Biblion Bible Commentary
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One Law for the Foreigner and the Native
Leviticus 24:10-23
10 The son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel; and the son of the Israelite woman and a man of Israel strove together in the camp. · WEB
A blasphemy case is held over until a ruling is given, and the ruling ends by making the law identical for foreigners and Israelites.
The narrative interrupts the legislation, and it is only the second story in the book.
A man whose father was an Egyptian fights with an Israelite in the camp, and in the quarrel he blasphemed the Name, and cursed Leviticus 24:10–11. His mother is named, and her tribe, which is more than the book usually supplies.
What happens next is the most important procedural detail in the chapter: they put him in custody until Yahweh's will should be declared to them Leviticus 24:12.
Nobody acts. There is no precedent, the man's status is ambiguous — half Israelite, half Egyptian — and the community holds him and waits rather than improvising. The same thing happens in the only other comparable case in the law Numbers 15:34, and both times the restraint is recorded approvingly.
The sentence, when it comes, is death, and the procedure puts the weight on the witnesses: let all who heard him lay their hands on his head Leviticus 24:14. The men whose testimony convicts him identify themselves in public and act first.
Then the general legislation, and this is where the case turns out to have been about something else.
The rules run through homicide, killing an animal, and injury — fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth Leviticus 24:20. As in Deuteronomy, this is a limit on penalties administered by a court, and the distinction it draws is between a man and an animal: he who kills an animal shall make it good; and he who kills a man shall be put to death Leviticus 24:21. Property is repaid; a life cannot be.
And the conclusion is the sentence the whole incident was recorded for: you shall have one kind of law for the foreigner as well as the native-born; for I am Yahweh your God Leviticus 24:22.
The case that raised the question was a man of mixed parentage, and the answer given is that there is no separate legal category for him. He is tried under the same law and receives the same sentence an Israelite would have received — which is a hard mercy, and it is the same principle the book applies when it commands that the foreigner be loved as oneself Leviticus 19:34.
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