One Whom the King Loves - The Stranger in Jewish Law

Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai set a trap with two verses. The first, from the Song of Deborah in (Judges 5:31): "And His lovers are like the rising of the sun in its might." The second, from the Torah itself in (Deuteronomy 10:18): "And He loves the stranger." Then he asked his question, and it has never stopped reverberating through Jewish thought: who is greater, one who loves the King, or one whom the King loves?

The answer is obvious once you hear the question. Of course the one beloved by the King stands higher than the one who merely loves the King. Even a perfect stranger can love from a distance. To be loved requires the King's own choice.

And the Torah says plainly that God loves the stranger.

What the Mekhilta Was Teaching

This argument appears in Mekhilta Tractate Nezikin 18:4, a tannaitic midrash on Exodus compiled by the school of Rabbi Ishmael in the 2nd century CE. The Mekhilta was not a book of sentiment. It was a legal and interpretive work, focused on deriving binding principles from the words of Torah. When it placed Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai's observation in this context, it was not offering a poetic reflection on divine love. It was making a structural claim: the convert's status before God is not merely equal to Israel's. In a specific, technical theological sense, it is higher.

Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai lived in Roman-occupied Judea in the 2nd century CE, decades after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. He was a disciple of Rabbi Akiva and one of the most formidable legal minds of the tannaitic period. The tradition that attributes to him the authorship of the Zohar reflects how towering his reputation had grown by the medieval period. His legal reasoning was precise and his theological instincts were deep, and both are on display in this teaching.

The comparison he draws rests on a distinction ancient Israel would have recognized from watching the courts of earthly kings. A man who loves the king may do so because the king is powerful, just, or generous. The love flows from below to above, and it is the subject's own act. But when the king loves someone, the dynamic is entirely different. The king's love is a gift given unilaterally, a choice made from a position of absolute power. To be the object of that love is to stand in a place no amount of effort or devotion can earn.

The Stranger's Unique Position

The native-born Israelite loves God because he was raised to. His parents taught him. His community reinforced the lesson. His holidays structured the year. He is part of a covenant that began with Abraham, was sealed at Sinai, and has shaped his entire existence. When he loves God, he is fulfilling the role he was created for.

The stranger -- the convert, the ger who chooses to join Israel -- comes from outside all of this. He was not born into the covenant. No ancestral promise binds him. No communal memory pulls him toward the God of Israel. He comes because he chose to come, often at considerable personal cost. And when he arrives, the Torah says God loves him.

The Mekhilta Tractate Nezikin 18:3 makes the sheer weight of that love visible through repetition. The Torah commands Israel regarding the stranger not once but again and again: "You shall not afflict a stranger" (Exodus 22:20), "You shall love the stranger" (Deuteronomy 10:19), "You have known the soul of the stranger" (Exodus 23:9). Rabbi Eliezer, the 1st-century CE sage, explained the repetition: because the stranger's past is to his disadvantage, the Torah surrounds him with overlapping protections, each one another layer of the divine embrace.

Why the Sun Metaphor Matters

The verse Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai chose to represent Israel's righteous is not a modest one. "His lovers are like the rising of the sun in its might." In (Judges 5:31), this line appears at the climax of Deborah's great victory poem, describing what it will be like when all of God's enemies have been destroyed and all of God's friends shine in their full glory. The sun at its peak is the greatest display of natural power and light in the human world. That is what the righteous of Israel are compared to.

And yet, even that blazing sun is in the position of the lover, not the beloved. The stranger, loved personally by God, occupies a position the verse does not even have language for. The Mekhilta leaves it implicit and trusts the reader to understand: if the sun-bright righteous are those who love, then the one whom the Sun's Creator loves in return is something beyond the sun.

How This Teaching Shaped Jewish Practice

The theological elevation of the convert was never merely theoretical. The broader section of Mekhilta Tractate Nezikin 18, spanning the school of Rabbi Ishmael's commentary on Exodus 22, builds an entire legal architecture around the stranger's protection and dignity. The stranger may not be verbally taunted for his past. He may not be financially cheated. He must be loved. He must not be oppressed. The repetition of these commands across Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy -- the Mekhilta counts thirty-six places in the Torah that mention the obligation toward the stranger -- reflects a tradition that took its own theology seriously.

When a person chose to join the Jewish people in the ancient world, they were not choosing an easy path. They were leaving their birth community, their family religion, their social network. They were accepting a covenant that came with obligations, restrictions, and in the Roman period, real danger. Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai's teaching served as a theological counterweight to all of that: yes, the path is difficult. But the one who walks it is not merely tolerated. He is loved by the King.

The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael contains 1,517 texts on Exodus in our database. Explore the full tradition of the stranger's status and the Torah's law of human dignity at jewishmythology.com.