Strangers
The stranger in Scripture is the non-Israelite who lives among the covenant people — the sojourner inside the gates, the foreigner brought near, the alien resident the Mosaic law has to place. Three labels do most of the work in the UPDV: "stranger," "sojourner," "foreigner." The legal frame around them runs in two directions at once: a body of cultic prohibitions that fences off the sanctuary and the holy things, and a body of general statutes binding native and stranger alike under one law. Outside the law the stranger appears in prophetic indictment, in the wisdom of Sirach, in the Maccabean wars, and finally in the Epistle to Diognetus, where strangerhood becomes a Christian posture toward the world.
Cultic Prohibitions Concerning the Stranger
A first cluster of laws fences the stranger off from particular sacred acts. The founding Passover ordinance opens with the bar: "This is the ordinance of the Passover: no foreigner will eat of it" (Ex 12:43). The atonement-meal that consecrates the priests is reserved on the same logic: "they will eat those things with which atonement was made, to consecrate [and] to sanctify them: but a stranger will not eat, because they are holy" (Ex 29:33). The holy things in general carry the same restriction — "no stranger will eat of the holy thing: a sojourner of the priest's, or a hired worker, will not eat of the holy thing" (Lev 22:10) — and the priest's daughter who marries out forfeits her access too: "if a priest's daughter is married to a stranger, she will not eat of the heave-offering of the holy things" (Lev 22:12). Sacrificial material from foreign hands is rejected: "Neither from the hand of a foreigner will you⁺ offer the bread of your⁺ God of any of these; because their corruption is in them, there is a blemish in them: they will not be accepted for you⁺" (Lev 22:25).
The tabernacle-precinct itself is fenced. When the camp moves, the structure is handled by Levites: "the stranger who comes near will be put to death" (Num 1:51). The altar-plate memorial after Korah's revolt names the same line — "no stranger, who is not of the seed of Aaron, comes near to burn incense before Yahweh; that he will not be as Korah, and as his company" (Num 16:40). Ezekiel restates the rule for the future temple: "Thus says the Sovereign Yahweh, No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, will enter into my sanctuary, of any foreigners who are among the sons of Israel" (Ezek 44:9). The kingship is fenced on the same principle: "one from among your brothers you will set king over you; you may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother" (Deut 17:15).
One Statute for Sojourner and Home-Born
Outside that fenced core, a different refrain runs through the law: one statute, both for the sojourner and for the home-born. The leaven-cut-off at Passover binds "whoever eats that which is leavened, that soul will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner, or one who is born in the land" (Ex 12:19). Two verses later the law becomes a slogan: "One law will be to him who is home-born, and to the stranger who sojourns among you⁺" (Ex 12:49). The same parity governs the late-month Passover for the stranger who chooses to keep it: "you⁺ will have one statute, both for the sojourner, and for him who is born in the land" (Num 9:14). Leviticus reasserts the principle as Yahweh's self-attestation — "You⁺ will have one manner of law, as well for the sojourner, as for the home-born: for I am Yahweh your⁺ God" (Lev 24:22) — and the Day-of-Atonement affliction binds "the home-born, or the stranger who sojourns among you⁺" (Lev 16:29). The same is true of the carcass-eating cleansing rule, which falls on home-born and sojourner alike (Lev 17:15), the high-handed-defiance cut-off ("the soul who does anything with a high hand, whether he is home-born or a sojourner... will be cut off from among his people," Num 15:30), and even the capital sanction for blaspheming the Name: "the foreigner as well as the home-born, when he blasphemes the Name, will be put to death" (Lev 24:16).
Religious Privileges Open to the Stranger
The fenced cult is not closed. The Passover itself opens to the circumcised stranger: "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" (Ex 12:48). Burnt-offerings and freewill sacrifices are open to the sojourner on the same parity: "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). Leviticus 22 broadens this to the full oblation-class: "Any man of the house of Israel, and from every sojourner who sojourns in Israel, who offers his oblation, whether it is any of their vows, or any of their freewill-offerings, which they offer to Yahweh for a burnt-offering" (Lev 22:18), and the next verse fixes the unblemished-male requirement that applies to him too (Lev 22:19).
Sabbath Rest
The seventh-day rest extends to the stranger by name. The Decalogue lists him in the household-inventory under the no-work rule: "you will not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your male slave, nor your female slave, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is inside your gates" (Ex 20:10). The Deuteronomic restatement adds the rationale that the male and female slave "may rest as well as you" and includes the stranger in the same enclosure (Deut 5:14). The covenant code states the sojourner-side directly: "on the seventh day you will rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your female slave, and the sojourner, may be refreshed" (Ex 23:12). The sabbath does not stop at the Israelite household — it reaches the resident-alien inside the gates.
Justice and Non-Oppression
Beyond the cult, the legal frame around the stranger turns to justice. Moses charges the judges at the start of Deuteronomy: "judge righteously between a man and his brother, and the sojourner who is with him" (Deut 1:16). The wage-protection law extends to the sojourner-laborer — "You will not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is of your brothers, or of your sojourners who are in your land inside your gates" (Deut 24:14) — and the orphan-widow-sojourner triad takes its place in the social-justice cluster: "You will not wrest the justice [due] to the fatherless sojourner, nor take the widow's raiment for a pledge" (Deut 24:17). The Mount-Ebal liturgy puts a curse on the same offense: "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 read this as a covenant index. Jeremiah's word to the royal house repeats the injunction: "do no wrong, do no violence, to the sojourner, the fatherless, nor the widow; neither shed innocent blood in this place" (Jer 22:3). Ezekiel renders the failure as historical indictment: "they have vexed the poor and needy, and have oppressed the sojourner wrongfully" (Ezek 22:29). Malachi places the same offense in the 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).
Kindness, Love, and the Egypt-Memory
The same law that protects the stranger on the negative side commands him into love on the positive. When the brother grows poor, he is upheld in the stranger-sojourner mode: "if your brother is waxed poor, and his hand fails with you; then you will uphold him: [as] a stranger [who is a] sojourner he will live with you. Take no interest of him or increase, but fear your God; that your brother may live with you" (Lev 25:35-36). The grounding-clause for the whole framework is Yahweh's bringing-out from Egypt (Lev 25:38). Deuteronomy makes the imitation-logic explicit: Yahweh "executes justice for the fatherless and widow, and loves the sojourner, in giving him food and raiment. Love⁺ therefore the sojourner; for you⁺ were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Deut 10:18-19). Even the prohibition on disgust runs through Israel's own sojourner-history — "you will not be disgusted by an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land" (Deut 23:7).
Bondservice, Loans, Carcasses, and Marriage
A further cluster of laws permits to the foreigner what is forbidden among brothers. The slave-class allowed under the law is drawn from the surrounding nations and from sojourner-children: "of the nations that are round about you⁺, of them you⁺ will buy a male slave and a female slave. Moreover of the sons of the strangers who sojourn among you⁺, of them you⁺ will buy" (Lev 25:44-45). The release-year exemption holds the foreigner's debt outside the cancellation: "Of a foreigner you may exact it: but whatever of yours is with your brother your hand will release" (Deut 15:3); and interest-on-loan is allowed against the foreigner where it is forbidden against the brother (Deut 23:20). Carcass-meat that the holy people may not eat may be given to the resident sojourner or sold to the foreigner: "you may give it to the sojourner who is inside your gates, that he may eat it; or you may sell it to a foreigner: for you are a holy people to Yahweh your God" (Deut 14:21). The blood-prohibition, by contrast, falls on home-born and sojourner together (Lev 17:10). Within the levirate-rule the widow is held inside the family: "the wife of the dead will not be married outside to a stranger: her husband's brother will go in to her, and take her to him as wife" (Deut 25:5).
Sirach on the Stranger
The wisdom of Sirach handles the stranger from two angles. On the side of the addressee toward outsiders, the sage warns against putting confidential content in front of an un-vetted observer: "Do no secret thing before a stranger; For you do not know to what end he will bring it" (Sir 8:18). The same caution covers indiscriminate hospitality: "Do not bring every man into your house; For how many are the wounds of a scammer!" (Sir 11:29). Against the foreign nations he prays for divine action: "Shake your hand against the strange people, That they may see your power" (Sir 36:3).
On the side of the stranger himself, Sirach is one of the few voices that records what it feels like to live as a dependent under another roof. Of the stranger inside someone else's house he writes, "You are a stranger and drink contempt; Besides this you will bear bitter things" (Sir 29:25). Of the man who must look to the stranger's table for food: "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).
Strangers in the Maccabean Wars
In 1 Maccabees the term hardens into a wartime label for the surrounding non-Jewish nations. Mattathias's lament over the desecrated city says, "The holy places have come into the hands of strangers: Her temple has become as a man without honor" (1Ma 2:8) — the holy places passed into stranger-grip and the temple stripped of its honor. Antiochus answers Lysias's commission with the colonization-order: "that he should settle foreigners to live in all their coasts, and divide their land by lot" (1Ma 3:36). At the Emmaus muster the Syrian forces are augmented by "the forces of Syria, and of the land of the strangers" (1Ma 3:41); on the field the Syrian camp is named directly — "the strangers lifted up their eyes, and saw them coming against them" (1Ma 4:12); and after the defeat the Syrian remnant flees away "into the land of the strangers" (1Ma 4:22). Judas presses into the same coastal territory and strikes its cult: "Judas turned to Azotus into the land of the strangers, and he threw down their altars, and he burned the statues of their gods with fire: and he took the spoils of the cities, and returned into the land of Judah" (1Ma 5:68). Demetrius retains his island-of-the-nations mercenaries over his ancestral troops: he sent away all his forces "except the foreign army, which he had drawn together from the islands of the nations: so all the troops of his fathers hated him" (1Ma 11:38). At Asor Jonathan meets the same kind of force: "the army of the strangers met him in the plain, and they laid an ambush for him in the mountains" (1Ma 11:68). Across the book "stranger" / "foreigner" / "land of the strangers" is the standing label for the heathen-nation body Israel is fighting.
The Christian as Stranger
The Epistle to Diognetus turns the category around. Christians live in their own home-cities but as if not at home in them: "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 legal status of the alien-resident becomes a posture of life. What the law of Moses imposed on the foreigner inside the gates — the experience of living under a roof not one's own, eating at a stranger's table, bearing contempt and bitter things — is taken up here voluntarily as the Christian's mode of being in the world.