Therefore love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.
To love the resident alien and stranger
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וַאֲהַבְתֶּם אֶת־הַגֵּר כִּי־גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לאהוב את הגרים והוא אמרו יתעלה ואהבתם את הגר, ואע"פ שהיה נכלל בזה עם ישראל באמרו ואהבת לרעך כמוך שזה הגר גר צדק אבל מפני שנכנס בתורתנו הוסיף האל אהבה על אהבתו וייחד לו מצוה נוספת כמו שעשה באזהרת ולא תונו ואמר וגר לא תונה. והתבאר מלשון הגמרא (מציעא פ"ט:) שחייבין על אונאת הגר משום לא תונו ומשום וגר לא תונה גם אנחנו חייבין באהבתו משום ואהבת לרעך ומשום ואהבתם את הגר, וזה מבואר אין ספק בו ואיני יודע אדם ממי שמנה המצות שסכל זה, וברוב המדרשות בארו שהאל צונו על הגר כמו שצונו על עצמו אמר ואהבת את ה' אלהיך ואמר ואהבתם את הגר. (והיה עקב, מדע הלכות דעות פ"ו):
That is that He commanded us to love converts. And that is His saying, "And you shall love the stranger" (Deuteronomy 10:19). And even though he was included regarding this with [all of] Israel, in His saying, "and you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18) - since this stranger is a convert (and a full member of Israel) - however because he entered into our Torah, God added love upon love and designated an additional commandment for him. [This is] as He did with the prohibition of, "And you shall not oppress" (Leviticus 25:17); He [also] said, "And you shall not oppress a stranger" (Exodus 22:20). And it is explained from the language of the Gemara (Bava Metzia 59b) that we are liable by oppressing the convert on account of, "And you shall not oppress," and on account of, "And you shall not oppress a stranger." [So] we are also obligated to love him on account of, "and you shall love your neighbor as yourself," and on account of, "And you shall love the stranger." And this is clear - there is no doubt about it. And I do not know a [single] man from whoever counted the commandments that botched this. And in most [books of] Midrash, they explained that God commanded about the convert, just like He commanded us about Himself - He said, "And you shall love the Lord, your God" (Deuteronomy 6:5), and He said, "And you shall love the stranger." (See Parashat Ekev; Mishneh Torah, Human Dispositions 6.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a flat, unconditional command
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Binding
- Reconstructionist Binding
- Karaite Binding
Two readings, side by side
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this is one of them.
In the traditional Jewish reading How the Jewish legal (halakhic) tradition reads and defends this commandment, in its own developed voice — the classical reasons given for the commandments (ta’amei ha-mitzvot).
The tradition reads “you shall love the stranger” as a distinct commandment, added to the love of one’s fellow and grounded in the memory of Israel’s own sojourn in Egypt.
Maimonides counts the love of the stranger (ger) as its own positive commandment, over and above the general love of a fellow Jew, so that one who loves the ger keeps two commandments at once. He notes that the Torah returns to warn about the ger many times over.
Maimonides (Rambam), Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot 6:4; Sefer HaMitzvot, positive commandment 207 (12th c.)
The Talmud asks why the Torah warns about the convert in thirty-six places — some say forty-six — and records two answers. Rabbi Eliezer the Great’s is that the convert’s inclination is bad. Rabbi Nathan, on “you shall not wrong a convert, nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt,” gives the rule that one does not name in another the fault one carries oneself — as the saying has it, a man with a hanged relative does not say to his fellow, “hang up this fish.”
Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b (rabbinic period)Source text: Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b — opens the source text at Sefaria in a new tab
In the source’s own words — Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b:
It was taught in a Baraisa: Rabbi Eliezer the Great says: For what reason does the Torah warn in thirty-six places, and some say in forty-six places, about a convert? Because his inclination is bad.
What is that which is written: "And you shall not wrong a convert, nor shall you oppress him; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt"? Rabbi Nathan said When you have a fault, don't talk about it to your fellow. That is the reason people say: One who has someone who was hung in his [family] record, let him not say, "Hang me a fish [on the grill]."...
On this passage: The reproduced span is this page’s segments 14–15. Earlier on the same page the Talmud derives three separate prohibitions against oppressing a convert; that passage is not reproduced here.
English: Sefaria Community Translation (CC0) — a volunteer translation, reproduced as it stands. Via Sefaria; translator’s notes omitted.
The Sefer HaChinuch gives the reason that a people formed by the experience of exile is charged to extend kindness to the one who now stands where they once stood.
Sefer HaChinuch (13th c.)
Rabbinic citations here link to the source text at Sefaria, a free online library of Jewish texts. Where a public-domain or CC0 English translation — one anyone may reuse — of the exact passage cited has been verified and is short enough to set out in full, the passage is also reproduced here in the source’s own words; where it is not, the citation says which of those conditions it missed. Which passages are reproduced is a matter of licensing, length and verification — never of how much a source matters.
Modern critical scholarship How modern academic biblical scholarship reads this text — the source-critical and form-critical school. Its hedges are shown as it states them; nothing here is presented as settled fact.
Modern source-critical scholarship assigns this text to the Deuteronomic source (D).
Scholarly confidence in this reading: scholarly consensus.
The catalog reads this law as plausibly aimed against Pharaonic Egyptian social ideology in which resident foreigners (ḫryw, Apiru, Semitic laborers) were legally unprotected dependents exploitable as corvée labor — implicitly inverted by the memory-clause 'for you were strangers in Egypt,' which grounds protection of the ger precisely in Israel's experience of Egyptian oppression; additionally, the ANE legal tradition broadly (Code of Hammurabi, Hittite Laws) which categorizes legal standing by kinship and class but provides no protected category for the resident foreigner as such (per van Houten)..
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 6:20-21 affirmed it
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Mishpatim, Nezikin 18 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.51-53 reinterpreted it
- De Virtutibus 102-108 reinterpreted it
Josephus
- Against Apion 2.209-210 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 25:35 expanded it homiletically welcoming the stranger (xenos) as ethical paradigm; thematically resonant with the ger ethic but not a demonstrable textual dependence
- Hebrews 13:2 expanded it homiletically hospitality to strangers
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 4:36 carried a parallel
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi Hammurabi's law code differentiates penalties by social class (awīlum / muškēnum / wardum) but contains no protected category for a resident foreigner deserving special legal solicitude — the absence of a ger-equivalent is the sharpest structural contrast with the Israelite legislation Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Structural absence across the collection (no section parallel) Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- hittite laws Hittite law differentiates compensation by the victim's free or slave status but provides no category analogous to the Israelite ger — a foreign resident who is affirmatively welcomed into the community and protected by a love command grounded in historical memory Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§19-24 (injury compensation by free/slave status) Hoffner, The Laws of the Hittites: A Critical Edition (Brill, 1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.
Deuteronomy 10:19 commands, "You shall love the stranger (גֵּר), for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (כִּי־גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם). The Hebrew term גֵּר (ger) is typically translated 'sojourner,' 'resident alien,' or 'stranger,' and refers to a non-Israelite living permanently or semi-permanently within Israelite territory — someone without the kinship ties, land inheritance, or social safety net that protected native-born Israelites. The ger was economically and legally vulnerable: without clan protection, they depended on the community's goodwill and whatever legal protections the law provided. The command to 'love' this person uses the same verb (אהב) applied to loving God (Deut 6:5) and loving one's neighbor (Lev 19:18), placing the alien in remarkably elevated company.
The Hebrew Bible's concern for the ger is extensive and distinctive. The Torah mentions the ger over 50 times, almost always in protective contexts: do not oppress the ger (Exod 22:20, 23:9), include the ger in sabbath rest (Exod 20:10, Deut 5:14), provide for the ger through harvest gleanings (Lev 19:10, 23:22, Deut 24:19–21), include the ger in festival celebrations (Deut 16:11, 14), and apply the same legal standard to ger and native-born alike (Lev 24:22, Num 15:15–16). This is not just one isolated command but a pervasive legislative agenda. The 'memory clause' — 'for you were strangers in Egypt' — appears repeatedly (Exod 22:20, 23:9; Lev 19:34; Deut 10:19, 23:8) and grounds the obligation in Israel's own experience of vulnerability. Empathy rooted in historical memory is being legislated into the social fabric.
Ancient Near Eastern law codes generally do not protect resident aliens in this way. The Code of Hammurabi distinguishes among awīlum (free citizens), muškēnum (a dependent class), and wardum (slaves), with different penalties and protections for each — but there is no comparable category of 'foreigner deserving special protection' as a matter of moral principle. Hittite laws similarly differentiate by social status but not by a protected category of resident foreigner. The Israelite ger legislation is unusual in the ancient world for several reasons: it explicitly invokes empathetic identification ('you were strangers'), it uses love language rather than mere legal tolerance, and it integrates the alien into the religious community (the ger participates in sacrifices, sabbath, and festivals). Christiana van Houten's work (*The Alien in Israelite Law*, 1991) argues that the ger laws represent a developing tradition that progressively integrated foreigners into Israelite community life.
The rabbinic tradition counted the obligation to love the ger as a separate commandment from loving one's fellow Israelite (Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive #207), emphasizing that the convert/resident alien is doubly protected — by the neighbor-love command and by this specific ger-love command. The Talmud (b. Bava Metzia 59b) reports that the Torah warns against wronging the ger in 36 places (some say 46), more than any other ethical topic. In later halakhah, ger was increasingly understood as 'convert to Judaism' (ger tzedek) rather than 'resident alien,' which shifted the obligation's scope. This reinterpretation reflects a post-Temple, diaspora context where the category of 'non-Israelite living in Israelite territory' had become largely irrelevant, while conversion had become a live social reality. The original socio-legal concern — protecting vulnerable non-citizens in an agrarian society — was thus theologized into a principle about welcoming those who join the covenant community.