A Cautionary Tale of Illegal Aliens Who Tricked Biblical Israel into Granting Them Citizenship
Progressives loathe the Old Testament. As progressives, they believe with Marcion the heretic that the ostensibly gentle Jesus of the New Testament was a supersized upgrade in progressive ethical thinking compared to the reputedly choleric Yahweh of the Old Testament.
In his book The God Delusion, the atheist zealot Richard Dawkins plunders the thesaurus to fire up an inferno of invective against Yahweh:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Closet Marcionites from the LGBT proselytizer Fr. James Martin, S.J. and his patron Pope Francis to the National Association of Evangelicals and its activists like Shane Claiborne believe that Old Testament laws on the death penalty or homosexuality belong to the Stone Age of ethical thinking.
Yet when it comes to immigration, the obnoxious God of the Old Testament suddenly evolves into a divine George Soros sporting a Santa Claus mask, welcoming illegal aliens with a “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and ferrying them across the Texan border on reindeer from Lapland.
Biblical Cherrypicking
“Compassion and soothing hurt feelings seems to be Fr. Martin’s principal norm in matters of sexuality, but when it comes to immigration policy, he cites Scripture [i.e. the Old Testament] in proposing divine commands,” writes Fr. John M. McDermott, S.J. in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review.
McDermott blasts his fellow Jesuit for “cherry-picking quotations from the OT” and engaging in “Catholic biblical fundamentalism.” Martin is “neither a biblical scholar nor a theologian” but “as a journalist he uses whatever arguments are at hand to advance his position.” (Also, the word for “sojourner” (ger) does not designate the modern refugee, migrant, or stranger.)
“Love the stranger” is indeed one of the most striking ethical injunctions in the Old Testament. “Only once does the Hebrew Bible command us to love our neighbor. Yet on 36 times, it commands us to love the stranger,” observes Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
The logic of loving the outsider is inextricably intertwined in the Hebrews’ salvation from Egypt in Exodus:
“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:34)
It is this Old Testament ethical imperative that is chiefly responsible for a Western understanding of asylum and immigration. Nations that are not influenced by the Judeo-Christian metanarrative have little sympathy for refugees. They are, on the whole, reluctant to bestow citizenship on foreigners.
One Law Under God
Progressives pick and choose Old Testament ethical norms that sit comfortably with their leftwing agenda not just by rejecting Israelite laws on homosexuality and the death penalty, but also seeking to apply the biblical laws on immigrants comprehensively.
Namely, the immigrant (like the native) who commits an abomination (idolatry, homosexuality, blasphemy, or child sacrifice) should be put to death (Leviticus 18:26-29, 20:2, 24:16,22). The alien is also required to participate in Israel’s major religious feasts (Deuteronomy 16:10-14, Leviticus 16:29-30). The immigrant cannot even practice his own pagan religion in Israel.
But progressives insist that Muslim migrants, for instance, must be allowed to build mosques, practice shariah law, and not be forced to abide by Western laws which forbid Islamic cultural practice like wife-beating, honor killing, female genital mutilation, or marrying underage girls (see my article on “prescriptive multiculturalism”).
Gibeonite Deception
The book of Joshua offers a cautionary tale about an “illegal immigration” scam perpetrated by the Gibeonites on the Israelites (9-10).
Here’s some context to the story. Freed from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites are marching victoriously to Canaan — the land Yahweh has promised them . Under their general, Joshua, they are crushing the Canaanites — who are being punished by God for egregious sins like child sacrifice, sorcery, and necromancy (Deuteronomy 9:4-5, 18:9-14).
The Gibeonites, having heard that Joshua has routed the cities of Ai and Jericho, act “with cunning” (9:4). They work out a hustle. Instead of attacking Israel or defending themselves, they pretend that they are tired, hungry immigrants from a far-off land. They disguise themselves with worn-out, patched clothes and sandals.
The “immigrants” seek to make a covenant with Israel in order to acquire “citizenship” in the Promised Land. They tell Joshua that they have heard reports of Israel’s God, and all that this God has done in Egypt and to Israel’s enemies. Israel is deceived and makes a covenant with them.
Shortly thereafter, the Israelites realize that they have been deceived. They cannot break their covenant with the Gibeonites, so they spare them and make them servants for Yahweh’s shrine.
Scoundrels and Suckers
The book of Joshua explains how the Israelites allowed themselves to be suckered by the scheming Gibeonites. First, they fail to discern that the Gibeonites’ confession of faith is superficial. Their flattery of Yahweh is a simply a means to their “citizenship.”
Second, the Israelites disobey God’s command, which clearly instructs them not to enter a covenant agreement with the pagan inhabitants of the land.
Most importantly, the Israelites “did not ask counsel from the Lord” (9:14). What they did was check the evidence. They tasted some of the food that the Gibeonites had brought along to make sure it was stale. But they did not ask God what to do about making a permanent treaty with them.
Later, the Gibeonites would become a bone of contention during the reigns of Saul and David. Saul would try to exterminate them and Gibeon would avenge his family (2 Samuel 21:1-14).
Seeking Wisdom
The cautionary tale of the Gibeonites belongs to the genre of Old Testament wisdom literature (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and wisdom Psalms). Wisdom is the ability to make the right choices and do it by seeking Yahweh, especially through His Word. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” reverberates through the book of Proverbs.
The book of Sirach or Jesus Ben Sira (regarded as canonical by Catholics and Orthodox and deutero-canonical by Anglicans and most historic Protestants) offers the epitome of wisdom teaching during the intertestamental period.
Ben Sira describes how “indiscriminate hospitality leaves one susceptible to being ambushed by unscrupulous guests,” writes Bradley Gregory in his monograph Like an Everlasting Signet Ring: Generosity in the Book of Sirach. “They are tricky, observe the host’s weakness, and turn his goodwill into calamity. They will ruin his reputation and alienate him from his own family.
“Do not invite everyone into your home, for many are the tricks of the crafty,” Ben Sira warns. “Receive strangers into your home and they will stir up trouble for you and will make you a stranger to your own family” (11:29,34).
How does one discern between those who are crafty like the Gibeonites and those who are not? How does one decide who to invite into one’s home or into one’s country? It is obviously foolish to welcome those who have made it clear that their objective is to destabilize and impose their religious hegemony on your country.
“Covenantal” Society
The answer is to cultivate wisdom and to create a “covenantal” society that is based not on “prescriptive multiculturalism” but on the fear of Yahweh and on the heritage of the West rooted in Judeo-Christian values — a “covenant of altruistic individuals seeking the common good,” as Rabbi Sacks puts it in his book The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society.
Progressives suffer from the racial bigotry of low expectations of non-Western cultures and never demand the same standards in terms of hospitality for the stranger from such groups.
In an op-ed last week, the Wall Street Journal explained that Arab nations do not want to welcome Palestinian refugees because they “have been a headache for Arab governments since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.”
To misquote the Apostle Paul, perhaps the wisdom of Arabs rulers is wiser than the foolishness of Western progressives.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.