“Love the foreigner as yourself”
Leviticus 19:34
Legal referenceSettledGod
You must treat the foreigner living among you as native-born and love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:34 BSB)
* The same command as 'love your neighbor' (v.18), now aimed explicitly at the outsider; the memory of Israel's own slavery in Egypt is made the ground of compassion.
What it sounds like today
A nice reminder to be kind to immigrants.
The cultural key
Sixteen verses after 'love your neighbor,' the same command is deliberately widened to the ger, the resident foreigner, closing any loophole that would limit love to one's own people. And the motive is memory: 'you were foreigners in Egypt.' Israel's compassion is to be shaped by its own experience of being the vulnerable stranger. The Torah returns to the care of the foreigner more than thirty times, making it one of the most repeated social commands in the Law, and strikingly generous for the ancient world.
Recovered meaning
Neighbor-love is explicitly stretched to the outsider, grounded in Israel's own history of oppression. Remember what it was to be the stranger, and let that memory become mercy.
Parallels: Leviticus 19:18; Deuteronomy 10:19