XX. (102) Moreover, after the lawgiver has established commandments respecting one’s fellow countrymen, he proceeds to show that he looks upon strangers also as worthy of having their interests attended to by his laws, since they have forsaken their natural relations by blood, and their native land and their national customs, and the sacred temples of their gods, and the worship and honour which they had been wont to pay to them, and have migrated with a holy migration, changing their abode of fabulous inventions for that of the certainty and clearness of truth, and of the worship of the one true and living God. (103) Accordingly, he commands the men of his nation to love the strangers, not only as they love their friends and relations, but even as they love themselves, doing them all the good possible both in body and soul; and, as to their feelings, sympathising with them both in sorrow and in joy, so as to appear all one creature, though the parts are divided; mutual fellowship uniting the whole and rendering it compact and coherent. (104) There is no need of my saying anything about meats, and drinks, and garments, and all the other matters which relate to the usual way of living and to the necessary requirements of life, which the law enjoins that the foreigners shall receive from the natives of the land; for all these things follow the one general law of benevolence, which enjoins every man to love and cherish a stranger in the same degree with himself.
XXI. (105) Moreover, extending and carrying further that humanity which is naturally so attractive, he also gives commandments respecting sojourners, thinking it fitting that those persons who, through any temporary distresses, have been driven from their homes should requite those who have received them with a certain degree of honour, with all imaginable respect, if they have done good to them and have treated them with friendliness and hospitality, and with a moderate degree of respect of they have done nothing more than merely receiving them into the land; for to be allowed to abide in a city with which one is wholly unconnected, or, I might even say, to be allowed only to tread on the soil which belongs to another, is in itself a bounty of sufficient magnitude for those persons who are unable to dwell in their own land. (106) But the lawgiver here, going beyond all the ordinary boundaries of humanity, thinks it fitting and ordains that such sojourners shall bear no ill-will even to those men who, after having received them in the land, may have ill-treated them, since, though their actions may not have been kind, their name at least resembles the characteristics of humanity. Therefore he says, in express terms, “Thou shalt not curse the Egyptian, because thou wast a sojourner in the land of Egypt.”{14}{#de 27:3.} (107) And yet what evil did the Egyptians ever omit to inflict upon this nation, being continually adding new devices of cruelty to the old ones, and proceeding by all sorts of fresh contrivances to heap inhumanity on inhumanity? But, nevertheless, because originally they received them in the land, not shutting their cities against them, and not making their country inaccessible to them when they first came, the lawgiver says, “Let them, as a reward for their friendly reception of you, have a treaty of peace with you. (108) And if any of them should be willing to forsake their old ways and to come over to the customs and constitutions of the Jews, they are not to be rejected and treated with hostility as the children of enemies, but to be received in such a manner that in the third generation they may be admitted into the assembly, and may have a share of the divine words read to them, being instructed in the will of God equally with the natives of the land, the descendants of God’s chosen people.
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