IN the first chapter of the Book of Nahum of The Bible, we are told: ‘The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies… The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.’¹

In Exodus too, from where probably Nahum develops this strain, God is a retributive God: ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet, he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation’ (34: 6-7).

I seek not so much to probe the nature of this ‘jealous and avenging’, or ‘retributive’ God of the Old Testament who does not ‘leave the guilty unpunished’, but rather to interrogate the nature of the actions (of the guilty) that God cannot leave unpunished. What are the crimes of the people that fill the Lord God with such wrath? In fact, what deserves some of the strongest of punishments at the hands of the maker who, as the Book of Nahum goes on to tell us, ‘rebukes the sea and dries it up, quaking mountains, melting hills away, and who pours out his wrath like fire and shatters rocks away’ (1: 4). By mainly analysing the Book of Genesis, I argue that whatever the specific crime, the most common underlying reason to enrage God is either the lack of hospitality offered by man towards God or other men, or man’s abuse of hospitality offered by God or other men. This is the focus of the first part of my paper.

 

In the second part, I try to argue – like some other recent writers holding on to the values inscribed by God on hospitality – that Europe and the West, with their Christian moorings must in our own times be more hospitable towards refugees and strangers. Is this not what the Lord God expects, and if shortchanged, what he will never forgive?

Hospitality, by definition, is understood as ‘the act or practice of being hospitable; the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers, with liberality and goodwill.’² Etymologically, the word can be traced to the proto Indo-European language ghosti, which can mean both guest and host, thus pointing towards a ritual guest-friendship that was mutual (OED). The host and the guest were both expected to be reciprocally kind to each other. This sort of friendship is evident in the earliest of literature from Europe, including The Iliad, where Diomedes recognizes Glaucus as an ancestral guest-friend whom he will not harm despite being on opposite sides in the war for Troy and Helen. They part by exchanging gifts.³

Such friendship or hospitality seems to be foundational to the Bible too and in particular the Genesis, where God offers it to his pious creations and in turn expects them to respond appropriately to him, and to offer similar hospitality to each other. In fact, ghosti can even mean stranger or enemy. This origin of ‘hospitality’ thus seems to suggest that there is the expectation of hospitality, if sought and reciprocated appropriately, even by the most distant other, or even for the enemy. Such boundless hospitality is often the concern of the Bible.

To begin reading the Bible then from the beginning. God creates heaven and earth, and upon the latter the garden of Eden, wherein he places the first man, Adam. There he gives him a helpmate, Eve, and of them he asks of nothing but to relish and bear witness upon his love and generosity, and to partake of his hospitality. The only injunction is not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. And here the first man and woman abuse God’s hospitality, which is the original sin and leads to their expulsion and much misery for the human race. It is this abuse that could not be forgiven, at least not immediately, and God alone with his immense generosity would later take birth as Christ and die to atone for it.

 

The message seems quite clear: to abuse hospitality is among the greatest of sins, and there must be more hospitality, even limitless hospitality, and evermore generosity for the human race to go on, which God provides by taking birth among men. Forgiveness may not be immediately possible but it must, in time, be given. Hospitality towards the wretched can be a step towards it. Those availing of hospitality too must respect it well, and respond appropriately with grace. Perhaps there is enough of an example of divine support here for Europeans who are Christian either by faith or as a result of cultural inheritance, to open up their gates to refugees, who may or may not be guilty of causing their own misery but certainly are deserving of a safe asylum.

Next in our Biblical story, Eve bears sons, the first-born children of the earth, Cain and Abel. However, among these first children of man, one sees a lack in the gestures of hospitality towards God. In the sacrifices the two make to the Lord, Cain’s offering is not true; it is not the best that he could have offered. He thus does not play a good host and God chides him for it. In response, Cain becomes jealous of the praise for Abel and commits the sin of fratricide. This act further induces the wrath of God who marks him for eternity and withdraws his hospitality from him for killing his brother, his kin, his neighbour on earth. Cain may till the earth but it would not yield to him; he has no home, he is a vagabond and a fugitive. This is the greatest curse: to live without a home, to be an exile. Cain thinks it would be better to be killed.

 

Adam and Eve bear other children, beginning with Seth, and the earth is populated. However, once more these children grow up to abuse the hospitality offered by the earth and suffuse it with evil. God, who cannot let this abuse go unpardoned, must give retribution. He floods the planet in the deluge to drown out all but Noah and his family upon whom he shows mercy as they are pious. Furthermore, God expects true hospitality from Noah whom he commands to build an ark on which he is to take in a pair of each species of the living. Nature and the human race are thus both afforded a chance of survival on a boat sailing to safety, reminiscent of many scenes now seen in the Mediterranean that our contemporary times place in front of us.

Noah and his progeny subsequently settle down and multiply. They prosper, make bricks and lay down deep foundations for a city at Shinar. They are also proud enough to raise the tower at Babel (Genesis 11:2). God sees this as hubris, and confounds them by dividing their single language such that they can no longer understand one another and separate and scatter across the earth.

One may also read this as God’s injunction to create others, and have different people live away from each other, so that they could eventually show each other hospitality. In the Third Book of Moses, Leviticus, God makes this hospitality incumbent upon his people: ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God’ (33-34).

After Babel, God tells Abraham to leave for his wanderings in other lands, and it is here that Abraham receives great hospitality almost everywhere he goes. He is accompanied by Sarah, his wife, and Lot, his nephew (Genesis 12). He receives hospitality and riches in cattle from Egypt from where he departs for Canaan. Lot moves away to Sodom in Jordan.

 

However, Sodom and Gomorrah very soon become corrupt, and once again the vengeful or retributive God cannot let this go unpunished. He decides to destroy these cities. On Abraham’s pleading, he agrees to not to do so if they can find ten men who are not sinful in these cities. What remains unclear and ambiguous, and thus of interest, relates to what is the unpardonable sin of Sodom? What is it that God must mete out retribution for? Is it the allusion to the sexual deviance that orthodox criticism has us believe or is it a reference to the lack of hospitality that the citizens of Sodom show to the two angels sent there by God to find ten good men?

Recent pro-gay rights scholars⁴ in particular argue that it is the rapacious behaviour shown by the citizens and the complete abandonment of all hospitality towards strangers that brings down the wrath of God. Lot, who saves the angels, goes so far as to even offer to the people of Sodom his virgin daughters to be raped in exchange for the strangers/guests/ the angels that he wishes to honour. He thus shows unmatched hospitality (albeit problematic in a modern feminist context) and is, therefore, saved by God when the city is destroyed. It is only those who bestow hospitality generously that deserve His grace. This alone ought to be reason enough for practising as well as cultural Christians to assert their belief in such hospitality today.

 

Furthermore, after the story of Lot, Genesis takes us back to Abraham in Chapter 20 where he receives gifts of land, cattle and a thousand pieces of silver along with generous hospitality from Abimelech at Gerar. In return, Abraham prays for Abimelech. On Abraham’s account, God grants Abimelech and his house with progeny, which had hitherto been denied to them.

This seems to work as a good example of the expected response of the guest. Abraham accepts the host’s kindness graciously, and renders him the best service he can, and which, as a prophet of God, only he is capable of. Modern immigrants often contribute with their unique skills and labour to their host nations.

At the end of his wanderings, Abraham’s wife Sarah bears Isaac, but God demands Isaac in sacrifice as an act of devotion for all the good returns He has bestowed upon Abraham. Abraham is ready to fulfil his pledge, and nearly sacrifices his own son for his God, and thus shows the greatest of generosity for the Other, even willing to sacrifice his own child, his blood and flesh, for the Other, the Host-Guest. God too recompenses Abraham adequately for his good intentions, and prevents him from sacrificing Isaac, replacing him by a ram through his angel.

Chapter 23 of Genesis offers the perfect example of hospitality and generosity offered by men to each other. Sarah passes away at the age of 127 in Kirjatharba or Hebron in Canaan. Abraham mourns her death and appeals to the sons of Seth, inhabitants of this land, asking them for land to bury his dead wife. The hosts offer the best land that Abraham may pick, and refuse to accept money from him. Even though Abraham repeatedly offers to pay, Ephron gifts him the cave of Machpelah and the neighbouring field, worth four hundred shekels of silver.

 

Thus, observing how the Hebraic people themselves have benefited from hospitality as well as suffered through its abuses, and how God has avenged them, and how it pleases Him for men to be hospitable, it must be considered incumbent upon Christians to be hospitable as well. The Hebraic people have so often been migrants and refugees themselves, fleeing the wrath of God against others who may have displeased him, and they have done so by land and by sea. On these counts alone, must they not show hospitality today towards other refugees who come to them by land and by sea? Have the people of Jehovah not expected, received and, at times, even forced people to offer hospitality by bringing with them what they claim as the wrath of God? Just as Ephron the Hittite gave Abraham the land to bury his wife, should not Europeans offer their Levantine neighbours land to resuscitate their dying, rescue their living, and commemorate their dead? Fleeing from Biblical lands now turned into infernos and rubble, do not these refugees also deserve to be seen as immigrants, and received with warmth and generosity?

 

In a negative sense, George Bush used the word ‘crusade’ for his war on terror that he saw opposed to western civilization. But, by implication, he also proved the Christian civilizational mooring of not just the religious but even the agnostic and downright atheistic West. David Cameron, while canvassing for the elections he eventually won, routinely said how proud he felt that this (Britain) was a Christian country.⁵ In deciding its holidays, in its appeals for nationalism, and in multiple other daily instances, the Christian nature of the West is still apparent. Then, following the Word, the expectations, the wrath, and the revenge as well as the ultimate forgiveness of the God, is it not imperative upon the people and the western governments to extend limitless hospitality to refugees from Syria and the Middle East who are knocking at Europe’s borders? Doesn’t the responsibility to offer this hospitality increase manifold when we take into consideration the West’s involvement in the crises in Syria and Iraq?

Giles Fraser, a priest in South London, writing in The Guardian, seems to agree with this view.⁶ Fraser rhetorically asks how many refugees can the UK take in? His powerful response resounds strongly as it invokes the Bible: ‘Why not all of them? Surely that’s the biblical answer to the "how many can we take?" question. Every single last one. Let’s dig up the green belt, create new cities, turn our Downton Abbeys into flats and church halls into temporary dormitories, and reclaim all those empty penthouses being used as nothing more than investment vehicles. Yes, it may change the character of this country. Or maybe it won’t require anything like such drastic action – who knows? But let’s do whatever it takes to open the door of welcome.’

 

However, not all voices are as generous or even accommodating. Peter Erdo, a Roman Catholic priest from Hungary, in response to the church at Vienna sheltering refugees said that if Hungarian churches sheltered refugees they would be engaging in human trafficking.⁷ Erdo is not alone in reflecting such a mindset. When they claim that European nations are not building walls around them, but only fences with secure gates, the leaders of these countries are working at limiting the numbers of refugees allowed in. Only occasionally have leaders such as Justin Trudeau of Canada or Angela Merkel of Germany taken in slightly larger numbers from among the multitudes waiting at the Mediterranean coasts and this too has provided a reprieve for only a few. Of a total 1,321,560 asylum claims in 2015, only 292,540 cases were accepted by the EU.⁸ According to the website Syrian Refugees, over 11 million refugees have been displaced from their homes in Syria alone since 2011.⁹ According to UNHCR, over four million had already left Syria and taken refuge in neighbouring countries or elsewhere by July 2015. Aljazeera, quoting UNHCR pegs the number higher than five million of total Syrian refugees by end of March 2017.¹⁰

 

Perhaps a rereading of the Bible, as I have tried to argue, may help us respond with greater alacrity to the desperate situation of refugees confronting us, and perhaps it might even clear up the minds of people such as Peter Erdo. In these Derridean moves of a close reading of the Genesis and a rereading of certain sections, I try to show how God the creator, the ultimate author, punishes most strongly with his wrath and avenges all slights on hospitality, both in receiving and offering it.¹¹ He is also the one who offers the greatest forgiveness when he takes birth to atone for the original sin. Then should not his followers, or upholders of his tradition, afford the same hospitality and forgiveness to those in utmost need of it? How long can Syrian children drown in the Mediterranean? For the people of Israel who so often found themselves as refugees and in turn sought asylum in different parts of the world, must it not be imperative to offer refuge? And can this be limited hospitality? Rather, must it not be an unlimited hospitality for the other in the way of God, as God expects? Rereading the Bible, where all revenge and forgiveness seems to rest so often on hospitality may be one possible answer for the West.

 

Footnotes:

1. All Bible quotations are taken from The Bible. New International Version (NIV). Bible Gateway. Web.

2. Online Etymology Dictionary. Web.

3. Homer, The Iliad (trans. Martin Hammond). Penguin, London, 2003.

4. Richard Dellamora, Friendship’s Bonds: Democracy and the Novel in Victorian England. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004; Patrick S. Cheng, ‘What was the Real Sin of Sodom?’ Huffington Post, Web, 25 May 2011; and Sibaji Bandopadhyay, ‘Approaching the "Present": A Pre-text – The Fire Controversy’, in Sibaji Bandopadhyay Reader. Worldview, New Delhi, 2012.

5. Rosa Prince, ‘David Cameron Declares: "Britain is Still a Christian Country",’ The Telegraph, 5 April 2015, Web.

6. Giles Fraser, ‘Christian Politicians Won’t Say it, but the Bible is Clear: Let the Refugees in, Every Last One’, The Guardian, 4 September 2015, Web.

7. Balazs Koranyi, ‘A Nation Divided: Hungarians Loathe and Help Refugees’, Reuters, 5 September 2015, Web.

8. ‘Migrant Crisis: Migration to Europe Explained in Seven Charts’, BBC News, 4 April 2016, Web.

9. Syrian Refugees: A Snapshot of the Crisis in the Middle East and Europe, Web.

10. ‘UN: Number of Syrian Refugees Passes Five Million’, Aljazeera, 30 March 2017, Web.

11. Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality (tr. Rachel Bowlby). Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2009.