CHAPTER XXV

A NARROW KIND OF PATRIOTISM

All nations like to think of themselves as superior to the rest of
mankind. The Greeks used to despise all foreigners as "barbarians." We
in America ridicule immigrants from other countries and call them
unpleasant names. The Jews also made the same mistake of despising
people of other races and nations. We find laws even in so just a
law-book as Deuteronomy which are unfair to foreigners. Jews were
forbidden to exact interest from fellow Jews, but they were permitted
to exact it from foreigners. The flesh of animals which died of
themselves could not be eaten by Jews, but they might sell it to
foreigners.

THE INCREASING HATRED TOWARDS FOREIGNERS AFTER THE EXILE

We have seen how the exiles in Babylonia kept the Sabbath and went to
the synagogue in order that they might continue to be Jews and might
not lose their Jewish religion, the worship of Jehovah. As time went
on they found it necessary to be more and more strict. As their girls
and boys grew up they fell in love with Babylonian young men and young
women. But if these young Jews had married Babylonians, the children
would have grown up as Babylonians in customs and religion. So all
intermarriages were forbidden.

=The fight against intermarriages in Judaea.=--When these exiles
returned from Babylonia to Jerusalem they were shocked to find that
the Jews there had not been strict in this matter. They had taken
wives and husbands from the Moabites, and Edomites, and other nations
around Judaea.

It is hard for us to see that this was wrong, for these people
probably became worshipers of Jehovah, like Ruth the Moabitess in the
beautiful story in the Bible, who said to her Jewish mother-in-law,
"Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." The exiles from
Babylon, however, including so good and wise a man as Nehemiah, fought
with all their might against all intermarriages. Without doubt the
motive, which was to protect the Hebrews from idolatry, was good, but
the matter is certainly open to criticism, especially in the light of
our truer knowledge of God. We read that at one time, even under the
leadership of Ezra, one of the returned exiles, a large number of the
wives from other nations were cruelly divorced and sent away weeping
to their own people. All this helped to give the Jews a wrong and
unreasonable pride in their own race and a silly and unkind contempt
for other races.

=The hatred between