Hospitality is one of the most vital and fundamental relationships in human society. This was true in the ancient world and is just as true today. At its core, hospitality involves providing for the needs of individuals who are unable to provide for themselves. In the biblical world this often revolved around providing food, shelter, and protection to travelers, sojourners from other lands, or the poor and needy within one’s own community. Hospitality is expected of the followers of God in both the OT and NT, since they themselves are the recipients of God’s hospitality.
Providing shelter and protection for those in need played an important role in nomadic cultures. In a world without hotels, restaurants, and police, people could survive only if they helped one another. One never knew when he or she would be dependent on the hospitality of others. Therefore a stranger counted on receiving hospitable treatment. The host would provide housing, security, and food.
The fundamental concept of hospitality spread across the ancient world. The Greeks considered the civilized as those, in the words of the ancient poet Homer, “who love strangers and fear the gods.” Egyptians believed that hospitality guaranteed a good afterlife, and the Romans regarded it as a sacred obligation. As such, hospitality was seen as a code that held all human relationships together. If you turned someone away, that person might die of starvation or thirst, or at the hand of bandits. To ignore or violate hospitality would unravel society’s fabric and threaten human survival. That is why the Bible takes so seriously the incidents at Sodom (Gen. 19:1-11) and in the Benjaminite town of Gibeah (Judges 19:15-21). Modern readers focus on the sexual immorality of these two towns, and rightly so, but the ancients were just as aghast at the violation of the law of hospitality. The Jewish historian Josephus refers to the people of Sodom as those who “hate strangers” (Josephus Ant. i. 11. 1).
God commanded Israel to practice hospitality (Lev. 19:33, 34; Deut. 10:12-19; 24:17, 19). Scripture provides many examples of hospitality, either in actions given or withheld. Abraham greeted the three strangers (Gen. 18:1-8). Saul spared the Kenites from the judgment on the Amalekites because of the former’s hospitality to Israel (1 Sam. 15:6). The widow of Zarephath offered Elijah the last food she had (1 Kings 17:8-16). In fact, the OT even portrays God in host imagery. God provided for the needs of the Israelites when they were wandering in the wilderness (Exod. 16; Deut. 8:2-5), and brought them as sojourners into His own land (Lev. 25:23) as His guests (Ps. 39:12).
Jesus’ life and ministry depended on the ancient tradition of hospitality. He sent the twelve and the seventy out with the expectation that they would receive hospitality (Luke 10:1-12). Jesus used it as a theme in His parables (Luke 11:5-8; 14:12-14), and the rest of His teaching frequently employed images of food and drink at festive meals. God compares the kingdom of God to a great banquet (Matt. 8:11; 22:1-14; Luke 14:16-24) and ends His ministry on earth with a ceremonial meal. During it He speaks about eating and drinking in the kingdom (Mark 14:17-25).
Hospitality continues as a theme through the rest of the NT. The early church depended on hospitality. Not only did it provide for the physical needs of itinerant missionaries, but it also bonded the members of the whole movement together. It made all who offered hospitality “fellow workers for the truth” (3 John 8). The early Christians expected that an overseer or elder would be hospitable (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8). The NT calls the person who takes care of visitors a philoxenos (“lover of strangers”). Peter sees hospitality as a gift from God (1 Peter 4:9).
While much has changed in our world today, hospitality continues to play an important role in society, and especially among God’s followers. It is often through the hospitality we show to others that God’s love is most clearly manifested in the world.