Dennis Tuuri

Deuteronomy 10:14-11. Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord thy God. The earth also with all that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them. And he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff necked. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward.

He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and the widow, and loveth a stranger in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God. Him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things which thine eyes have seen.

Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons. And now the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude. Therefore, thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments always.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for this piece of scripture. And we pray, Lord God, now that you would bless it as we try to look at it and understand what you’d have therein for us, that we would obey it. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

We’re talking this morning on the stranger. And by way of review, of course, we’ve been going through the tithe, ending up at the poor tithe several weeks ago. The poor tithe, we know, is more appropriately called the third-year local tithe. And during that third-year local tithe, a specific portion of the tithe was to be given unto four groups: the Levites, the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless. And we talked last week about each of those groups representatively of the church of God or of God’s Israel.

We wanted to go into each one of those three groups—the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless—in more detail over the next few weeks. And so this morning’s talk is on the stranger. I think it’s important that we understand what the stranger teaches us or what God teaches us about the stranger in the scriptures because the stranger is mentioned throughout the scriptures and is an important thing to have regard unto.

We talked about how that third-year tithe, though it specifically talks about inclusion of that group—fatherless, widow, and stranger—yet we also know that the rejoicing tithe is also to include those same groups of people with it. We know that from other portions of scripture that say that when they went up before the Lord their God to rejoice, they were to go up with these other three groups. And so the stranger is present at the three annual feasts in which the children of Israel were commanded to go up before God in Jerusalem. He was present with them to rejoice with them. And he also received a portion of their tithe. And so it’s important we understand who the stranger is.

Now, just by way of introduction, there are three words—three Hebrew words—that are translated stranger in the Old Testament or words kin to stranger. The first two are not a concern of ours. They’re zer and no. Those words have more to do with a temporary person in the land, somebody traveling through the land of Israel, for instance. And those things are usually associated with evil because they’re outside the customs of the land of Israel normatively. And the land of Israel is the land of blessing. And so we’re not really concerned with those.

Those are just sort of passes through the word specifically. The word we’re concerned with is the Hebrew word gur, and this is translated in some versions differently. In terms of its translation, sojourn—it’s a sojourner as it were in the land, somebody who had fairly permanent residence within the land and yet was not of the land, not native born as it were. Had come into the land, settled there for whatever reason, and so was amidst the group amidst the group of God’s blessing.

Now we know this is the specific group we’re concerned with because in all those passages where it talks about the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger, this is the specific Hebrew word that’s used. And as you go through all the Old Testament references to stranger—and there’s roughly 125 or 130 of them—about half of them are this word. And it’s obvious that you’re talking about a whole different group of people when God uses this word in the scriptures, people that we’re commanded to show blessing toward and to have certain regard for. I don’t want to go through all those verses, of course, this morning, but just in terms of summary, the Israelites, for instance, were expressly told not to oppress this sort of person—this gur, this sojourner.

With them, by the way, it’s interesting that in the Septuagint the word, this particular Hebrew word, is translated most times with the Greek word that is the base for our modern word proselyte. And so there’s reason to believe that the word proselyte has origins in that stranger dwelling in the midst of the land.

Now I don’t think—and I think I could demonstrate if we had more time—that this gur was not necessarily a complete covenant member of the nation of Israel. And specifically, it says that if the gur, if this stranger, wants to have Passover with you, he has to have himself circumcised, him and all the males in his household. And so you see there that he can at a certain time decide to become a full-fledged member of the covenant community by partaking of Passover. But in order—just as we today, in order to attend the communion feast, which is the New Testament equivalent of Passover—you have to have the covenant sign of initiation of circumcision or baptism in our case.

And so if the sojourner wanted to partake of Passover and be a full-fledged member of the nation of Israel, he had to have himself circumcised. And that indicates that there were sojourners in the land who were not circumcised and therefore were not full-fledged members. Additionally, the Israelites could with animals that died of themselves, they could give those animals to the stranger that dwelt among them, although it was illegal for them to eat it because there was blood in the animal—it hadn’t been properly bled yet. They could give it to the stranger or sell it to these other groups of strangers who are passing through.

So there were different laws in that regard in terms of dietary exclusion from some of the festivals. At the same time, though, there was inclusion of the stranger in various other things that are peculiar to the nation of Israel, such as the Sabbath. That’s an obvious one—that the stranger was commanded to rest in the land, and the Israelite was to give his stranger rest as well as the rest of his animals and the rest of his household as well.

The stranger had to observe that day of rest both on the Sabbath and also on the Day of Atonement. He had to rest that day as well. He’s specifically included in that injunction.

We read in this passage before us that the strangers are to be loved by the covenant members of Israel. Gleaning, which is something we’ll talk about in weeks to come, was also specifically included the stranger in that gleaning provision. So the covenant people had their fields gleanable as it were. They couldn’t go through them fully, and we’ll talk about that in other weeks. But the thing to remember here is that strangers are included in that gleaning process. In other words, they get to glean the fields that the Israelites could not fully harvest.

If the stranger was a bondservant, he was not commanded release in the sabbatical year the way that a native-born or a full covenant member of Israel was. And so if the person became a full proselyte—full-blown proselyte, full member of Israel of the covenant community—he then would achieve release in that sabbatical year, but normally he did not because he was not a full-blown covenant member.

I think the way to think of this stranger is that he’s on the doorway of grace as it were. He’s dwelling amidst the covenant people. He’s decided to obey certain laws. He couldn’t eat, for instance—he couldn’t drink blood. He couldn’t pass his children through the fire to Molech. Couldn’t worship idols. He couldn’t involve himself in sexual sins that were outrageous that God listed a bunch of them. He couldn’t do that either, or else he’d be cut off. He’d be kicked out of the land or killed in some of these cases.

So there were various civil penalties that he found himself bound to keep, even though he wasn’t a full-blown covenant member. And yet he also enjoyed, of course, the bounty that God was giving Israel in times of blessing. And he also, of course, enjoyed the Sabbath rest. And he also enjoyed many other benefits of being close to the covenant people, including, of course, the administration of the word of God, which would bring him into full covenant relationship with God if he was attentive to that teaching of God’s word.

Now, I don’t want to get into this in detail, but in Leviticus there’s a bunch of—there’s like maybe eight or nine references in the book of Leviticus to the stranger and his inclusion in certain sacrifices, exclusion from inclusion in certain sacrifices, what he had to do to observe the Passover, et cetera. There are some commentators who believe that the stranger in the book of Leviticus is one who has circumcised himself and his household and is going to take Passover, and that’s why he’s included in all these other things.

I don’t think you have to go to that position in order to be consistent with scripture. I think that some of the civil sanctions listed in Leviticus would also apply to those people who are dwelling in the community. But I want you to be aware of that fact that as you study through it yourself in the book of Leviticus, some people say the stranger in that account is specifically a full-blown covenant member.

One of the interesting literary things that goes on in that chapter is that it talks a lot about and uses this conjunctive all the time: “The son and the alien, both of them, the native and the alien. The alien and the one who is born in the land.” Uses that conjunctive about a lot of different things going on in the book of Leviticus—eight or nine times like I said. And so there’s some reason in terms of the structure of the language used as well to think that perhaps that particular group that’s being addressed in Leviticus are full-blown covenant members.

But it’s not necessary in order to keep the distinction between the stranger and the full-blown covenant member of Israel. So I think the best way to think about the stranger is in terms of who he was: that he was somebody from another country, obviously, who was sojourning fairly permanently in the land with the group that God had called out for himself and given him his promised land. He was under some of the civil sanctions of that government and also incurred some of the blessings of that government, although he didn’t receive all the blessings in terms of sabbatical release from being a slave.

And as we go through some of these other verses, it’ll become a little bit clearer also some of the other particulars about the stranger and his relationship to the rest of the covenant people.

Now, our text this morning—the first verse we read in this, and I think this is important to recognize—in verse 14, and this verse 14 begins a series of verses that builds up to the command to us to have concern and compassion and love for the stranger. It begins with the fact that in verse 14: “Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord thy God. The earth also with all that therein is.”

So there’s a declaration that God owns heaven and earth and all that’s in heaven and earth. And that’s when we begin this study now of the stranger. We want to keep that in mind first and foremost. After all, when we talk about the stranger, we’re talking first and foremost in terms of geographic reference, aren’t we? We’re saying you’ve got a nation here in Israel or in America, and you’ve got people from another nation, another geographic location—certainly it’s a political entity, but another geographic location—who has come to live in this geographic location. And God is going to command us to love them. And the first thing that God reminds us of is that the geographic location in which we stand here in America or in Israel, wherever he’s talking to in reference to the scripture, is God’s.

First and foremost, we don’t own it. Now, the alien also, of course, has reference to cultural resources. There’s cultural resources in the land of Israel that would be a benefit to the stranger. There’s cultural resources in America that would be a benefit to immigrants. But even those cultural resources, of course, and environmental resources are God’s as well. I mean, God causes the trees to grow and the water to flow. And even what we do with our hands and our language—the language is certainly a large part of a cultural resource—that of course is a gift of God as well. And we image God when we speak well. All these things—it’s important to recognize that whatever we have as native-born is a result of God’s grace because he owns the land. He owns the geographic location, and he owns all the cultural advantages that he’s given us.

So that’s the first point. The second point of this text is that God bestows love on Israel. And so we go right from the fact of God’s ownership into verse 15: “Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them. And he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.”

So God says, “I own all the earth. I own all the resources. I own all the people as well. But I chose your fathers and I chose their seed and I chose your race as it were above all other nations to call out for myself.”

So God says, “I own all things, but I’ve bestowed a grace in giving you a land and giving you various things that I’ve given you and calling you out to be my own.” So God has bestowed love on Israel. Now it’s important to recognize that we normally think of the stranger—at least I did when I began the study—in terms of the negative things. You know, the stranger is oppressed. He’s easily vulnerable to oppression by other people. He can’t get a good job because he can’t speak the language yet, might not know how to work good yet, and this kind of thing.

But there are positive aspects to being a stranger as well. And we enumerated a few of those talking about the stranger in Israel. But it’s easy to see that there are benefits to coming to a foreign land. Otherwise, you wouldn’t go there, would you? Of course, I suppose if you’re coming from may be bad enough to where you don’t care where you go to. But usually you come to a place in which you think there’ll be blessings. And so a stranger who came to Israel had certain blessings from being a stranger in the land. Okay? He had grace the land as it were bestowed on him. If they were in obedience to God, they’d have blessings. And so the stranger would reap some of those blessings as well.

And so to recognize the role of the stranger, we have to recognize it was two parts. One, that it was a positive aspect to being a stranger, and two, there were negative aspects—you could be oppressed. So God here shows that he bestowed his love upon Israel even though he owns all the earth and everything in it. And he goes right—we know from that that Israel as it were can be seen as a stranger as well.

Now we know by specific scriptural references that Israel was a stranger in the land of Egypt. In Genesis 15, God, when he makes his covenant with Abram, tells him of a certainty that his seed will be strangers in a foreign land and served there for 400 years in slavery. Genesis 23, Abram himself acknowledges the fact that he’s a stranger, a sojourner with other people when he goes to buy a plot of land. And in Exodus 2, when Moses has a son, he names his son Gershom. And he names him that because he says, “I’ve been a stranger in a strange land.” Moses has been a stranger.

So Moses recognized that where he was, he was a stranger as well. We know that the nation of Israel was a stranger in the land of Egypt and that had certain negative implications. The scriptures tell us, and God reminds them of that in this passage as well. He says their fathers went down to Egypt with threescore and ten persons. So he reminds them of their slavery in Egypt when he commands them to love the stranger.

So there were negative aspects of Israel’s being a stranger in Egypt. In Exodus 23, Israel is commanded not to oppress a stranger: “For ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The Israelites knew not just their position in terms of being slaves in the land of Egypt and their sojourning there as strangers or aliens. They also knew the heart of the stranger. They knew what it felt like to go through all that. They knew the consequences on their own soul, on their own mind, on the minds of their family in the land of Egypt as they went through some of these negative aspects of being a stranger.

Deuteronomy 24: “Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger. Thou shalt remember thou was a bondman in Egypt and the Lord thy God redeemed thee then.” So God wants us to remember as we consider the stranger that a stranger is capable of much oppression, and Israel was oppressed in the land of Egypt. And he continues to remind them of that oppression.

But it’s also important to recognize this other aspect that I mentioned, that there’s a good aspect of being a stranger as well. In Deuteronomy 23:7, Israel is commanded not to abhor an Egyptian. And why? “Because thou was a stranger in his land.” Israel was a stranger in Egypt. Why? Because it was Egypt’s land. And certainly toward the end of Israel’s stay there, the Israelites were put under subjection to the Egyptians and were slaves.

But remember why they were there after all. They were there in his land because they were going to starve in their land. And so they went to Egypt for the positive aspects of going to Egypt. And that was good and proper. I don’t think that was a judgment of God against them for leaving the land. God used the Egyptian control of land and resources that he had given them there. And then, of course, the use of Joseph to produce blessings in Egypt so that his people would be sustained in that wilderness. Okay, there was a positive aspect of Israel being a stranger in the land of Egypt.

And in this passage in Deuteronomy 23, he says just that: “Don’t abhor Egyptian. You were a stranger in his land. And in essence, he helped you at first. He fed you through the produce of his land. You ate and were satisfied.” Okay, it’s important to recognize that there’s a positive aspect as well as a negative aspect of Israel.

So we know that Israel was a stranger. God says, “I own the world. I chose out you.” And then he reminds them that Israel was a stranger themselves in time past. But they weren’t just a stranger in times past in relationship to the Egyptians. They were. And now they had their own country. But was it their own country? Of course not. God has just told them, “I own the land itself.”

And so Israel is said throughout the scriptures also to be a stranger perpetually. For instance, in Leviticus 25, God says: “The land shall not be sold forever for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourers with me.” God says, “I own the land and that’s one of the reasons for the year of Jubilee and the land reverting back. So you can’t sell the land forever because it’s not yours to sell. It’s my land. And though I’ve delivered you out of the strangeness you had in Egypt and the bondage there, and some of the positive aspects have brought you to your own land, remember you’re still a stranger because I own the land and you are strangers and sojourners with me.”

First Chronicles 29:15, David confessed: “We are strangers before thee, before God, and sojourners, as were all our fathers. Our days in the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.” David, in Psalm 39, says: “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry. Hold not thy grace at my tears. Peace, at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were.”

David doesn’t say, “I just was, my fathers were.” He says, “I am a stranger with you.” And as Psalm 119:19 says, “I am a stranger in the earth. Hide not thy commandments from me.” So we know that Israel knew and understood that when it had proper relationship to God, God had delivered them out of being a stranger and alien in Egypt, and yet they were still strangers in another sense because they were sojourners on God’s land. And that couldn’t change, of course. God always owns the land, always owns all that’s created, and so we have a perpetual, as it were, stranger status in relationship to God.

So our relationship and our position in relationship to God is one of stranger. Now we know in the New Testament in Ephesians it said that the Gentiles were not a people. They were cut off, strangers to the covenant, strangers to the promises of the covenant. God says but “I brought you near and so now you’re fellow citizens.” And so there’s an aspect in which we were strangers as well, and now we are no longer strangers because we are part, grafted into the covenant community of Jesus Christ. And yet we have to confess, as did the covenant people of the Old Testament, that we are strangers in a land that God has given us. We don’t own this land. We don’t have any natural rights to this land. We are strangers in it.

So it’s important to recognize—I’m convinced that the reason God talks in verse 15 about his bestowal of grace and love on Israel was, after reminding them of his ownership of the earth, to remind them that they are strangers or sojourners in the earth as well. And so they should love the stranger.

And then in verses 17 and 18 it says the Lord thy God doesn’t show partiality. He says that “I am the Lord your God of gods, Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible, which regardeth not persons nor taketh reward.” And goes on to talk about how he loves the stranger in giving him food and raiment. God says, “I don’t regard persons.” That’s kind of funny, isn’t it? Because he just told us that he chose out Israel of all the rest of the nations. How can you put those two together?

And we know there are lots of other verses in the scriptures that say that God is not a guarder of partiality. He doesn’t show favor as it were upon one nation over another. And yet he just told us that he chose Israel. Well, how can we correlate those things? We can correlate those things because if we recognize that God didn’t choose Israel just as the only group of people that he was going to call to himself. He chose Israel that they might be a light unto the rest of the world, that they’d be a beacon of his righteousness and truth and so proselytize the rest of the world.

God didn’t show partiality because he had chosen the people not for the sake strictly of saying, “These are mine and the rest of you can just forget it,” but for the sake of setting up an example. Israel was a seed nation as it were. God had seeded the earth with his people then, and he was going to take that people and extend his dominion and his understanding of his dominion over the rest of the nations of the world as well.

God doesn’t show partiality. He’s told them now that he owns the earth. He chose them, and he doesn’t show partiality. He shows grace to the stranger. So what’s their response supposed to be? They’re certainly not to become exclusive, not to become ingrown. To deny the stranger is to become ingrown in one’s faith and to believe that they had natural privilege with God.

Now you know you’ve got strangers with Israel throughout the Old Testament. And I’m convinced that saying in the Old Testament, it’s a looking forward to the time when other strangers will be included into God’s house as well from every nation. And we know we’ve talked a lot about the verses in Isaiah that all the nations will come up to Jesus Christ, up to his throne, up to where his law comes forth from. And we know that’s what Jesus Christ has established 2,000 years ago as his kingdom. And it’s working itself out over the entire earth.

So all the nations come to Jesus Christ in terms of coming to the scriptures, coming to the preaching of the scriptures. They can understand how to be civil rulers, how to be good family people, how to exercise vocational calling. That’s what God always wanted for Israel. He never wanted them exclusively as a nation so that no other nations of the earth be blessed. He doesn’t show partiality.

Israel were strangers before God. They were to show God’s grace to other strangers, recognizing that they were a seed nation. And by the way, if you remember this—remember, this is taught throughout the Old Testament—then it’ll keep you away from some of the errors that some of us have been taught in Bible school regarding the fact that you know, Jesus Christ came and offered a kingdom just to the Israeli nation and doesn’t really concern himself with expanding the kingdom beyond them. That of course isn’t true.

So the third point there is that God does not show partiality, and therefore Israel is a seed nation. And then we go right from there into verse 19: “Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

It’s important to recognize that God had given specific commands to this nation—that were strangers before him, the Israelites—in relationship to the other strangers they would have in the midst of them.

In Leviticus, this same commandment to love the stranger—to love your neighbor basically, which is what’s going on here—is repeated in Leviticus 19: “If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, you shall not vex him. Thou shalt love him as thyself. For ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

In Deuteronomy 26, this is what led us into this talk of the stranger. We see the ratification of the covenant, the affirmation of the covenant keeper that he had kept God’s tithe. And part of the keeping of God’s tithe was to give a portion of that tithe unto the alien. God’s grace as manifested by his people toward the alien is an important part of covenant ratification in Deuteronomy 26. Israel is commanded to show grace unto the stranger.

In Job 31, Job himself, talking about his own good works, he said, “The stranger did not lodge in the street, but I open my doors to the traveler.” He was commending himself before God and saying, “Look at you. You told me to be kind to the strangers. I did that. They didn’t have to sleep out there when they came through the land. When they sojourned in the land, they came into my house.”

Leviticus 25: “If thy brother be waxed and poor and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him. Yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with thee.” Now, I think that the proper translation of that is that if the brother is poor, that as if he was a stranger or sojourner, you shall help him in his distress.

And the clear implication there is that any stranger or sojourner in the land—the sojourners that we’re talking about who are walking in obedience to external commands of the word of God and are on the doorway of grace as it were—that Israel has shown grace to those people. They have been and they have gone out of their way to help those people the same way they’d help a poor brother in their own midst if he was in times of distress.

So Israel was commanded to have these kinds of external manifestations of grace toward the stranger. And we know that’s of course repeated in the New Testament. One of the qualifications for a widow to be put in the list is that she entertains strangers, that she, you know, was kind to strangers. And there’s other—we talked about those verses last week in terms of God calling his people in the New Testament also to show kindness towards strangers.

So God declares his ownership of the land. He talks about his love shown to Israel. He says that he’s not partial. And on the basis of those three things, he commands Israel to show grace to the stranger. The basis for Israel to show grace to the stranger is a recognition that God has shown grace to them even though they are strangers before God in his land. And so they’re to manifest God’s grace toward the stranger as well, recognizing that he doesn’t show partiality, recognizing that’s a method of evangelism, and recognizing that it’s showing the love of God that God has shown to us, and that we have no natural place with God by which we can claim privilege or priority with him.

Finally, Israel’s oppression of the stranger is seen as a great sin. Therefore, if it’s so important that the people of Israel demonstrate God’s grace to the stranger, we can imagine what Israel’s denial of that and actual oppression of a stranger would bring upon them.

In Malachi 3, let’s listen to this list of sins here that Malachi 3 talks about. God says, “I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.”

God talks there about sorcerers and adulterers. False swearers is the third group there, and then about those who oppress the hireling, the fatherless, the widow, and the stranger. To oppress the stranger is seen in the same category as sins by God as being a sorcerer or committing adultery. It’s an important thing to God. It’s more than just showing kindness to somebody, which is what I’m trying to get across here. It’s teaching a central element of the faith, that we stand in relationship to God through the grace of God and for the purpose that we would go out and show that grace to other people. That’s what helping the stranger is all about, and that’s why God deals with his people who oppress the stranger in harsh and very severe ways.

By the way, notice there also that false swearers are included in that category of sinners. It’s a terrible thing to make a false oath before God.

In Deuteronomy 27, in the curses of covenant breaking, we read: “Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless and widow, and all the people shall say, Amen.” One of the specific curses of God is upon people when people pervert the judgment to a stranger.

And what’s interesting is how God brings about this curse upon us because in Deuteronomy 28 it says that one of the curses is that “the stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high and thou shalt come down very low.” And he uses that same word gur in both occurrences. So what he’s saying is, “If you don’t acknowledge this grace that you’ve received, if you don’t pass that grace on and don’t recognize this is an evangelistic faith, and if therefore you pervert the judgment to a stranger—you know what I’m going to do? You oppress the stranger because he’s lower than you. Well, I’m going to make him higher than you and you’re going to be the stranger in the land and he’ll be the head and you’ll be the tail.”

Okay? God says, “If you’re going to treat the people that I command you to treat favorably and compassionately that way, I’m going to raise them up above you and you’ll be the oppressed one.”

Then remember, we read last week about the widows and the fatherless. And God says, “If you do damage, if you hurt the widow and the fatherless, I’m going to make your wives widows and your kids will be fatherless.”

Psalm 94, the description of the wicked is that “they slay the widow and the stranger and murder the fatherless.” It’s a terrible thing to sin against the stranger in our land and did not show him the grace that God has shown us.

Jeremiah 22. And this verse is specifically directed to the civil magistrate in the land. Thus saith the Lord: “Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor. And do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood. In this place, the civil government is charged with doing no wrong to the stranger and making sure they get justice in the courts of the land, and making sure that they show an open hand of grace, not that there are closed hands of grace to the stranger in the land.

The civil government is charged with that.