers the same heathen-mouth from the return-side: "Then was our mouth filled with laughter, And our tongue with singing: Then they said among the nations, Yahweh has done great things for them" (Ps 126:2). Sirach extends the witness-frame to the wisdom-tradition: "His wisdom will the Gentiles declare, And his praise will the congregation tell forth" (Sir 39:10), and turns the divine-fear toward the same body in the national-deliverance prayer: "And cast your fear upon all the nations" (Sir 36:2).
The umbrella thus closes where it began: the body of nations who lay outside the Abrahamic covenant, and against whom Yahweh first acted in expulsion and exclusion, are also the body before whom Yahweh sets his glory, into whom he sends his revelations, from whom he draws pious instances by name, and at whose mouth, finally, the great works of Yahweh come back as testimony. See also Idolatry, Aliens, and Ammonites for adjacent material on the heathen body, its cult, and its individual nations.