I was reading Deuteronomy 23 for my weekly quiet time last night, and I cross-referenced Leviticus 25, since both discuss debts. Here are my issues:
Different translations disagree on Leviticus 25:35. The King James Version has the following:
"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee." The italicized words are not translated from the Hebrew MT. They are added by the translators.
Most other translations have the same meaning as the New International Version (NIV):
"'If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you."
The KJV treats the stranger, or ger, as a brother to the Israelites. For the KJV, a Gentile who makes his home in Israel is to be treated as a fellow Israelite. The NIV, by contrast, interprets Leviticus 25:35 to mean that Israelites are to treat an indebted fellow Israelite as a ger. What that probably means is that the indebted Israelite (like a ger) can live on Israelite land, but he does not own it. Since he cannot plant his own crops, he must rely on the compassion of other Israelites and glean the corners of their fields. In the KJV, a Gentile ger is to be treated as an Israelite brother. In the NIV, the indebted Israelite brother is to be treated as a ger.
Which is right? The Hebrew is not overly helpful, explaining the ambiguity. Here is my rough literal translation:
"And when your brother will be poor and his hand will slip within you, you will strengthen him--ger and dweller--and he will live with you."
You can see why translators add words!
As far as context goes, I agree more with the NIV. Leviticus 25:47 distinguishes the ger and the dweller from an Israelite brother. That passage gives Israelites the right to redeem a brother who is enslaved by a ger or dweller. There seems to be an attempt to keep an Israelite under family supervision rather than letting him fall into outsiders' control. That would mean that the outsiders are technically not family.
For Leviticus 25:35, the Septuagint has the same message as the NIV, only it translates ger as proselutos, or proselyte. The rabbis also equated a ger with a convert (or so I have heard). They probably believed that foreigners who dwelt in Israel did so because they converted to Israel's God and laws. Because gerim were not originally part of an Israelite tribe that inherited land, however, they were landless. At Harvard, I remember Professor Jon Levenson reading a rabbinic passage that called converts the children of Abraham and Sarah. I wonder how rabbis interpreted Leviticus 25:35. Would they consider a ger a brother, but also a second class citizen?
The gerim may not have been deemed as equal to Israelites in rabbinic thought, at least not entirely. For example, I was reading Deuteronomy 23:3-6, which excludes Ammonites and Moabites from the assembly of the LORD. According to an article on the orthodox Jewish http://www.torah.org/, a male Ammonite or a Moabite can become a ger (proselyte), but he still cannot marry an Israelite woman. He can only marry another ger. Unfortunately, the article did not cite its Jewish sources, but it defines its understanding of normative Jewish tradition. In this understanding, an Ammonite or Moabite does not lose his previous stigma when he becomes an Israelite.
Why does the KJV translate the verse as it does? Maybe it wants to convey that God's intention was always for Jews and Gentiles to be brothers in the Lord. In the same way that Jesus saw God's inclusion of the Gentiles as foreshadowed in the Old Testament (Luke 4:24-27), the KJV may want to demonstrate continuity between the OT and themes in the NT. The NIV may be more sensitive to the context of the verse, but its translation is not antithetical to Christianity. In Ephesians 2:12, Paul says that Gentiles were once strangers from the commonwealth of Israel. In a certain Christian view, there is discontinuity between the OT and the NT. For adherents of this view, Gentiles were not totally equal with Israelites in OT times, but the wall of partition was torn down through Christ.
Any thoughts?