Discourses about migration and immigration permeate the Old Testament. Beginning with Abraham, whom God asked to leave both his people, the Chaldeans, and his home, the city of Ur and go to a place God would show him, the theme of migration continues in many scenes and stories.
The Book of Ruth opens with the story of a Hebrew family that settled in the land of the Moabites for a long time. Everyone in the family was lost and gone except for Naomi and her two Moabite daughters-in-law, who planned to return home. On the one hand, that marks the end of Naomi’s migration to the land of the Moabites. On the other hand, it marks the beginning of Ruth’s migration and settlement among her in-laws and Naomi’s community.
These stories of migration in the Old Testament capture a movement and cultural exchange, ranging from voluntary migration to forced migration. The latter included periods of slavery in Babylon, Egypt, Persia, and Syria. The movement and settlement of the Israelites in the Promised Land are further detailed in the third book of the law of Moses and part of the book of Joshua.
Scholars such as Emory’s Jehu Hanciles have inferred that migration and immigration have been part of humanity for an extended period. Hanciles observes in his Migration and the Making of Global Christianity (2021), “The influential role that human migration [played] in historical development is acutely manifest in the rise and spread of major religions, reflecting the basic axiom that migrants carry their religious beliefs and practices with them.”[1]
Using the term “historical development,” Hanciles signals that discourses about migration are historical, although it seems doubtful that anyone, scholar or otherwise, would attempt to trace the origins and beginnings of migration in human history. Even so, one can make claims from different periods, from the Ancient Near East to the contemporary West. For one, migration in the Old Testament occurred primarily within a religious context. God seems to be involved in one way or another in these stories. Likewise, rituals were either applied or established through these movements.
Migration and immigration in the books of the Hebrew Bible occurred within the parameters of faith and obedience (or disobedience) to God. The story of Jacob and his family moving to Egypt when Joseph became the prime minister is interpreted as God’s divine plan for forming a new community of Israel. Religion and migration are inseparable in the Old Testament. The stories of the Old Testament are those of migration and immigration, and the migration stories of the Old Testament are deeply rooted in spirituality and faith. Hanciles adds, “Evidence of religious life from prehistoric times is sketchy and elusive, and hardly measurable because religion in primal societies is indistinguishable from other human activities.”[2]
These stories from sacred Scripture differ in a number of ways from today’s dialogues about national borders and border security. Migration may not necessarily be tied to religion and spirituality in most cases today, although there are immigrants (voluntary and forced) as well as refugees whose movement is based on their religious beliefs and practices.
Today the dialogue tends toward perceiving these situations as humanitarian crises and efforts by host communities to provide humanitarian relief. It would seem strange today to learn of a people moving from one nation to another claiming that God sent them. Instead, people can move or seek to move for a variety of reasons, including survival during wars, hunger, and climate change.
Moreso, world leaders evoke their laws and constitution while taking in refugees and asylum-seekers rather than looking at what the Bible or other religious books say. Nevertheless, this ancient and yet enduring phenomenon has persisted despite being perceived so differently by those navigating it firsthand, those learning about it from a distance, and those in political leadership on different sides of various borders.
[1] Jehu J. Hanciles. Migration and the Making of Global Christianity. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021), 42
[2] Hanciles, Migration and the Making of Global Christianity, 42
Kefas Lamak is a Guest Writer. He is a Faculty Specialist in the Department of World Religions and Cultures at Western Michigan University. Lamak is a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa and his published work includes essays in the Journal of Black Religious Thought and the Journal of Religion in Africa.
