There is a kind of cruelty that is not visible in the moment. It lives in a tone of voice. A dismissive glance. A pressing of advantage against someone who has no one to defend him.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 22:20) forbids both the visible and the invisible harm: the stranger you shall not vex with words, nor distress him by taking his goods. Speech is named before property. What comes out of the mouth can wound a stranger more surely than a lost coin.
The Memory the Torah Will Not Let Us Lose
Then the verse turns personal. Remember, sons of Israel, My people, that you were strangers in the land of Mizraim. The command is grounded in memory. You know this pain. You carried it across the Sea of Reeds. Do not inflict on anyone what Pharaoh inflicted on you.
This is why the command to love the stranger appears thirty-six times in the Torah — more than any other commandment. The Torah is not merely regulating behavior. It is shaping a people whose history is a training in empathy, whose most formative memory is the experience of having no standing at all.
Why Words Come First
The Targum's order is deliberate. Verbal mistreatment leaves no receipt. No court case names it. But the stranger hears every sharp syllable, and the Torah hears it too. God hears what no judge sees.
The Takeaway
Israel's memory of slavery is not meant to produce resentment. It is meant to produce kindness — a kindness that speaks gently first, before it gives generously.