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Finished reading: Including the Stranger: Foreigners in the Former Prophets by David G. Firth đź“š

This managed to be both a quick read and an excellent depth of study — one, in fact, much more biblically scholarly than anything I have read in a while or that I expected to find here. I don’t recall how I came across this one, but the title attracted me for what should be obvious reasons.

Here’s Firth on why he focuses on the narrative materials of the Former Prophets rather than the legal texts:

There is value in a more focused study that considers the contribution of the Old Testament’s narrative materials. Walter Houston has pointed out that laws can change a society’s behaviour only when justice is taught and not only enforced, and one of the key ways in which this teaching happens in the Old Testament is through its narrative materials.

There are, however, more fundamental reasons for turning to Israel’s wider narrative traditions. One important point is that the law provides not an ethical maximum but rather a minimum. That is, law recognizes a problem that needs to be addressed, but what it provides is the least that should be done, not necessarily the ethical goal towards which a people should aspire. By contrast, [Gordon] Wenham has argued that the narrative texts of the Old Testament are didactic and so try ‘to instil both theological truths and ethical ideals into their readers’, and that therefore the narratives offer a form of paradigmatic ethics. […]

In the end, although there is no one method and there are some figures whose status is never entirely clear, many foreigners are mentioned in the Former Prophets, with many of these included among the people of God so that the boundaries of this people is constantly being challenged.*

While I wish Firth had said more in the closing pages, what he has done — what he draws out of the text and into proper attention — is remarkably important.

A few summary take-aways:

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