Those who support illegal immigrants on moral grounds, like Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the Sojourners, appeal to Bible verses like “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the stranger. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you. You shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:33–34). In fact this verse is posted on their website.⁴

Meanwhile the law-and-order camp appeals to St. Paul’s teachings in Romans 13:1: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities”—i.e., the laws of the land. As noted already, the sanctuary movement originates with the practice of taking sanctuary in the cities of refuge as established in the Old Testament law. However, sanctuary advocates seem totally unaware of the conditions prescribed in the Bible for receiving sanctuary protection. Then, too, most Americans simply do not know that the Bible has much to say about immigration and immigrants. Clearly what we need is a fair and balanced treatment of all relevant biblical material to examine how it addresses these issues and to see what wisdom it might offer us. The fact is, the Bible records many stories that deal with immigrants as well as containing many laws and ethical principles that could guide America, its people, organizations, churches, and even lawmakers as this nation wrestles with one of the most vexing issues of our time.

In this book we shall carefully examine the relevant biblical texts that bear on the issue of immigration and aliens. The narratives and laws of the Bible did not take place in a cultural and historical vacuum. Consequently, we will need to look at other ancient texts from the world of the Bible to understand what was going on during the days of Abraham, Moses, and David that shaped the teaching of Scripture. In my view this contextual approach is essential for establishing the setting of biblical stories and laws, thus providing the basis for understanding them.

Migrations of peoples did not begin with the Americas in the early seventeenth century. They have been a part of human history since God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and they settled east of Eden (Gen. 3:22–24). When Cain murdered his brother Abel, he went in search of a new home, fearing that someone would avenge the death of Abel. So he immigrated to the land of Nod (“wandering”), where he built himself a new home (Gen. 4:14–17). From the early pages of Genesis onward, there are reports of families, clans, and tribes migrating to foreign lands. For example, the people who built the tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1ff.) had emigrated from the east and settled in the land of Shinar, present-day Iraq. Centuries later, Abraham and his family migrated from the same region to the land of Canaan (Gen. 11:31–12:9), and this is where the story of ancient Israel’s ancestors begins.