The Stranger was always distinct, even when part of Israel

The term Jew is one that can muddy the waters a bit. Jew in the NT is mostly used geographically rather than referring to a specific nation. The Israelites were a distinct group of people with a distinct heredity. You are correct that non-Israelites could keep the covenant, celebrate Passover, and be circumcised. This did not make them Israelites. They were still recognized as a distinct group of people even after circumcision (Num. 11:4, Neh. 13:3). This meant that they were still ineligible for becoming civil magistrates (Deut. 1:13-16, 17:15, 2 Sam. 5:1, 1 Chr. 11:1) and permanently owning property (Lev. 25).

David Opperman

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

7 thoughts on “The Stranger was always distinct, even when part of Israel”

  1. This is the missing link in most immigration discussions. It appears to me that Israel had basically open borders, but those who immigrated were not necessarily afforded citizenship and the privileges there of, i.e. property ownership, political influence either as magistrate or participation in the “electing” thereof. It seems they held a status more akin to that of a slave subsisting on the production and charity of the host people. As long as Israel was faithful in general but here more specifically to the immigration regulations, there was little fleshly motivation for strangers to seek habitation in Israel (except to partake of the crumbs of a Godly social order). Further, these regulations prevented the stranger from disinheriting the host people.

  2. DD,

    Right you are!

    Immigration practices of the OT can hardly be appealed to for our setting w/o this realization that the stranger was always still a stranger.

  3. DD, and Bret, I agree. Though I would say that a true convert may have realized that their was a “fleshly” reason to flee to the law and social order of the hebrew economy,for refuge from the surrounding pagan nations.

  4. My understanding is that when we read about the congregation of the children of Israel in passages like Exodus it is referring to the physical descendants of Jacob. In passages like Exodus 12 and 13 we read about a multitude …of strangers voluntarily choosing to leave Egypt with the children of Israel and become circumcised, keep the Passover, and take part in the worship of the true God. This means that they followed Israel and became a part of the church (ecclesia) in the wilderness.

    It seems to me that if the alienist were correct, then we would see the strangers who accompanied Israel identified by the region in which they settled. Instead we see that Isreal is numbered according to the descendants of their tribes. The mixed multitude is still a recognizably distinct entity in Num. 11:4 when they fall into discontent. In my opinion this indicates that God wasn’t merely concerned with Israel’s religious/covenantal identity, but with the physical and hereditary ancestry.

    There was the presumption of peace between the native Israelites and any friendly strangers that were with them. They shared in the same religious ceremonies together and lived in harmonious accord. I don’t think that this means that they were indistinguishably equal to each other. I like to think of this as being analogous to guests that are invited over to your home to visit. As Christians we should treat invited guests with courtesy and respect, but at the same time there is a distinction between guests and owners. Guests don’t take over the ultimate ownership of the hosts property. They are not his heirs, and they don’t have a say as to how the owners property is disposed. These rules were basically applied at the national level by restricting the government and permanent property ownership to natives.

    With all this in mind, you can see why there was almost no intermarriage between the Israelites and outsiders. When intermarriage did occur, it was most often to someone of a closely related semitic nation. The Isrealites were specifically forbidden from intermarrying with the surrounding Canaanite nations. It is true that this was largely done for religious reasons, but the alienist also misses the fact that this restriction applied to whole nations of people. By our standards today we would call Moses a bigot for prejudging people without knowing them all individually. The Israelites weren’t explicitly forbidden from marrying all non-Canaanites, but this was almost never practiced. During the time of Ezra and Nehemiah the circumstances of large numbers of foreigners and intermarriages threatened the identity of the native Israelites. Because of the danger that these marriages posed Ezra and Nehemiah mandated the separation of Israelites from foreign wives. This is why I believe that anti-miscegenation laws would be justified on the basis of the general equity of this law as well as the Fifth Commandment generally.

    There are a few exceptions to the rule. One appears to be Sheshan who allowed his Egyptian servant Jarha to marry his daughter and become his heir 1 Chr. 2:34-35). This doesn’t mean that we ought to interpret the very occasional exception in any way to be the rule. If we do allow this then we really have no basis for forbidding a man to have multiple wives since there are examples of this happening as well in the narrative portions of scripture without there being any express commandment against it. I believe that in general, both intermarriage and polygamy are contrary to the archetypal basis for marriage in God’s marriage of Adam to Eve. In this case we see that Adam only has one wife and they are of the same flesh and bone. Elsewhere this idiom is used to connote a close kin relationship, usually a member of the same nation, although sometimes it is even closer. This means that the ancient Hebrews clearly understood that close kinship was normative for what should be considered for marriage in the same way that most marriages in ancient Israel were monogamous, despite some well-known exceptions

  5. ‎”Caleb was a Kenizzite of the line of Ham but became an Israelite and was given an inheritance with Judah of the line of Shem.”

    I don’t find the example of Caleb compelling. It is common in the books of Joshua and Judges to refer to specific clans within tribes with the suffix -ite. For example Abdon the son of Hillel is called a Pirathonite in Judges 12:13, but this was simply the name of the clan in Ephraim who lived in Pirathon. This is not the name of a Hammitic or Canaanite nation.

    Faithful Caleb is called “the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite.” (Nu 32:12; Jos 14:6, 14) Jephunneh could have descended from some member of the non-Israelite Kenizzites (Ge 15:18, 19) who associated with the descendants of Jacob (Israel), marrying an Israelite wife. However, more likely the name Kenizzite in his case derives from some ancestral Judean family head named Kenaz, even as Caleb’s brother was so named.—Jos 15:17; Jg 1:13; 1Ch 4:13.

    Notably, all references to the Kenizzite connection, which would imply a “quasi-foreign” status, were removed from the Septuagint, which adds instead a qualifier (ό διακεχωιζιδμένος) that means “he who goes against the current”.[1] The Talmud (Sotah 11b) also interprets the name Jephunneh in this vein: “he (Caleb) was a son who turned —panah— from the counsel of the spies”. Caleb is simply from the tribe of Judah.

    “deuteronomy 21:11 “

    This passage is referring to defensive wars that Israel was fighting. There are a couple of things here to keep in mind.
    1) These wars would have been fought against local semitic nations who were closely related to Israel. This is akin to a Swiss man marrying a Belgian woman. Not really intermarriage.
    2) This could not have included Canaanites, who the Israelites were forbidden to marry.
    3) This is by no means an expression of what God considers normative for marriage. Deut. 21 also regulates but allows polygamy, but we wouldn’t cite Deut. 21 to defend the idea that polygamy is normative.

    “Exodus 12:38 A mixed multitude went up also with them, with flocks, herds, and even very much cattle.”

    This has already been dealt with. These people were allowed to join the covenant, become circumcised, and partake in the Passover. They still were not numbered with the children of Israel, but were rather a distinct group (Num. 11:4). They also didn’t permanently own land (Lev. 25) or become civil magistrates (Deut. 1:13-16, 17:15, 2 Sam. 5:1, 1 Chr. 11:1).

    “Notice this is the mixed multitude that Caleb was in.”

    This has not been proven. It is far more plausible that Caleb was a descendant of the tribe of Judah like the narrative says.

    “Riddle me this. Was Bathsheba an Israelite or a Gentile. If she is an Israelite then she married a gentile Uriah. If she is gentile she married the man after God’s heart David.”

    This is irrelevant since we would never justify polygamy simply because David was a polygamist.

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