People & groups
Sojourner
A person living among a people other than their own.
Also called · Resident alien · Foreigner · Stranger
What it means
Leviticus 19 commands Israel not to mistreat foreigners living in its land, but to treat them as native-born people and love them as themselves.
Deuteronomy 10 says that God upholds the rights of orphans and widows and gives foreigners food and clothing. Israel must love foreigners because it also lived as foreigners in Egypt. A resident foreigner is not necessarily someone merely passing through.
How it appears in the Bible
In Ruth 2, Ruth calls herself a foreigner. Boaz replies that he has heard how she left her parents and homeland to join a people she had not known. He lets her glean in his field and drink the workers’ water, and tells her that he has ordered the young men not to touch her.
Translation note
The selected passages use stranger and foreigner. Here the context concerns someone living among another people; the word stranger should not be read as merely an unfamiliar person.