Leviticus 19:34

Lev 19:34 [But] the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I [am] the LORD your God.

Ver. 34. Shall be unto you as one born among you.] If he be a proselyte.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lev 19:34. As one born among you — Either, 1st, As to the matters of common right, so it reached to all strangers. Or, 2d, As to church privileges, so concerned only those who were proselytes. Ye were strangers — And therefore are sensible of the fears, distresses, and miseries of such; which call for your pity, and you ought to do to them, as you desired others should do to you, when you were such.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

(34)But the stranger that dwelleth.—Better, The stranger that sojourneth. The word “but” is not in the original, and its insertion mars the flow of the passage, whilst the expression rendered in the Authorised Version by “dwelleth” is the same which is translated “sojourn in the preceding verse. This stranger is in every respect to be treated as any other member of the commonwealth, and as a native.

Shalt love him as thyself.—He is not simply to be treated with consideration and courtesy because he is a foreigner, and enjoy the rights and receive the justice due to every human being, but he is to be put on a perfect equality with the ordinary Israelite. Hence the precept laid down in Lev_19:18, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” is here enacted with regard to the stranger. It was this humane law which attracted so many strangers to Palestine. Hence we find that in the days of Solomon there were 153,600 strangers in the Holy Land.

For ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.—To enforce these kindly sentiments towards strangers, which was so contrary to the practice of the surrounding nations, who had an inveterate hatred of all foreigners, the lawgiver appeals to their own bitter experience. They knew with what inhumanity they were treated in Egypt because they were strangers, how they had been humiliated and reduced to slavery. The very thought of this will not only soften their hearts, but will enable them to see that the safety of all classes consists in basing our legislation upon the principle of equal rights to all inhabitants. This pathetic appeal is to be found three times more in the Pentateuch to enforce this precept (Exo_22:20; Exo_23:9; Deu_10:19).

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But a stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you,.... Especially if a proselyte of righteousness; for then he enjoyed the same privileges, civil and religious, the Israelites did, for there was one law for them both, Exo 12:49,

and thou shalt love him as thyself; and show it by doing all the good things for him they would have done for themselves in like circumstances:

for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: and therefore knew what hardships such were exposed unto; and it became them to put on bowels of compassion, and show pity to those in a like condition, and particularly consider, as Jarchi suggests, that they were idolaters there also, and therefore ought not to upbraid strangers with their former idolatry:

I am the Lord your God; who showed kindness to them when strangers in Egypt, and had brought them out of that land, and therefore ought to obey his commands, and particularly in this instance.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

As one born among you; either,

1. As to the matters of common right, as it here follows: so it reacheth to all strangers. Or,

2. As to church privileges: so it concerns only those who were proselytes of righteousness.

For ye were strangers; and therefore are sensible of the fears, distresses, and miseries of such, which call for your pity, and you ought to do to them as you would that others should do to you when you were such.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

34. The stranger… thou shalt love — Judaism, as Christianity in the bud, was a religion of love. The Mosaic law here sets up a safeguard against that hostility which is so natural to differences of race and religion that in the Latin tongue the word hostis, stranger, soon came to signify an enemy.

The contempt of the Gentile as a dog, which was manifested in the time of Christ, was no part of true Judaism, but a sad degeneracy from its own law. See Lev_23:22, note. The permission to exact interest on money loaned to a stranger, granted in Deuteronomy xxiii, 20, shows that this verse is not to be understood as making absolutely no distinction between an alien and a Hebrew.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

As one born among you - Either 1, as to the matters of common right, so it reacheth to all strangers. Or 2, as to church- privileges, so it concerns only those who were proselytes. Ye were strangers - And therefore are sensible of the fears, distresses, and miseries of such, which call for your pity, and you ought to do to them, as you desired others should do to you, when you were such.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

כי גרים הייתם FOR YE WERE STRANGERS [IN THE LAND OF EGYPT] — "Do not reproach thy fellow-man for a fault which is also thine” (cf. Rashi on Exodus 22:20).

אני ה' אלהיכם I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD — Thy God and his God am I! (אלהיכם “your” God — the God of both of you).

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.