(RNS) — At a press conference last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked by a reporter to respond to Pope Leo XIV’s use of the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew “to critique Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.” In his answer, Johnson promised a longer explanation of his biblical position and later that day proceeded to link from his social media account to a 1,290-word essay he said he’d written during the Biden administration.

Let’s take a look.

Johnson’s essay focuses not on Matthew 25 but on a passage from the Book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible — claiming Leviticus 19:34 is “[p]erhaps the verse most often cited by the Left” in support of its immigration position. In the King James Version, the verse reads: “But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” 

Johnson makes his case on the proposition that “[t]he Bible teaches that God ordained and created four distinct spheres of authority — (1) the individual, (2) the family, (3) the church, and (4) civil government — and each of these spheres is given different responsibilities.” According to him, Leviticus 19 applies only to individuals who, as “a central premise of Judeo-Christian teaching,” are supposed to treat strangers “with kindness and hospitality,” not to civil government.

This is a problematic claim, to say the least. That’s because a gēr — the Hebrew word translated as “stranger” in verse 34 as well as in the previous verse, which reads, “And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him” — enjoyed the same status in civil law as an Israelite (see the Book of Numbers 15:15). It hardly matters whom the two verses in Leviticus are directed to when civil government is already responsible for treating strangers the same as Israelites. 

To be sure, some scholars have held that the gēr that Leviticus is referring to was a proselyte — a convert to Judaism — and therefore an Israelite for all intents and purposes. However, the late Bible scholar Rabbi Jacob Milgrom persuasively argued, the fact that the gēr “was not obliged to follow all the religious prescriptions incumbent upon his Israelite neighbors” shows that such was not the case. A gēr was by definition a non-Israelite living in the Land of Israel.

But let’s take a step back. Even a proper scholarly understanding of the meaning of gēr doesn’t resolve for anyone how the United States should deal with undocumented immigrants, much less with border restriction, about which Johnson makes the even more dubious claim that “[t]he Bible tells us so.” The Bible tells us many things, a lot of them irrelevant to public policies in today’s world.

But it is pretty clear on some things, and one of them has to do with where Jesus stood on the “stranger” question. In Matthew 25, he says in no uncertain terms that inviting or not inviting the stranger in is one of those things involving “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine.” In Jesus’ words, it is the kind of response that separates the sheep from the goats — the righteous who will go to eternal life and those who will go “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

It’s clear that, in contrast to the Hebrew Bible, this message is directed at individuals. It’s also clear on which side it puts all those people in Minnesota delivering food to immigrant families and blowing whistles to prevent them from being vexed by the agents of Caesar.