Refuge Reimagined

Biblical Kinship in Global Politics

Mark R. Glanville, Luke Glanville

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780830853816
• eBook ISBN: 9780830853823
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The global crisis of forced displacement is growing every year. At the same time, Western Christians' sympathy toward refugees is increasingly overshadowed by concerns about personal and national security, economics, and culture. We urgently need a perspective that understands both Scripture and current political realities and that can be applied at the levels of the church, the nation, and the globe.

In Refuge Reimagined, Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville offer a new approach to compassion for displaced people: a biblical ethic of kinship. God's people, they argue, are consistently called to extend kinship—a mutual responsibility and solidarity—to those who are marginalized and without a home. Drawing on their respective expertise in Old Testament studies and international relations, the two brothers engage a range of disciplines to demonstrate how this ethic is consistently conveyed throughout the Bible and can be practically embodied today.

Glanville and Glanville apply the kinship ethic to issues such as the current mission of the church, national identity and sovereignty, and possibilities for a cooperative global response to the refugee crisis. Challenging the fear-based ethic that often motivates Christian approaches, they envision a more generous, creative, and hopeful way forward. Refuge Reimagined will equip students, activists, and anyone interested in refugee issues to understand the biblical model for communities and how it can transform our world.

PART ONE

THE BIBLE

1

KINSHIP WITH
THE STRANGER

IMAGINE THE CIRCUMSTANCES of a family of three generations that has fled their own village because of war, in this case nearly a millennia before Christ. Jonathan and Abital, their children, and Abital’s mother—all those from the family who miraculously survived the conflict—have struggled for miles along a hilly trail to find sanctuary. One circumstance is in their favor: the time when kings go to war is also the time of the spring harvest, and they have some hope at least of finding a little food to eat. After seeking work in a number of settlements along their path, they come at last to one where Abital and her mother are invited to help with the herds that roam within the village walls; there may be other work for them here as well. The father at the head of the family is, in time, invited to join with some laborers who are harvesting grain nearby. Perhaps the family finds shelter under a disused, ramshackle mud-brick roof, one of just seven buildings making up this settlement. Or perhaps (and what joy and relief this would have been!) one of the family households makes room under their own roof for the newcomers, and they crowd in.

Here is shelter, and food, a respite from violence—even the blessing of companionship. But is it as good as it seems? This family is desperate and has nowhere to turn. For the present, there are no other options and no one advocating for them. Will these outsiders receive their pay, their daily allotment of grain? And what happens in the future, after the harvest? Will they be homeless again, to endure the searing heat of the summer months without shelter? Will they be forced to beg for food, or borrow to purchase it, and so become indebted and enslaved like so many others in their situation?

THE STRANGER IN THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY

In this chapter we examine Deuteronomy’s urgings of the Old Testament people of God to embrace the “stranger” as kin.1 Deuteronomy’s concern to protect the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow is well known (e.g., Deut 24:19-22). But by the sheer number of the book’s references to the first member of this triad, the stranger (the noun appears twenty-two times), it seems that widespread displacement was a particularly pressing social concern of that place and time. In ancient times people who had been displaced, wrenched by war or other crises and hardships from their lands and kinship groupings, were in real danger of exposure and starvation. Such people were often obliged to offer themselves as the cheapest of cheap labor simply in order to survive. They were often exploited and abused. A Babylonian proverb reflects this reality: “A resident alien in another city is a slave.”2

For these most vulnerable strangers, the only real hope for a future was the prospect of adoption into a new kinship grouping: “The landless and their families needed to be integrated into the clans.”3 Renowned Old Testament scholar Nadav Na’aman puts it well:

Traditional society in Judah was based on family solidarity, on the leadership of the elders and notables, and its economy rested primarily on land. Integrating into such a traditional society was a major hurdle for displaced people who had been torn from their own former family structures, and had neither land nor means of production to provide them with self-sufficient subsistence.4

Israel’s very identity as a nation is invoked in what is perhaps the most famous of Deuteronomy’s edicts on this matter: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut 10:19 NRSV).

As we read these texts, we must keep in mind that Deuteronomy is about a community, a people called into being as a nation and formed by Yahweh himself, which is now (as Deuteronomy is being communicated to this people for the first time) in the process of being renewed and re-formed by God. Deuteronomy is a covenant charter for the people of Yahweh (e.g., Deut 29:9-14; 31:9-13).5 The community shaped by this text is to be different from others of the ancient Near East. In particular, it is to stand for justice, in stark contrast to the oppression the people had endured as strangers in Egypt. The renewed community is to celebrate the life and joy of the one true God in communion with one another, utterly separating themselves from the idolatry of the surrounding nations. Deuteronomy’s laws in regard to the stranger can be understood only in the context of the life of the community it serves. Every person within this new community is to experience the freshness, the genuineness, the grace that flourishes when people are knit together as sisters and brothers through the redeeming acts and the loving rule of God.6

Some readers will already be thinking, but what about Deuteronomy’s commands to destroy the Canaanites? Surely there is nothing welcoming about that! Well, if this thought is yours, wait for the next chapter, where we will explore the meaning of the Old Testament texts (including some from Deuteronomy) that seem to urge the exclusion—even the elimination—of “outsiders.”

WHO WAS THE STRANGER?

Before we explore Deuteronomy’s response to the stranger further, it is important to establish precisely who it is we’re talking about.7 “Stranger” translates the Hebrew word gēr. In Deuteronomy, the dependency of this person is always in evidence: in their labor within the household and the settlement (Deut 5:14; 24:14), in their inclusion within the triad of the vulnerable (“the stranger, the fatherless, the widow,” e.g., Deut 16:11, 14), and in the laws that dictate that the community should provide means for their sustenance (Deut 14:28-29; 26:12-15).8

Like Abital and Jonathan in the story above, the stranger in Deuteronomy is dependent, landless, and on the lowest stratum of the social ladder.9 Such strangers have left kinship ties and land and now live where they have no blood relations nearby. They are now without the security and privileges that family ties and place of birth once provided. They are in social limbo for, although technically they are free (not enslaved), they lack those things that lend status and security: land, a means of subsistence, and meaningful social connection. Since there are no family members to come to the defense of such strangers, they are easily victimized and oppressed; they can all too easily fall into debt; they may be reduced at last to slavery.

Where does the stranger come from? Scholars suggest that a stranger in Deuteronomy could have been a displaced person from the kingdom of Judah (the Southern Kingdom); a refugee from Israel (the Northern Kingdom), displaced by the Assyrian invasion; or a foreigner from a kingdom other than either Judah or the Northern Kingdom. Or perhaps there were strangers from each.10

There is evidence that at least some of the strangers referenced in Deuteronomy were foreigners (see Deut 14:21; Deut 28:43). However, as we consider the situation of these dependent strangers in Old Testament society, it is a mistake to think about their ethnicity only in terms of national categories, as either Israelite or non-Israelite. Such distinctions may be normal today. I may hold a passport identifying me as belonging to a certain country and will be obliged to present that passport for permission to travel from one country to another. My nationality is constantly in view. But in a clan-oriented society such as that of the Old Testament, personal identity is rather more complex. It is not as simple as distinguishing between Israelite and non-Israelite, as a person from a different tribe or even the next settlement is an outsider.11 As a member of a communal society, I might very well think of any natural-born member of my household and my clan as an insider, and thus think of all others as outsiders.

Consequently, the stranger in Deuteronomy is any vulnerable person from outside the core family: an outsider in relation to the clan and the household within which he or she now dwells. Some of these strangers would have come from another nation, but others might have come merely from the clan group over the hill, so to speak.12 However far they have come, these strangers have been separated from their land and their kin and no longer know the protection that family and patrimony (land inheritance) provide. An old Italian term for orphan comes to mind: esposito, “exposed.” The Deuteronomic “stranger” is exposed to all manner of ill.

Deuteronomy’s vision for the stranger. The book of Deuteronomy has a three-part structure—it’s shaped like a doughnut. The first and third sections (Deut 1–11 and 27–34) provide the covenantal and narrative framework within which stands the “law corpus” (Deut 12–26). These laws at the center (of the doughnut) are intended to shape the people into a community radically different from all the other ancient Near Eastern nations that surround them. Thus, many aspects of Israel’s communal life are dealt with in the law corpus, including social law, judicial procedures, and feasting texts. And within this body of laws, Deuteronomy makes special provision for the welfare of the stranger.

THE SOCIAL LAW’S CONCERN FOR DEPENDENT STRANGERS: RESPONSIBILITY AND SOLIDARITY

Hireling law. Many of the law types in Deuteronomy provide for strangers such as the family that we imagined in the chapter’s opening; the social laws in particular are meant to restrain a creditor’s ability to accumulate indentured workers and slaves.13 Our discussion probes the implicit cultural meaning of the social laws of Deuteronomy, that which the original audience would have taken as the obvious sense of the text.14

From Deuteronomy’s social laws, two are particularly relevant to our consideration of the stranger: (1) regarding hired laborers and (2) regarding the harvest:

Do not oppress a needy and destitute hired laborer, whether one of your brothers-sisters,15 or your stranger who is in your land and within your gates. You shall give them their wage in their day, before night comes upon them, for they are poor, they are always in dire need of it. Otherwise they will call out against you to Yahweh and you will incur guilt. (Deut 24:14-15 author’s translation)

This hireling law is in two parts: a general prohibition against oppressing a day laborer, followed by the specific direction to pay a day laborer on the day of his or her work. A hireling was among an ancient Near Eastern society’s poorest (Job 7:1; 14:6). The term “brother-sister” is designed to arouse a sense of kinship solidarity and responsibility, as if to say: “treat your brothers as brothers!” But the phrase that follows, “whether one of your brothers-sisters or your stranger,” goes further, to enfold the stranger within Deuteronomy’s brother-sister ethic. In regard to justice and compassion, then, the displaced person is to be held as equal to the brother or sister.

Gleaning laws.

Supposing that you reap your harvest in your field and you accidently leave behind a sheaf in the field, do not return to get it. It shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, in order that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. (Deut 24:19 author’s translation)

Establishing an olive orchard or a vineyard took considerable time and expense, and landowners were understandably careful to make the most of what the land produced for them. But during Israel’s harvest, Deuteronomy forbids the landed farmer to go back over the field, vineyard, or olive grove a second time to gather the residue (Deut 24:19-21). Instead, the remnants of the harvest are to be left for the poor or displaced.16 The stipulation that these most vulnerable people should share in the fruit of the land demonstrates that they are to be treated as participants in the community, co-recipients of Yahweh’s gifts (Deut 24:20, 21).

Cultural meaning of the social laws. At the very least, these social laws communicate a certain responsibility toward vulnerable people. Yet, for whom did ancient Israelite people have responsibility?17

The warmth of the climate didn’t always translate into a warmth of welcome. Culturally, ancient Israelites acknowledged n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Matthew Soerens
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Kinship with Refugees
• Part One: The Bible
• Part Two: The Church
• Part Three: The Nation
• Part Four: The World
• Conclusion: Kinship Creativity
• Discussion Questions
• Further Reading
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes
• Praise for Refuge Reimagined
• About the Authors
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright