WORD STUDY – SOJOURNER – גר Gimmel Resh

Psalms 119:19: “I [am] a sojourner in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.”

For many years I have read this verse in the King James Version which uses the word stranger rather than sojourner. Many other translations say a foreigner. I never understood how that last part, “hide not thy commandments from me” applied to being a stranger or foreigner. 

Although they all tend to mean the same there is a nuance of difference between a sojourner and a stranger and a foreigner.  I live next door to a foreigner from Mexico. He has his papers and is on a route to becoming a citizen.  He is still however a foreigner, one who is not really a citizen of this country yet, but he intends to be and plans to spend the rest of his life in this country and become a citizen.  I doubt that that definition of a foreigner would fit the context of this verse.  I mean I am a foreigner in this world but I have no intention of staying around.  I am booked on that old Gospel ship and my passage is paid for by the blood of Jesus and when it sets sail for my home  I plan to be on it because this world is certainly not my home.

A stranger is someone with who you are no yet acquainted but may still live in your country and even your home town.  I may be a stranger in this world but I don’t live here.  I am just passing through.  So for me, a stranger is not the word to use here because I cannot figure out what:  “hide not thy commandments from me” has to do with being a stranger or foreigner on this earth.

But when I checked the Hebrew word for foreigner and stranger out  I found the definition really fit that of a sojourner.  Webster defines a sojourner as one who resides temporarily in a place.  That is me, I am just a temporary resident of this world.  I am here to accomplish a mission for the Jesus I love and when that is accomplished, put me on the first boat to heaven.

I had a woman on my bus the other day who is about 52 years of age.  A couple of years ago she had a  heart attacked and died on the operating table.  The surgeons were able to bring her back. She doesn’t remember the incident but she was told when they brought her back to the life she fought them and was angry that they brought her back.  Of course, I asked why and she said she was only telling me because she knew I would not laugh at her.  Others did laugh and so she stopped telling people about it.  She said she was in a place she could describe.  To describe something you need to point to something in the physical world to compare it to but there is nothing in this world that she can compare it to.  The peace she felt was nothing like she ever felt in this world and then she met Jesus and the love she felt was unlike any love she ever felt in her lifetime.  Then they brought her back to this world, who wouldn’t be angry?   She then said; “I don’t belong in this world, this is not my place, but Jesus told me to return and so I am here until He says that I can return to my real home.”   She is not a stranger in this world, not a foreigner, she is a sojourner, here for a reason and when that reason is fulfilled, she is returning to her real home. 

The word that is translated as stranger, foreigner or sojourner is ger in Hebrew.  It is found in most all Semitic languages and it references someone like a Bedouin who just journeys around the land, having no permanent home.  He passes through town after town picking up supplies and then living off the land in a tent.  A ger claims no nationality, no hometown, and identifies with no particular race of people or cares what his race is or what race anyone else is.  That’s me, I live in a studio apartment with a room full of boxes that are unpacked.  I am ready to move on at a moment’s notice.  I am a ger a sojourner in this land. 

But as I listen to the news about the mass killings in Las Vegas and in a church in Texas, I feel so alien in this world.  As I drive through Chicago and see the homeless, the addicts, the alcoholics lying in the alleys and on curbs I realize I don’t belong in this world.  A couple of weeks ago I attended a fundraiser to help battle against sex trafficking.  I heard horrendous stories of young girls and boys forced into sex slavery as just children, even as early as six years of age or earlier.  I heard of one girl who at the age of twelve gave birth to a baby from prostitution and because the people who “owned” her were Satanists, they sacrificed her baby and forced her to eat her own baby.   After hearing that I realize I don’t belong in this world, this is not my home.  I make any money off my books I only want it to go to combat such sins.  I don’t need a fancy car, a big house with lots of furniture.  I don’t need cruises or vacations on some exotic beach because I don’t plan on hanging around here any longer than I have to.  I just want to get the job God called me to do completed so I can go on and out of here.  As Paul said; “For me to live is Christ.”   I have no other reason to dwell on this planet.

After many years of reading his verse in my KJV as “I am a stranger  in the earth,” I never understood that second part, “hide not thy commandments from me.”  As I grow to realize that for me the proper translation should be “I am a sojourner” I finally understand that last part.  I believe I understand it as David understood it, only by knowing and obeying His commandments am I able to make it to the port where my ship that will take me to my home is docked.

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