What Does the Bible Say about Immigrants?

Quick Summary

The Bible speaks consistently and clearly about immigrants, often using the language of the foreigner, the stranger, or the sojourner. From the law of Moses to the teaching of Jesus, Scripture frames immigration first as a matter of human dignity, memory, and moral responsibility. God’s people are repeatedly called to remember their own vulnerability, to resist oppression, and to extend justice and care to those who live among them without power or protection.

Introduction

Immigration is often treated as a modern political problem, but Scripture approaches it as a deeply human reality. Long before borders were fixed and passports issued, people moved because of famine, war, labor, family, and survival (much like today). The Bible assumes this movement as part of ordinary life. Its concern is not how to score a debate, but how God’s people are to live faithfully when strangers dwell among them.

Throughout Scripture, immigrants are not described primarily as threats or burdens. They are neighbors, laborers, worshipers, and sometimes prophets. They are people whose lives intersect with the community of faith in ways that test memory, justice, and compassion. The Bible does not flatten these questions into easy answers, but it does return again and again to one central claim: how a society treats the foreigner reveals what it believes about God.

The Foreigner and the

Sojourner in the Old Testament: Hebrew Terms and Scripture

The Hebrew Word:

Ger

(גֵּר)

The primary Hebrew word translated as “sojourner,” “resident alien,” or sometimes “foreigner” is ger (גֵּר). A ger is not a passing traveler. The word describes someone who lives among the people of Israel but does not possess land, clan protection, or full legal standing.

Because land ownership was the foundation of economic and social security in ancient Israel, the ger was inherently vulnerable. Without inherited land or kinship networks, survival depended on the justice and restraint of the wider community.

This vulnerability is assumed throughout the law.

Israel’s Own Story as Migrants

Scripture repeatedly grounds Israel’s treatment of the ger in Israel’s own history of migration and displacement.

Abraham’s call begins with migration:

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

Genesis 12:1 (NRSV)

Later, Jacob’s family becomes a migrant people seeking survival during famine:

“Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly.”

Genesis 47:27 (NRSV)

That migration turns into oppression. Israel lives for generations as a vulnerable minority:

“Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph… The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites.”

Exodus 1:8, 13 (NRSV)

This experience becomes the moral foundation for Israel’s law.

Commanded Memory and Moral Formation

Israel is explicitly commanded to remember its own status as a ger.

“You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

Exodus 22:21 (NRSV)

“You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

Exodus 23:9 (NRSV)

Memory is not emotional nostalgia. It is ethical formation. Israel’s past vulnerability is meant to restrain its present power.

Law as Justice, Not Charity

The Torah places the ger alongside widows and orphans as a protected class. These commands are not framed as optional generosity but as obligations of justice.

Provision for food:

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field… you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien.”

Leviticus 19:9–10 (NRSV)

Fair wages and protection from exploitation:

“You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land.”

Deuteronomy 24:14 (NRSV)

Equal justice under the law:

“You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the Lord your God.”

Leviticus 24:22 (NRSV)

Access to rest and dignity:

“The seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter… or the resident alien in your towns.”

Exodus 20:10 (NRSV)

God as the Defender of the Sojourner

The Bible goes further than regulation. It presents God as personally invested in the well-being of the ger.

“The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”

Psalm 146:9 (NRSV)

This is not abstract compassion. It is a theological claim about who God is. To mistreat the ger is to stand against God’s own concern for justice.

Memory as Moral Responsibility

One of the most striking features of biblical teaching on immigrants is the repeated command to remember. Israel is told to remember its slavery, remember its wandering, and remember God’s deliverance. This memory is meant to shape behavior in the present.

Forgetting leads to hardness. Remembering leads to restraint, empathy, and action. The Bible assumes that power can easily corrupt unless it is checked by story and gratitude. Immigration, in this sense, becomes a test of communal memory. Do God’s people remember who they were and who God has been?

This emphasis on memory keeps biblical ethics from becoming abstract. Compassion is not grounded in sentiment alone, but in lived experience and shared history. The people of God are called to treat the foreigner not as an unknown problem but as a familiar human being.

The Prophets and the Measure of Justice

The prophets of Israel repeatedly return to the treatment of the foreigner as a diagnostic tool for communal faithfulness. Alongside denunciations of idolatry, economic exploitation, and corrupt leadership, they identify the mistreatment of immigrants as evidence that the covenant itself has been violated. In prophetic theology, injustice toward the vulnerable is never incidental. It is a sign that worship has become detached from obedience.

The prophet Amos offers one of the clearest examples. Amos condemns Israel not for failing to perform religious rituals, but for performing them while ignoring justice. God rejects festivals, sacrifices, and songs precisely because social life contradicts covenantal ethics:

“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies… But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Amos 5:21, 24 (NRSV)

While Amos does not list immigrants in every oracle, scholars consistently note that his vision of justice assumes protection for those without power, land, or legal standing. Walter Brueggemann observes that for the prophets, justice is not an abstract virtue but “the concrete practice of neighborly responsibility within social relationships” (Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, p. 39). Immigrants, like widows and orphans, fall squarely within that moral horizon.

The prophet Jeremiah is more explicit. In a temple sermon delivered at the height of Judah’s religious confidence, Jeremiah names the treatment of the foreigner as a litmus test of authentic worship:

“If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow… then I will dwell with you in this place.”

Jeremiah 7:5–7 (NRSV)

Here, oppression of the ger is not a side issue. It is listed alongside violence and idolatry as grounds for judgment. Christopher Wright notes that in prophetic literature, social ethics function as “covenant maintenance,” revealing whether Israel understands its relationship to God as real or merely symbolic (Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, p. 253).

The same pattern appears in Zechariah, where the prophet ties divine displeasure directly to social abuse:

“Do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.”

Zechariah 7:10 (NRSV)

What unites these prophetic voices is their refusal to separate devotion from conduct. The prophets do not argue that justice replaces worship. Rather, they insist that worship without justice is fraudulent. As John Goldingay summarizes, prophetic critique exposes “religion that insulates itself from responsibility toward the weak” (Old Testament Theology, Vol. 2, p. 601).

This is why the prophets consistently treat injustice toward immigrants as a sign of moral collapse rather than a policy failure. A society that claims covenant loyalty while exploiting those without power reveals that its faith has become performative. God is not impressed by liturgy that masks harm.

The prophetic tradition therefore resists any attempt to spiritualize ethics. Faith is not hidden in private belief alone. It is public, embodied, and visible in how communities structure power, restrain exploitation, and protect those who can be easily ignored. The foreigner stands at the center of this vision, not because they are idealized, but because their vulnerability exposes the true character of the community that surrounds them.

Jesus and the Stranger

In the Gospels, Jesus does not offer a policy platform, but he does offer a way of seeing the world that reorients social boundaries. His ministry consistently moves toward those pushed to the margins, including the poor, the ritually unclean, ethnic outsiders, and those without social protection. This movement is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate enactment of God’s reign, in which worth is not determined by status, ancestry, or proximity to power.

The Gospel writers situate Jesus in a world marked by ethnic tension, economic disparity, and religious boundary-keeping. Jews and Samaritans were divided by centuries of hostility. Gentiles were often viewed with suspicion. Yet Jesus repeatedly crosses these lines. He heals the servant of a Roman centurion (Matthew 8:5–13), engages a Samaritan woman as a theological interlocutor (John 4:1–26), and praises the faith of outsiders when insiders fail to respond (Luke 17:11–19).

Jesus’ teaching about neighbor-love explicitly expands moral responsibility beyond familiar or comfortable categories. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the question “Who is my neighbor?” is reversed. The issue is no longer identifying who qualifies for care, but recognizing what it means to act as a neighbor (Luke 10:25–37). The Samaritan, an ethnic and religious outsider, becomes the moral exemplar. As Joel Green notes, the parable “redefines community around mercy rather than proximity, identity, or obligation” (The Gospel of Luke, p. 430).

This redefinition of belonging runs throughout Jesus’ ministry. Those assumed to be outsiders repeatedly model faithfulness, while those assumed to be insiders often resist. Belonging is not erased, but it is relativized. Compassion becomes the mark of covenant faithfulness.

Perhaps most striking is Jesus’ identification with the stranger in his teaching about final judgment. In Matthew 25, Jesus speaks of welcoming the stranger as an act done directly to him:

“I was a stranger and you welcomed me… Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Matthew 25:35, 40 (NRSV)

This identification is not metaphorical politeness. It is a theological claim. Jesus locates himself among the vulnerable, making hospitality a matter of discipleship rather than sentiment. To receive the outsider is to receive Christ. To reject the vulnerable is to reject him. As Dale Allison observes, this passage grounds ethics not in abstract principle but in Christological encounter (The New Moses, p. 274).

Jesus’ vision resists both indifference and fear. He does not deny social complexity, but he refuses to let complexity excuse the erosion of mercy. The stranger becomes a site of encounter with God.

The Early Church and Shared Life

The early Christian communities emerged in a world shaped by migration. The Roman Empire was filled with displaced populations: former slaves, itinerant laborers, merchants, soldiers, and refugees from war or famine. Urban centers such as Antioch, Corinth, and Rome were ethnically and linguistically diverse, often marked by sharp social stratification.

The book of Acts portrays the church taking shape within this fluid context. Pentecost itself is narrated as a gathering of people “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). The Spirit does not erase difference, but it creates communion across it. Language, ethnicity, and origin remain visible, yet they no longer determine belonging.

Hospitality becomes a defining practice of the early church. Believers share meals, resources, and worship, forming communities where social boundaries are reconfigured:

“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

Acts 2:44–45 (NRSV)

This shared life is not romanticized utopianism. It is a concrete response to vulnerability. Many early Christians lacked stable social standing. Mutual care became essential for survival as well as witness.

The inclusion of Gentiles further demonstrates the church’s refusal to equate worth with origin. Peter’s encounter with Cornelius leads to a theological reorientation:

“I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

Acts 10:34–35 (NRSV)

This moment marks a decisive break with ethnic exclusivity. The church does not abolish difference, but it refuses to let difference become a barrier to fellowship. As Luke Timothy Johnson notes, early Christianity formed “a community whose social practices embodied its theological convictions” (The Acts of the Apostles, p. 187).

Letters attributed to Paul reinforce this vision. Baptism is presented as incorporation into a community where previous status markers no longer determine access or dignity (Galatians 3:28). Hospitality toward strangers is repeatedly commended as a basic Christian virtue (Romans 12:13; Hebrews 13:2).

The early church’s posture toward outsiders is therefore neither assimilationist nor exclusionary. Difference is acknowledged, but it is not allowed to dictate value. Belonging is shaped by shared allegiance to Christ and shared responsibility for one another.

What the Bible Is Ultimately Saying

The Bible does not reduce immigration to a single command or slogan. It presents a moral vision shaped by memory, justice, and love of neighbor. Immigrants are consistently treated as people before they are treated as problems. Vulnerability calls forth responsibility. Power demands restraint.

This vision challenges both fear and indifference. It insists that faith is not proven by words alone but by the way communities make room for those who live among them without security or status.

FAQ

Does the Bible support open borders?

The Bible does not speak in modern political categories. Its focus is on moral responsibility, justice, and the protection of vulnerable people rather than on prescribing specific border policies.

Does the Bible require Christians to help immigrants?

Scripture consistently commands care, fairness, and protection for the foreigner. These commands are framed as justice and faithfulness, not optional charity.

Are immigrants treated the same as citizens in the Bible?

Biblical law recognizes differences in status while also insisting on equal protection from harm, exploitation, and injustice.

Is immigration only a political issue?

In Scripture, immigration is a moral and spiritual issue. It reveals how communities understand power, memory, and faithfulness to God.

Works Consulted

• Allison, Dale C. The New Moses: A Matthean Typology. Fortress Press.

• Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. Fortress Press.

• Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans.

• Goldingay, John. Old Testament Theology, Vol. 2. InterVarsity Press.

• Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Acts of the Apostles. Sacra Pagina Series. Liturgical Press.

• Keener, Craig S. The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. Eerdmans.

• Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Fortress Press.

• Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. InterVarsity Press.