Genesis tells the story of Abraham and Sarah who left their country in the East to live in Canaan as foreigners (Gen 12–23). Their grandson Jacob moved his family to Egypt during a time of famine after his own son Joseph rose to a position of power there (Gen 43–50). Later, Jacob’s descendants, the people of Israel, became slaves in Egypt. It was then that God chose Moses to lead them out of Egypt into Canaan, the land God had promised to give them as their own.

They settled there under the leadership of Joshua. The laws they had received from God taught them to treat the foreigners living among them with the same fairness and freedom that they had finally come to enjoy (Exod 12:49; Lev 24:22). The Israelites were commanded to respect foreigners and to give them full legal rights (Deut 10:18,19), remembering that they themselves had once lived as foreigners in Egypt (Lev 19:33,34; Deut 23:7).

However, the Jewish Scriptures also warned the Israelites to be careful about becoming too friendly with the people who lived in the land of Canaan. The Canaanites and their false gods were to be driven out (Exod 23:31-33). If the Canaanites remained in the land, they were not to participate in the religion of Israel, unless the males allowed themselves to be circumcised (Exod 12:48,49).

Years later, the people of Israel became foreigners once again, when they were taken as captives into exile in Babylonia. The Israelites were allowed to return to their own land in 539 B.C. Their leaders at this time were Ezra and Nehemiah who taught the people to be very strict about separating themselves from foreigners when they prayed or worshiped God. And they told the Israelite men who had married foreign women to divorce these wives and send them and their children away (Ezra 9,10).

Some of Israel’s prophets, though, taught that God had a plan that included foreigners and the enemies of Israel. For example, the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel declared that in the future foreigners would join Israel in worshiping Israel’s God and even share in possession of the promised land (Isa 56:1-8; Ezek 47:21-23).

In the New Testament, Jesus’ actions showed that God’s love and care are for all people. The story he told his followers about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) showed how a man who was not a Jew (the Samaritan) acted in a very neighborly way toward a Jewish man who had been robbed and beaten. Jesus also reached out to Gentiles (non-Jews) when he healed the servant of an officer in the Roman army (Matt 8:5-13) and the daughter of a Canaanite woman (Matt 15:21-28).