“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry:hold not thy peace at my tears; for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.” (Psalm 39:12)
Lately we hear people sanctimoniously intoning that it is unChristian if we don’t open our borders (and our purses) to these economic migrants storming the Southern border. So I began thinkin’ on the theme of migration in the Bible.
As a Bible-thumping Prot, I’ll wager I have more of a fascination with the OT stories than many Jews. I do know them better than any Catholics of my IRL acquaintance, who actually do not believe me when I relate certain stories—even though the Catholic Bible contains several quite fantastic books the KJV doesn’t have. (Now, I know Chaps and JAC probably know more than I do; this ain’t directed at you Ettes!)
It occurs to me that the entire Old Testament is a story of migration.
It seems Yahweh’s default command is “GET OUT OF HERE!”
Sometimes exile/flight is a punishment decreed by God: Eden, Noah, the 40 years in the wilderness, the Babylonian Captivity.
Sometimes it’s a seeming misfortune whereby God works in His trademark “mysterious ways”: Jacob, Joseph—and metaphorically speaking I’d include Isaac in this category: surely the poor lad endured the ultimate estrangement in that instant when his beloved father stood above Isaac’s trussed body, the sacrificial knife at his tender throat.
And sometimes uprooting oneself and family is the price of a reward promised by God: Abraham, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.” ( Gen 12:1). Moses: “And I am come down to deliver {Israel} out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey..” (Exodus 3:8) And Nehemiah, wherein we get the story of the return of the Babylonian exiles and the re-purification of the Temple.
Patiently or even willingly enduring exile is a test of faith, of character. Witness Ruth, the gentile woman who became King David’s grandmother, refusing to return to her own country:”Thy people shall be my people, and thy god my god; and in the country where thou diest, there will I be buried..” And King David himself endures an internal exile,a fugitive hunted in his own country by the wretched, curséd-of-God King Saul.
The Gospels too begin with a forced march which compels Mary and Joseph to travel to Jerusalem at an inopportune time. And the first event in the Infant Jesus’ life is the “Flight to Egypt” (kinda completes the circle with the Exodus story.) then, Jesus and His disciples live as itinerant mendicants, sometimes driven onward by a hostile populace or threat of persecution: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath nowhere to lay his head..”
Many other tales in our mythology and folklore, like Abraham and the King of Salem or Wotan the Wanderer, have as a theme the inadvisability of showing unkindness or inhospitability to “The Stranger” , who might be a powerful,royal,or even divine being in humble disguise.
But The Stranger or Sojourner isn’t moving in; they are transient visitors. They don’t come to live with you, but to test whether you have it in you to share with and protect even people who have absolutely nothing to do with your everyday life. Then they move on. They have to: that’s their mission, their geas.
When Israel gets to the Land O’Milk ‘n’ Honey, which God had said way back at the beginning was “the place of the Canaanites , and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites and the Jebusites”, He expects the Israelites, NOT to beg admittance to live peacefully among those natives—but to kill them and drive them OUT. Israel is no longer the stranger and sojourner. Now it is the homesteader. Not only justified , but divinely commanded, to commit whatever pillage and mayhem it must in order to secure its claim.
(Interesting, doncha think, that the sanctimonious Woke , who moan about our lack of compassion for the refuse seeping across our southern border, are the LAST people to recognize Israel’s right to sovereignty and security…?)
My conclusion: Migration is a primary motif of the Bible, if we read it entire, as a work of literature.
And it is a powerful metaphor for the estrangement or exile of humans from God, and for the precariousness of our mortal existence. But the message concerning actual migration of peoples is mixed, not fixed, both metaphorical and historically.
Buona Pasqua, i miei amici!
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Oh my! Tour de force.
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I hope that means you liked it, Simon…☺️!
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And I totally second what Simon said! You are brilliant, Hypatia, and it is always a privilege to read your work 🙂
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Liked it? I loved it and will respond with something more focused eventually. Am still ruminating while marinating on this.
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The only time leftists ever care about Christianity is when they think they can use it as a weapon.
I can’t speak for Nanda, but you definitely know more about the Bible than I do 🙂 I am thinking about rectifying this situation, by joining a Bible study or something, but even then, Hypatia will always be far more of a Biblical scholar than I will ever be 🙂
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I can’t take credit; these stories were read to me every night at bedtime. And I’m glad they were. I tried to import the same basic Biblical literacy to my daughter, along with the D’Aulaires’ great books on Greek and Norse mythology.
once I listened to a Great Courses series on the Bible as literature. The lecturer quoted Milton’s line that his goal in writing “Paradise Lost” was “to justify the ways of God to Man”—and posited that the Bible as a whole is an attempt “to justify the ways of Man to God”! We start out in a garden, a natural setting, and cities in the Old Testament are evil places: Sodom, Nineveh, even Jerusalem! But at the end, after the apocalypse and the Fire, God brings down, not a new Garden of Eden, but a city: the New Jerusalem. Like God has become reconciled to HUMAN civilization! Isn’t that interesting? 😴
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Blessed Pasch, dear Hyp, ST, Ettes, Sieurs & All! Targeted, timely exegesis, my dear Alexandrine friend. This Catholic is impressed and edified. Just for you, I’m working on a brief “conversation” between our friends Jack and Jord about pesky ole free will and Divine Will. Stay tuned. 🐼🙏
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“(Interesting, doncha think, that the sanctimonious Woke , who moan about our lack of compassion for the refuse seeping across our southern border, are the LAST people to recognize Israel’s right to sovereignty and security…?)”
As we all know I hardly qualify as a Biblical scholar; I’m always pleased when I, too, can take something away from these types of posts. 🙂
And this was it!
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“…surely the poor lad endured the ultimate estrangement in that instant when his beloved father stood above Isaac’s trussed body, the sacrificial knife at his tender throat.”
This! I have tried on occasion to get into Isaac’s head in that moment but have failed so far. That was what we would have a called, back in the day, a “come to Jesus moment” for him.
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Yeah…child sacrifice was a thing in that time and place, and I’ve always wondered if poor little Isaac didn’t know that. Maybe he was resigned, like Jephtha’s daughter, who says:
“My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth..”
I wonder how old Isaac was at this point. A toddler? So that he couldn’t resist when Abraham bound him? Or an ephebe, who could have struggled and maybe gotten away, but didn’t?
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À propos of my conclusion, I just came across an amazingly apt quotation attributed to Chekhov: “Art doesn’t have to solve problems, it only has to confront them directly.”
And the Bible does directly confront alienation and displacement in various permutations. But it doesn’t take a position on it. I reckon that depends on the destination, whatever that turns out to be—and it may not be the place you set out for.
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Human beings are also ‘aiming’ by nature. We are diminished when we have nothing to ‘aim’ at; without goals one withers on the vine. I suspect the sojourner is aiming at a goal almost entirely spiritual.
Hypatia, how much of your focus is on these migrations being forced not taken on voluntarily?
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I argued with L!’s gay (mohamadden?) all the time about the right of Israel to exist. It was his pet peeve. I don’t recall getting much if any support from the other commenters on any of those threads. Being ‘good guys,’ I suppose they did not want to upset the usurper.
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Pretty sure I know whom you mean. I argued with him a lot.
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He was always johhny-on-the-spot if I mentioned anything pro-Israel. It was uncanny.
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It killed me. Whyncha go join the “Palestinians”, Mr Z? Oh right, they’ll throw you off the roof of some building for being queer…..
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Reblogged this on ST UnWoke! and commented:
Hypatia bringing the heat as per SOP krap
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