The Threat of the Outsider
For our purpose of understanding "the stranger" in
biblical terms, it is important to acknowledge the likely connection between
the general sociological term "habiru" and the odd, nameless hovering
mass of unnamed humanity mentioned often
in the texts of the "insiders" as being at various times an
inconvenience, a worry, and a serious threat.
The habiru are the large mass of people who can find no
right "place" in the system, perhaps because they do not sufficiently
conform, and perhaps because the community needs some outsiders for the menial
functions of society. In the texts, the habiru are marginal people who in good
times did menial work, in war times might have been hired cannon fodder, and in
bad times lived by raids and terrorism, because they did not have any approved
modes of access to land, power, or even food.
While at times useful to the established social system of
the empire, the habiru were generally a threat. The empires used great energy
to contain, administer, resist, and when possible nullify and eliminate them.
It is in the character of the empire to want to include everyone on its own
terms, everyone who will accept the dominant norms, who will perform according
to approved expectations, and who will accept a system of benefits which may be unequal but is nonetheless less normative.
While wanting to include everyone, however, it is also the
case that the empire exists for and by the uneven distribution of goods. The
necessary and inevitable social stratification dictates that some will have
more, some much less, and perhaps some will have nothing.'
That disproportion is what a socio-economic political
monopoly is all about. The monopoly is not an accidental by-product, but the
point of such power. Those who do not benefit from that disproportion are
inherently a threat, because sooner or later, they notice the disproportion and
want it adjusted. As they become a threat, the outsiders must be kept at a
distance. One way of maintaining such social distance is by labeling
as "stranger" the ones who do not conform enough to be included
"in."
For our purpose of understanding "the stranger" in
biblical terms, it is important to acknowledge the likely connection between
the general sociological term "habiru"and the biblical term "Hebrew," which most scholars believe is simply an
alternative rendering.
"Hebrew" apparently comes from the verb 'abar, to
"cross over." Thus the Hebrew is one who crosses over boundaries, who
has no respect for imperial boundaries, is not confined by such boundaries, and
crosses them in desperate quest of the necessities of life. The Hebrew is
driven by the urgent issue of survival. Note that the term "Hebrew"
is not, in this reading, an ethnic term but a sociological category referring
to those who are not contained in or sustained by the social system but who
must live outside the system and its resources and benefits. Thus we can
conclude that the people who finally become the "people of God" in
the Old Testament are some among those whom the empire had declared
"strangers," "outsiders," "threat."
While the position of the outsider is often rooted in
political and economic matters, there is a different distinction between
insider and outsider in Gen. 43:32. In the midst of the Joseph narrative, it is
written of Joseph:
They served him by
himself, and them by themselves, because the Egyptians might not eat bread with
the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians.
The distinction between Joseph and the Egyptians is not
ethnic but sociological. The Egyptians in the narrative are an embodiment of
the Egyptian empire, the classic insiders. Joseph is a Hebrew, an outsider who
does not qualify to eat with the imperial insiders. This verse provides
important clues for our understanding of the stranger:
1. The text contrasts Egyptians and habiru, those in the
empire who control the monopoly and those who are disqualified outsiders.
2. The contrast concerns access to food and, therefore, to
life, worth, security, and dignity. "Food" refers to the means of
life. But it also concerns the most intimate of social transactions, where
social distinctions are likely to be most rigorously observed.
3. The contrast concerns the issue of social power, but the
matter of power is articulated as a religious-moral matter. The word
"abomination" (to'eveh) suggests that the Hebrews are morally
inferior socially dangerous, and ritually impure. It is remarkable how
sociological distinctions become reflected in ritual categories.
4. The biblical narrative notices the oddity of this
arrangement of eating and therefore of social power. The narrator makes no
explicit comment, but the fact that the eating arrangement is mentioned at all
means that full notice is taken by the narrator of the discrimination.
The biblical narrative is restless with this social
arrangement of discrimination that the empire had come to regard as routine.
Creating outsiders is initially done to have a means of monopoly from which
some are excluded. This monopoly of power is readily translated into a monopoly
of sanctity and virtue, of holiness and righteousness.
In the Old Testament, this ritualizing of social distinction
is carefully articulated in terms of laws of purity that concern food, the
priesthood, and sexuality. In Leviticus and Ezekiel especially, we find an
intense sorting out of what is acceptable and unacceptable, the unacceptable being categories
treated as morally inferior, socially dangerous, and ritually impure. But these
"religious" categories are never far removed from the realities of
social power and access to social goods. In the New Testament, this way of
identifying, categorizing, processing, and administering strangers shows up in
Jesus' legal disputes with the advocates of the laws of holiness and
righteousness (cf. Mark 7).
The practice of defilement and uncleanness turns out to be a
labeling process with enormous social implications.
Landless and Not Belonging
I suggest now a third dimension of generating strangers that
is intimately tied to the first two and may in fact be more foundational: strangers
are those who do not have land, who are not judged as entitled to it, and who
have no chance of acquiring any of the land." Thus the "Hebrews"
are those who "cross over" (abar), trespass, pass, do not respect
the property or property rights of others because they are so desperate or
resentful that they will not finally acknowledge edge present social
settlements.
It is not accidental that strangers in our society are often
experienced as dis-placed persons, that is, people without a place. They have
no place (or have lost it) because the social system, with its capacity for
inclusion and exclusion, has in fact assigned their place to another and so
denied them any safe place of their own.'
Strangers are often those who are cut out of the history of
the land, denied the fruit of the land, and therefore denied social power,
social security, or social worth. Every society, including eventually the
Israelite community itself, has clear
rules about who may own land, how to acquire land, and how to retain it. But
the rules governing possession are made by those who have and know how to get
land, so whenever those rules are made, some end up without land. When some are
excluded from the land, they do not belong, do not have voice or vote, do not
know how to penetrate the closed systems of legislation and the
courts) Finally, they drop
from view and no longer exist.
Very often those denied land will settle for such a fate
decreed by the landed. They become passive, docile, and hopeless; even then,
however, they continue to be an unsettling presence, worrisome, and
embarrassing. On occasion, those consigned to "nonexistence" refuse
to accept their fate. They want in; they push, insist, and become a threat.
Either way, in docile despair or hope-filled insistence, the outsider is always a threat to those who
own, control, and administer land, goods, power, sanctity, and
virtue.
Walter Brueggemann. Interpretation and Obedience
