Even from a foreigner ¹  you must not present the food of your God from such animals as these, for they are ruined and flawed; ²  they will not be acceptable for your benefit.’”

Whenever the tabernacle is to move, ¹  the Levites must take it down, and whenever the tabernacle is to be reassembled, ²  the Levites must set it up. ³  Any unauthorized person ⁴  who approaches it must be killed.

So you are to appoint Aaron and his sons, and they will be responsible for their priesthood; ¹  but the unauthorized person ²  who comes near must be put to death.”

you must select without fail ¹  a king whom the Lord your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens ²  you must appoint a king – you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. ³ 

You may lend with interest to a foreigner, but not to your fellow Israelite; if you keep this command the Lord your God will bless you in all you undertake in the land you are about to enter to possess.

In those days Israel had no king. There was a Levite ¹  living temporarily in the remote region of the Ephraimite hill country. He acquired a concubine ²  from Bethlehem ³  in Judah.

But his master said to him, “We should not stop at a foreign city where non-Israelites live. ¹  We will travel on to Gibeah.”

Ruth ¹  knelt before him with her forehead to the ground ²  and said to him, “Why are you so kind ³  and so attentive to me, ⁴  even though ⁵  I am a foreigner?” ⁶ 

Naomi then said to her daughter-in-law Ruth, “It is good, my daughter, that you should go out to work with his female servants. ¹  That way you will not be harmed, which could happen in another field.” ² 

For you ignore ¹  the God who rescues you; you pay no attention to your strong protector. ²  So this is what happens: You cultivate beautiful plants and plant exotic vines. ³ 

No foreigner who becomes a follower of ¹  the Lord should say, ‘The Lord will certainly ²  exclude me from his people.’ The eunuch should not say, ‘Look, I am like a dried-up tree.’”

As for foreigners who become followers of ¹  the Lord and serve him, who love the name of the Lord and want to be his servants – all who observe the Sabbath and do not defile it, and who are faithful to ²  my covenant –

Israel was set apart to the Lord; they were like the first fruits of a harvest to him. ¹  All who tried to devour them were punished; disaster came upon them,” says the Lord.’”

But those who were to camp in front of the tabernacle on the east, in front of the tent of meeting, were Moses, Aaron, ¹  and his sons. They were responsible for the needs ²  of the sanctuary and for the needs of the Israelites, but the unauthorized person who approached was to be put to death.

It was a memorial for the Israelites, that no outsider who is not a descendant of ¹  Aaron should approach to burn incense before the Lord, that he might not become like Korah and his company – just as the Lord had spoken by the authority ²  of Moses.

The generation to come – your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places – will see ¹  the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the Lord has brought on it.

The Lord swears an oath by his right hand, by his strong arm: ¹  “I will never again give your grain to your enemies as food, and foreigners will not drink your wine, which you worked hard to produce.

For when anyone from the house of Israel, or the foreigner who lives in Israel, separates himself from me and erects his idols in his heart and sets the obstacle leading to his iniquity before his face, and then consults a prophet to seek something from me, I the Lord am determined to answer him personally.

When you bring foreigners, those uncircumcised in heart and in flesh, into my sanctuary, you desecrate ¹  it – even my house – when you offer my food, the fat and the blood. You ²  have broken my covenant by all your abominable practices.

“I ¹  will come to you in judgment. I will be quick to testify against those who practice divination, those who commit adultery, those who break promises, ²  and those who exploit workers, widows, and orphans, ³  who refuse to help ⁴  the immigrant ⁵  and in this way show they do not fear me,” says the Lord who rules over all.