Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 15:2 (Spring 1972)
Article: Jehovah’s International Love
Author: Arthur H. Lewis

JETS 15:2 (Spring 1972) p. 87

Jehovah’s International Love

Arthur H. Lewis*

Xenophobia, the fear and hatred of strangers, continues to blight modern society, just as it did ancient Israel and her neighbors. Some of the world’s trouble-spots show Protestants fighting Catholics, or white Christians fighting black Christians. The question raised by this paper is whether the Hebrew Scriptures provide an answer to bigotry, or whether they only illustrate the problem.

A study of the laws and admonitions to Israel having to do with the ger and the goi, the sojourner within the tribes and the foreign nation outside, show a high standard of love for the stranger that cannot be challenged. Compliance by the Hebrews came short of these ideals, but throughout most of Old Testament history the Israelites were surprisingly tolerant of their neighbors. The pattern of nationalism starts to develop at the end of the divided monarchy and after the return of the exiled Jews from Babylon.

The ethical problems raised by the conquest of the Canaanites obviously reflect on the theme of Jehovah’s international love, but they require a discussion too extensive for this paper. Only four areas will be examined: the Noachian laws, the treatment of the gerim, intermarriage with gentiles, and the prophets’ views of the goiim.

The Covenant With Noah

The opening chapters of Genesis are a tribute to the universality of Jehovah’s rule. After the judgment upon society by the flood, a new regulation for all nations was established. The Talmud finds seven laws for all peoples in the Noachian Covenant.1 Usually, however, these are shortened to three: the command to multiply and fill the earth, the right to eat animal flesh, but never the blood, and the sanction against taking human life; anyone guilty of murder must himself be put to death.

These laws were the core of a widely dispersed revelation of the will of God as to the political, religious, and ethical life of the nations. The first law provided for man to spread out and form small cultural and political units; it was implemented at the Tower of Babel. The second law made the sacrifice of animals for food a sacrament of wor-

*Professor of Old Testament, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

JETS 15:2 (Spring 1972) p. 88

ship and a reminder that all life comes from God with the blood as its symbol. In the third law we find the dignity of human life established and with it the “Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself” concept of the societal parts of the Decalogue.

Evidence throughout the Old and New Testaments shows that the Je...