From Eden to the New Jerusalem: Migration as a Narrative Arc in Scripture

Abstract

This essay argues that a canonical reading of Scripture that is attentive to the experiences it portrays must notice the centrality of the migrant experience throughout both the Old and New Testaments. We begin by tracing patterns of displacement, forced migration, and exile that define the lives of biblical figures such as Adam and Eve, Abraham, Ruth, Jesus, Paul, and the Early Christians. We also explore contemporary uses of the Bible that justify anti-immigrant policies and the dehumanization of immigrants, arguing that such interpretations contradict the text’s narrative. By reading Scripture through the lens of migration, Christians can better identify how the migration experience is both a theological and hermeneutical key to understanding God’s redemptive work in history.

1. Introduction

For many Christians, the Bible serves as a foundational source of spiritual truth—the bedrock of their faith and the primary means by which they understand God and the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Devoted believers turn to Scripture not only to affirm their faith but also to find moral and spiritual guidance for daily life. Yet, the Bible is more than a collection of stories about notable figures or expressions of faith. It also carries a complex and layered history of interpretation for Latino people. Within Latin America, Elsa Tamez finds that “For five hundred years we have been involved in a struggle of interpretation: some from a liberating perspective and others from a legitimating perspective of oppression (Tamez 2006, p. 14).” The Spaniards who came to the Americas viewed themselves as the saviors of the indigenous people who were destined for damnation and justified their cruelty by appealing to the stories of conquest in the Book of Joshua. Tamez, in fact, observes how the Spanish conquistadores reread the plagues in Exodus to help explain the disease of smallpox that brought death to many indigenous people (Tamez 2006, p. 3). Not all conquistadores read the Bible in this manner. Others, such as Bartolome De Las Casas, argued that those who teach that the natives of the New World should be conquered and subjugated make a disgraceful mistake and “abuse God’s words and do violence to the Scriptures (de las Casas 1974, p. 25).” As he finds, “If we want to be sons of Christ and followers of the truth of the gospel, we should consider that, even though these peoples may be completely barbaric, they are nevertheless created in God’s image (Casas (de las Casas 1974, p. 36)).” Las Casas realized that the Bible is not simply a book to justify cruelty, it speaks to the dignity and humanity of all people.

In contemporary debates, the Bible is continually invoked in opposing ways. Immigration rights advocates appeal to its emphasis on welcoming the foreigner and stranger (Casteel 2021; Cuéllar 2018, pp. 67–88; Heimburger 2018, pp. 179–208; Estrada 2019), while opponents of migration cite passages that stress adherence to the rule of law and submission to governing authorities (See Melkonian-Hoover and Kellstedt 2019, pp. 41–86; Zehnder 2021, pp. 72–75, 79–80, 103). With the Bible on their side, politicians continually demonize immigrants and rely upon race-baiting campaigns, especially against those from Latin America (Miranda 2025). In fact, use of the Bible by the Department of Homeland Security underscores the complex and sometimes contradictory interpretations of Scripture in contemporary discussions of migration. As Yii-Jan Lin reminds us, Americans once used the image of the New Jerusalem from the Book of Revelation to support the exclusion of immigrants (Lin 2024). However, an anti-immigrant use of Scripture is not new. Jacqueline Hidalgo has also shown that using the imagery of the New Jerusalem to justify colonization and the displacement of local populations dates to the reign of Constantine (Hidalgo 2016, pp. 106–8). For migrants, the Bible may function as a source of encouragement, but it can also cause distress when employed to justify exclusionary policies. Certainly, the Bible can provide hope for humanity, but we cannot ignore how it has contributed to the dehumanization, exclusion, and inhumane treatment of immigrants.

How, then, can we move beyond the impasse created when Christians use the Bible both to oppose and to support immigration reform? How can we navigate these conflicting interpretations in a way that respects both the sacred text and the lived experiences of migrants? While reconciling the Bible’s call to hospitality with its exhortation to submit to governing authorities may be difficult for some, it is helpful to consider Scripture’s narrative arc. The Bible is not written primarily for legal citizens—those privileged and secure in their cities and nations. The Bible was not written to benefit and justify the oppression of the empire. The Bible was written for migrants, about migrants, and by those with migration identities. It tells the story of people who have not always belonged, those who were displaced, exiles, and those seeking a home. More profoundly, it is a story of a God who comes down to dwell with a displaced community, journeying alongside them as they move through the world toward their ultimate home, the New Jerusalem.

Now, recent biblical scholarship has increasingly attended to questions of migration, exile, and displacement. Ethical and theological studies have examined the Bible’s call to hospitality and its implications for contemporary immigration debates, including international law.1 In parallel, Latinx, postcolonial, and minoritized readings have emphasized exile, border-crossing, and diaspora as key lenses for interpreting both Testaments. While this scholarship has demonstrated that migration is a pervasive biblical concern and contemporary ethical challenge, it has tended to focus either on discrete texts, ethical readings, or theological interpretation. Less attention has been given to migration as a canonical narrative structure.2 That is, as the overarching theme that shapes the Bible’s portrayal of God, God’s people as migrants, and the story of migration from Genesis to Revelation. Fundamentally, I argue that migration is not simply a recurring biblical motif isolated from various books but a narrative arc in Scripture, such that redemption cannot be understood apart from experiences of migration. In other words, from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells a story of redemption in and through the experiences of forced migration, exile, and a return to a homeland.

In the following sections, I offer a narrative and literary reading of selected episodes from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to show that migration is not merely a background theme but a defining feature of the identities of key figures, individuals who, in contemporary terms, would be recognized as immigrants. Although this survey is necessarily brief, it is sufficient to surface figures who are often not otherwise recognized as migrants. Certainly, there are different forms and causes of migration within the Bible, and I make no attempt to harmonize or romanticize these passages.3 However, it is difficult to ignore how the opening and closing movements of the biblical canon are marked by migration from Genesis to Revelation. This canonical arc suggests that migration functions not merely as a narrative motif but as a theological framework through which migration can be reimagined. Seen in this way, the Bible is a story that traces a journey of humanity from displacement to belonging—a home with God, with Revelation’s vision of heaven on earth.

Additionally, throughout this essay I use the expression “forced migration” in a historically grounded sense to denote displacement compelled by forces beyond an individual’s control. In biblical texts, this includes expulsion, famine-driven displacement, enslavement, flight from persecution, and imperial deportation. Though these forms differ in scale and mechanism, they share the common feature of a type of migration produced through coercive means.

2. Migration in the Old Testament

Beginning with Genesis, we encounter the first human beings, Adam and Eve, who lived in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:7, 15–25). Their story is often understood as the account of humanity’s first disobedience—the eating of the forbidden fruit (3:1–6). Yet, it is also the story of the first migration. Expelled from the home they had known, Adam and Eve became wanderers, seeking a new place to dwell (vv. 23–24). In this narrative, sin is not only an act of disobedience, but it also signals their inability to remain as tenants of the Garden of Eden. Their migration, however, is not a journey abandoned by God. Even as they leave Eden, God accompanies them, providing care and guidance. When Eve gives birth to her first child, Cain, God remains present, shaping the path of life outside Eden (4:1–2). From the beginning, the biblical narrative shows that God travels with those who are displaced, walking alongside migrants, and helping them find a new home.

Not long after, we encounter the story of Abraham, a Babylonian living in Ur of the Chaldeans. His story begins when God visits and tells him to travel to a new land, later described in the Bible as the Promised Land (Hoffmeier 2009, pp. 29–57). Abraham’s story in Genesis includes several migrations. First, there is a famine swept over the land that forces Abram and Sarai to migrate for survival on two occasions (Gen 12:10; 20:1–18). Though Abraham is a migrant, this does not mean that he does not host other migrants. Strikingly, we also find Abram unconditionally welcoming three strangers who were traveling to Sodom (Gen 18:1–33). Abram and Sarai continue to be residents in Canaan. However, Abram is never really a citizen or portrayed as a permanent resident. He is described as a being in the land as a “soujouner” (megurecha), that is, being in a condition of a foreigner (Gen 17:8).4 Even when he asks for a plot of land to bury his wife, he states, “I am a foreigner and stranger (ger)” (Gen 23:4; NIV). Migration and the condition of their foreignness are aspects of their identities and experiences. Even on further occasions, Abraham’s children had to migrate, again, due to famine and threats to their lives.5

The Book of Genesis ends with Joseph, a young, unaccompanied migrant who first came to Egypt because he was sold into slavery by his own family. However, as an unaccompanied migrant, he had gifts that helped the people of Egypt. He had the ability to interpret dreams, and much later, through a series of life events, he emerged in the courts of Pharoah as a trusted advisor. When Pharoah had a dream no one could interpret, it was Joseph who could discern that another famine was coming, and that it was time to prepare. Joseph helped the Egyptians survive the famine. As we can observe in his story, migrants are not burdens to society. Instead, as Justo Gonzalez points out, they have gifts and contributions that do contribute to society (Gonzalez 1996, pp. 96–97). Egypt was able to endure the difficult time because of a migrant who was living among them.

As the Hebrew people grew in population, they also experienced persecution and oppression for being children of immigrants. Generations later, a new pharoah emerged, one who did not know the Hebrew people’s ancestors. This pharoah was cruel and oppressed the Hebrews. It was Moses, a Hebrew man raised in Egypt, who God chose to lead the Hebrews out of slavery and to a new land. God appeared to this man of mixed cultural identity—who had the blood of the Hebrew people within his veins but also the mind of an Egyptian as one educated in its courts—and spoke to him from a burning bush as Moses tended sheep in the desert. He empowered Moses to lead the Hebrew people for forty years as they migrated from Egypt to the Promised Land. Though Moses was the leader of the Hebrew people, he viewed himself as a migrant and even gave his son an immigrant name, saying, “I have become a foreigner (ger) in a foreign (nokri) land” (Exod 2:22; NIV).

While the Hebrew people were migrating to the Promised Land, God gave them His Torah (Law). That Law includes the command in Exodus 22:21, “You shall not wrong the foreigner or oppress them, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.” The collective memory of migration thus functions as a foundational experience shaping Israel’s relationship with both God and others (Kidd 1999, p. 132; Pilarski 2018, p. 45), See also (Glanville 2018). Notably, within the Pentateuch the noun ger (“foreigner” or “resident alien”) appears frequently in the legal texts of the Covenant Code,6 the Deuteronomic Code,7 and the Holiness Code.8 Ahida Calderón Pilarski observes that the incorporation of ger into Israel’s legal framework indicates the tangible presence of immigrants within the community and the perceived need for their legal protection (Pilarski 2018, p. 45; Kidd 1999, pp. 19–20, 24). In fact, José Ramírez Kidd argues that these laws reflect multiple historical periods in which foreigners lived among the Israelites. For instance, the Deuteronomic Code appears to address immigrants situated in urban contexts, likely during the eighth century BCE (Kidd 1999, p. 43), whereas the Holiness Code reflects the legal accommodation of foreigners who joined Jewish communities during the Persian period (Kidd 1999, p. 68). Taken together, Kidd maintains that the term ger designates a recognized legal status, granting specific rights to non-Israelites residing within the community (Kidd 1999, p. 16). He further notes that the legal tradition uniquely includes a positive command to “love the foreigner” (Deut 10:19), a directive unparalleled elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible and one that may signal an invitation toward social integration rather than mere tolerance (Kidd 1999, p. 81).

The Bible includes another migration story, slightly different in that it does not focus on the travel narratives of men. Instead, the book is about two women—Ruth and Naomi—who had recently become widows and had nowhere else to go but to migrate back home to the city of Bethlehem in Judah. Ruth was a foreigner, a Moabite, one of those foreign wives the men of Israel had married. She was not a resident of Bethlehem, but Naomi was. Though Naomi was an exile who returns home, we cannot exoticize Ruth as has been done in the history of reception or ignore the dynamics of her migration within this book.9 Ruth’s commitment to her aging mother-in-law and her devotion is noticeable throughout the entire book. Yet again, this is not simply a story about family devotion; it is an immigrant story (Carroll R. 2015). Like many other migrant stories, this one is driven because of famine. Though this book begins with an immigrant woman coming to the land of Israel to work and support her widowed mother-in-law, it ends with Ruth meeting a man by the name of Boaz who can see beyond her migrant status. Ruth eventually becomes the maternal ancestor to the greatest king of Israel—King David. In the lineage of King David, there is an immigrant woman who worked with her hands and supported her family (Brenner 1999, pp. 158–62).

The people of Israel continued to live in the Promised Land. However, the kingdom was fractured by internal political divisions. Even King David had to flee and resettle away from his homeland when his life was in danger, an experience that can rightly be described as that of a refugee (Strine 2021, p. 403). It eventually divided into two kingdoms and endured kings who no longer followed the Law. In 705 BCE, King Sargon II of Assyria conquered and deported many Israelites. Many became refugees and traveled south to the kingdom of Judah or were deported to Assyria. Then in 539 BCE the nation of Judah was conquered by the Babylonian Empire. They lost their independence and because of war, many were deported, became refugees, and remained in another state of migration. This mass deportation provoked an unprecedented crisis. What now was the relationship between God and His people? What did the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple mean for the physical and spiritual destiny of the Jews? The Book of Psalms records the lament of the Jewish people:

By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? (Ps 137:1–4, NRSV).

Even more, the prophetic writings address the concerns of migrants (Crouch 2021, pp. 53–66; Cuéllar 2008). For example, Barnabas Aspray argues that Isaiah 16:1-5 insists that “Jerusalem’s welcome of Moabite refugees leads to the establishment of its own everlasting kingdom of justice and righteousness (Aspray 2021, p. 437).” The truth is, though the people of Israel and Judah were deported, God was still with them. He too had migrated with them. Two of those young people deported were Daniel and Esther, who have books named after them in the Old Testament.

The books of Daniel and Esther are stories rich with themes of resilience, maintenance of their faith and cultural identity in a foreign land, trusting in God’s sovereignty and justice, and leveraging their own political power to help their people. Daniel is a book known for its prophetic visions about the future. However, this is a story rooted in a migrant experience. This young man, deported to a foreign land, is given a new name, learns a new language, and is educated in the courts of Babylon. However, he gets singled out because of his cultural identity since he had refused to eat the food of the Babylonians. As it is today, food in antiquity was a cultural identity marker. Daniel and his Hebrew friends demonstrated their ability to thrive on a vegetarian diet and were thus able to hold onto that aspect of their cultural identity. Additionally, just like Joseph in Egypt, Daniel too had the ability to interpret dreams. As a result, he was granted a political position as a trusted official in the courts of Babylon. A popular widely known episode from this book is when Daniel and his Jewish friends are thrown into the lion’s den because they had refused to worship an image of the Babylonian king and instead chose to maintain loyalty to their faith. But this is also a story of young immigrants refusing to lose their ethnocultural identity by assimilating to the Babylonian way of life and religion. This story is a story of cultural resilience, identity, and faithfulness to the traditions of Daniel’s ancestors. This is not to say that he segregated himself from the majority culture. Not at all. As a Babylonian official, he served all people, both Babylonians and Jews, in the court of the king. As an immigrant, though, he was able to live in a majority culture while also not feeling ashamed of his ancestry and heritage.

The story of Esther echoes a similar theme though this time, the story is that of a hidden immigrant (Kolia 2022). The Book of Esther is celebrated for the way God uses a woman to bring about the deliverance of the Jewish people. Esther was an orphaned Jew who came with Mordecai when he was “carried away from Jerusalem among the captives” when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah (Esther 2:5–7). She was a foreigner living in Persia and eventually became a queen while she was in service in the Persian court. Yet, even while a queen, she did not reveal to others her Jewish identity (v. 17). Her story is a testament to God’s sovereign hand guiding and elevating immigrants to positions of influence where they can champion the cause of their people. Esther was at the right place at the right time to help her people who were being persecuted. She could have remained silent and hid her immigrant identity, but she is known within the Bible and Christian tradition as a woman who did not forget her people. She did not forget her identity.

What can we notice thus far? Migration has a complicated story in the Bible. As with the Garden of Eden and the deportation of the Jewish people to Babylon, large groups of people are often forced to migrate because of unrighteousness or political corruption of their nation. Many innocent people are swept away and lose their homes. Many, like Joseph, Daniel, and Esther, are young people forced into migration due to no fault of their own. We also have stories of migration due to climate change. Abraham and Ruth are individuals who need to migrate to a foreign land because of famine. They were dependent upon the open borders of other nations to survive. However, they were not looking for handouts. As seen in Ruth’s story, these hardworking people support themselves and contribute to the welfare of the city. Last, we also notice through the life of Sarah and Joseph the role of human trafficking. Whether they are sold by their own family or taken by force, the Bible does not fail to mention the dangers of movement and travel to a foreign land.10 But God of the Hebrew Bible was also with them and protected them. Though they did endure hardship, imprisonment, and the loss of their family, these stories of pain and trauma do not include a portrait of a distant God. In fact, God is always portrayed as being with the migrant, caring for the migrant, and defending the migrant.

This does not suppose that all migration is positively portrayed, nor am I attempting to romanticize migration. There are also various instances of force migration where the people of God are engaged in the act of displacement and creation of migrants. The Hebrew people also mixed with people who were ethnoculturally different in the stories of Ezra and Nehemiah. Forced migration is also most notable in the conquest narratives of Joshua and the expansion of the Davidic empire.11 Though it has been argued that God leads Joshua and the Israelites to the people who may have an opportunity to know God (Magezi 2019), such reading risks overlooking a significant feature of the book. That is, the book of Joshua does not preserve the memory of those who were displaced. Instead, it provides a history of conquest and its justification, which Pekka Pitkänen describes as a “stylized” and “exaggerated’ literary form (Pitkänen 2018, pp. 304–7).

As such, we must admit that Israel’s military campaigns in these texts are the cause and creation of refugees as they enter new land and eradicate communities. Non-Israelite communities are displaced, prisoners of war are captured, and people are deprived from returning or living in their homeland. Certainly, there are doubts whether these narratives actually happened and scholarship rigorously debates the appearance of Israel in Canaan (see for example Younger 2008, pp. 3–32). But as a literary text, they reflect what Cameron Howard has described as “the violent fantasies of the colonized (Howard 2020, p. 418).” Within the narrative world of Joshua, appeals to divine mandate function to legitimate these acts of displacement. The theological tension is unmistakable and God is portrayed not as the guardian of the displaced Canaanite but as the one in whose name displacement is authorized, even as the text remains silent about the suffering of those who are forced to migrate.

3. Migration in the New Testament

In the New Testament, a similar pattern emerges. This time, the people were under the rule of the Roman Empire who through their imperial conquest had made migrants of all (Estrada 2024, pp. 625–33). Migration during Roman occupation was different to the point that it was often difficult to distinguish between a visitor and a migrant.12 Now, the Roman Empire did not create a national empire with federal laws similar to the United States today. When the Romans conquered a region, they managed rebellious regions and left peaceful ones to their local ethnarchs or under the oversight of an appointed senator (Cassius 1987, vol. 53, pp. 12–14). Even more, Rome primarily cared about the movement and migration of their politicians. It was Roman politicians who were checked at the borders (Cassius 1987, vol. 54, p. 42). When migration did happen, it was the result of famine, violence, slavery, travel, education, or economic opportunities.13 These were movements that Laurens Tacoma classifies as forced movements, volunteer movements, and state-sanctioned movements (Tacoma 2016, pp. 7, 30–33).

The first story of migration is the story of Jesus himself as a child (Aspray 2024; Ruiz 2018, pp. 89–108). The first Gospel of the New Testament recounts the story of Jesus and his family fleeing their home to Egypt because his life was in danger. It was violence that set into motion the migration of Jesus from Judea to Egypt. Although the Gospel of Matthew describes Jesus as a refugee, the Gospel of John also describes Jesus as a migrant who comes into the world to live among us (Estrada 2023, pp. 93–103). Jesus embodies the identity of a migrant, a man who journeys to a new land but experiences rejection and hostility from those he came to sav and even commands migration for the sake of the gospel.

Again, we may not think of the apostles as migrants because we often think of migration in terms of crossing national boundaries, but provinces and regions had borders. Yet, these were not impassible boundaries for the Spirit, though. The Spirit not only intentionally crosses borders, but also compels the apostles to cross and see what is happening on the other side. In this sense, the maintenance of regional borders and segregation between people cannot stem the migratory activity of the Spirit and the people of God.

The early apostles were missionary migrants who carried the gospel from Judea to foreign lands. The Book of Acts narrates the role that violence and persecution had in spreading the gospel from Judea to various regions. Even in Stephen’s speech, before his martyrdom, the theme of migration emerges in his defense.14 Or as Roberto Mata finds, in Stephen’s speech, Luke “redefines the Exodus as ongoing and the Jesus movement as a migrant caravan (Mata 2024, p. 530).” Christopher Hays, likewise, made a similar point. He too notes that Stephen reminds the religious leaders that being a member of the people of God is to be a migrant, all land is holy ground, and that passion for one’s own land can be spiritually dangerous (Hays 2021, p. 165).

Yet, it is not just God or the people who migrate, so does the Holy Spirit. Ekaputra Tupamahu rightly how the book of Acts is not a missionary project but a migration narrative that starts in the peripheral and ends in the center of the empire (Tupamahu 2024, pp. 190–93). He also insists that the “Spirit of Pentecost is a migrational spirit that breaks linguistic chains (Tupamahu 2024, p. 194).” To further add, we can also notice that the baptism in the Holy Spirit in Acts begins in Jerusalem but continues in neighboring borderlands such as Samaria and Casarea, and much later occurring in Ephesus. The Spirit crosses racial and cultural boundaries where racial prejudices would otherwise prevent people from engaging one another. The Apostle Philip journeys to Samaria to preach the gospel, which was greatly received by the Samaritan people. When news about Philip’s success reaches those in Jerusalem, John and Peter come to visit. They meet these Samaritans and lay their hands on them in prayer so they can receive the Holy Spirit (8:14–17). In this episode, Spirit baptism occurs on the other side of the Judean border and with people who have a different ethnic identity. It does not occur with the apostles’ Galilean friends, those who think like Peter or John, and certainly not among their own homogenous community. A similar situation occurs when Peter is compelled to travel to Casarea and preach the gospel to the gentile godfearer, Cornelius, and his household (10:1-48). The Spirit, in this sense, is not only a migrational Spirit. The Spirit also motivates Peter and his Jewish companions to cross the border and have their racial perceptions of Cornelius and his household transformed (Estrada 2017, pp. 292–94).

As such, Acts also chronicles the movement of the Apostle Paul who also travels to various regions to preach the gospel (Agosto 2018, pp. 149–70). He is chased out of towns, forced to hide, and constantly on the move. The gospel, however, spreads across the Mediterranean world because it is carried by a migrant (Kahl 2022, pp. 17–36). Thus, when Peter writes his letter to the early Christians, it is not a coincidence that he addresses them as “aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Pet 2:11). The early Christians are not citizens of Rome; they are migrants—believers living in a land not their own.

Lastly, in the final book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, we see the full force of the Roman Empire and its power of deportation. Rome was known for its ability to exile people, sending them off to a foreign land as a form of punishment (Claassen 1999, pp. 7–11; Kelly 2006, pp. 14–15; Balsdon 1979, pp. 104–13). Deportation, under the Roman Empire, was their form of immigration control, reserved for people deemed a threat.15 Even more, the Romans did not care about citizenship status. Both citizens and non-citizens were deported. Suetonius remarks that during a famine, the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus “expelled from the city the slaves that were for sale, as well as the schools of gladiators, all foreigners with the exception of physicians and teachers, and a part of the household slaves.”16 The Emperor also exiled his own children, Agrippa Postumus his daughter, Julia, and granddaughter, Julia the Younger.17

Though the Book Revelation is known for its apocalyptic visions of the future, these visions were given to Jewish man recently deported to the island of Patmos. In the Book of Revelation, the city of Rome is described as Babylon. It is portrayed as a violent imperial power oppressive to God’s people. Within its pages, John records a voice from heaven, which tells the people of God, “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins and so that you do not share in her plagues, for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (Rev 18:4–5, NRSV). Rome is not a glorious empire. It is morally corrupt and oppressive to God’s people. As Roberto Mata observes, the voice of heaven calls forth the people of God to come out from Rome similar to the way God called Moses to lead the people of God out of Egypt (Mata 2021, pp. 654–69; Mata 2018, pp. 171–90). This is a call for self-deportation, as Mata argues (Mata 2022, p. 441). It envisions the people of God who are neither hot nor cold to make a break with the ungodly empire and separate themselves from its corruption in a manner akin to John’s exile (Mata 2022, p. 430). As such, in Revelation, the people of God are not journeying to the land of Israel. Instead, they are migrating to the New Jerusalem, the city of God coming down from heaven (21:2, 10). He invites the people of God to get ready to make a final migration and be at home with God—to a place where there are no more tears, no more pain, and no more death (v. 4). The final migration is toward a new home where one can finally be at rest with God, a home that is with God—the New Jerusalem. Within this new city surrounded by walls, the entrance gate “will never be shut” but will always welcome people from various nations (vv. 24–26). The Book of Revelation, as Jacqueline Hidalgo describes, “offers the hope of ultimate divine reversal” where immigrants are no longer excluded by an imperial power (Hidalgo 2016, p. 105).

4. Migration as the Narrative Arc

To claim that migration is a narrative arc of Scripture is not merely to observe that many biblical figures are migrants. Rather, it is to insist that the canon itself is ordered around displacement and movement as the ordinary condition of life with God. From humanity’s expulsion from Eden to Israel’s exodus and exile, from Jesus’ life as a refugee to the church’s expansion through forced and voluntary migration, and finally to the eschatological journey toward the New Jerusalem, Scripture consistently narrates the story of God in and through communities on the move. Migration, therefore, is not simply a theme within the Bible but a narrative logic that governs its unfolding. Read in this way, migration functions hermeneutically as a locus theologicus, the preferential place of theological reflection. As a result, interpretations that appeal to the rule of law or governmental order while marginalizing migrants are thus not merely ethically problematic, they are hermeneutically incoherent. That is, they contradict the Bible’s own narrative logic. To marginalize migrants is to render Scripture theologically unintelligible, for it is precisely in displacement, movement, and vulnerability that the Bible’s God chooses to be known.

Thus, when people use the Bible as a weapon against migrants in immigration debates, they fail to notice that they are contradicting the very narrative arc of the biblical story, similarly to when people today cite civil rights laws to justify the eradication and dismantling of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies. Another example would be when people appeal to ‘religious freedom’ and decry religious persecution, while at the same time justifying discrimination against others who practice a different religion. Anti-immigrant perspectives may use passages that champion the rule of law or emphasize the obligation to submit to governing authorities, but they fail to notice that a migrant God never asked imperial authorities for permission to visit their domain. A migrant Spirit does not care about artificial and imaginary lines in the sand. And the migrant people of God of the Bible travel to all parts of the world, not as citizens of nation-states but as a community whose identity is not secured by passports of political belonging.

The Bible is not a book of permission to oppress or justify the dehumanization of the immigrant. It is a call to act, to welcome, and to resist injustice wherever it is found. From Adam and Eve’s exile to Abraham’s journey to the Promised Land, to Israel’s exile and return, to the words of the law and the prophets to care for the stranger, to Jesus himself as a refugee fleeing persecution, commanding migration in his very commissioning, and to the first followers of the gospel, the Bible consistently reveals a God who is present with the displaced, exiled, and people who are on the move. The very heart of the Bible and its message cannot be understood apart from the God who reveals his divine self in and through the story of migrants. Rather than using the Bible as a tool to uphold xenophobic policies and anti-immigrant legislation, the biblical text invites us to see ourselves, God, and humanity through the lens of migration. As we engage this sacred text and apply its teachings to our lives, I hope we—like the patriarchs, the prophets, Jesus, and the first followers of the gospel—will recognize our own identity as migrants. We must also remember that a Bible severed from migration is not the Bible at all. It becomes a domesticated tool of empire, stripped of the God and the people who move and live as migrants on the earth.