(RNS) — As a rabbi who has spent his life gleaning wisdom from sacred writ, it troubles me to see the Department of Homeland Security put biblical verses at the heart of a massive recruitment effort for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Given the Bible-thumping tendencies of the Trump administration, I suppose this development should come as no surprise. The DHS had already used Bible verses in its social media campaign to argue that its use of racial profiling, arbitrary arrest and “disappearing” of Hispanic immigrants, including those with U.S. citizenship, is precisely what God is going for.
Americans have long shown themselves to be vulnerable to believing that the Bible sanctions morally dubious projects. For centuries, the so-called Curse of Ham, taken from a passage in the Bible’s Book of Genesis, was used to justify the enslavement of Black people.
The ICE recruitment ads are especially painful because they not only employ Bible verses to support morally questionable ends, but because in their original context the verses’ teachings are diametrically opposed to the current mission of ICE. A few examples will highlight the problem:
The choice of the Book of Proverbs for ICE’s ads makes perfect sense, as Proverbs is full of catchy sayings. The first verse of the book’s 28th chapter is a perfect opening line for a military recruitment campaign: “The wicked flee though no one gives chase/But the righteous are as confident as a lion.”
It almost makes me want to sign up! The verse appeals to strength and ridicules weakness, using the symbol of the self-assured lion, that orange-maned monarch, and fits the MAGA zeitgeist. The soundtrack for ICE’s social media video matches it with the opening monologue of the 2022 movie “The Batman,” with actor Robert Pattinson declaring, “They think I’m hiding in the shadow, but I am the shadow.”
On closer examination, this verse has nothing to do with chasing down defenseless refugees or with immigration. In Proverbs’ view, immigrants are anything but wicked.
If you open your Bible to Proverbs 28, you’ll find other verses from the very same chapter that convey very different messages that are also pertinent to the Trump era: “Better is a poor man who lives blamelessly/Than a rich man whose ways are crooked,” says verse six. Verse 28 proclaims, “A rich man is clever in his own eyes/
But a perceptive poor man can see through him.”
Arguably, the entire chapter could be read as a moral condemnation of the kleptocracy currently running things in Washington. “He who covers up his faults will not succeed/He who confesses will find mercy,” reads verse 13, while verse 18 teaches us that “He who lives blamelessly will be delivered/But he who is crooked in his ways will fall all at once.”
Which makes us wonder who exactly are the “wicked” in that opening verse. The chapter’s final verse tells us who they aren’t: asylum-seekers fleeing ICE. “When the wicked rise up, men go into hiding,” it concludes, “but when they perish the righteous increase.” If it’s the immigrants who are doing the hiding, they can’t also be the “wicked,” who are causing them to hide.
Whoever the “wicked” are, we know from this chapter that they are crooked, conniving, overconfident and rich. According to Proverbs, they are the ones who are headed for a fall.
On Sept. 7, the Department of War Rapid Response X account posted a clip showing military personnel completing outdoor training, along with the words “Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you, wherever you go,” quoting the first chapter of the Bible’s Book of Joshua.
In Joshua 1, the title character, one of the Bible’s great generals, is instructed by God to “be strong and of good courage.” This works well as a summons to prospective ICE recruits. It’s important to point out, however, that Joshua and the Israelites were the ones who were newcomers to the land when this charge was given to them.
True, their ancestor Jacob was born there, and God had promised the place to Abraham. But the video leaves off the second part of God’s exhortation to the Israelite leader. “ … But you must be very strong and resolute to observe faithfully all the Teaching that My servant Moses enjoined upon you. Do not deviate from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.”
Conquest comes with conditions, God is telling Joshua. The rule of law must prevail. And sure enough, when the Israelites stray from God’s moral playbook — specifically, when a man named Achan personally profits from the spoils of the conquest of Jericho — Israel subsequently loses a key battle.
The message here is that the ends can never justify the means. Cruelty can never be the point.
In another recruitment video, DHS featured a line from Psalm 18: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed.”
As Rabbi Benjamin Segal writes in his 2022 commentary, “The New Psalm,” the entire remainder of the psalm is about how the righteous, defenseless and meek shall inherit the earth. “Doing good is the guarantor not only of a positive future in the short run,” Segal writes, “but also of survival in the long run. … The psalm is addressed to the underprivileged community, which sees itself as both righteous and suffering.”
Nothing could be further from the mission of ICE.
Nowhere is DHS’ misrepresentation of the Bible more evident than in the apocalyptic tone of a one-minute recruitment video that shows armed U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel boarding helicopters as a man quotes the Prophet Isaiah. “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’” he says, as a version of Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” swells.
The earnest voice-over returns to say, “I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’”
Isaiah was called by God to speak on behalf of the persecuted and the weak — precisely the people being hunted down in the hallways of courthouses and the parking lots of Home Depots – and to call out those who are oppressing them.
If you don’t believe me, listen to Isaiah himself, in the same chapter: “Your rulers are rogues/And cronies of thieves/Everyone avid for presents/And greedy for gifts;/They do not judge the case of the orphan/And the widow’s cause never reaches them.”
In the end of that chapter, the prophet proclaims that God “will restore your magistrates as of old, and your counselors as of yore. After that you shall be called City of Righteousness, Faithful City.”
Sorry, DHS, you’ve failed Bible 101. You can’t cherry-pick verses, when the rest of the chapter puts your argument to shame. The Bible has many sections that are hardly “woke,” but the commandment to love the stranger is repeated 36 times. And the injunction to not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor is as clear as day.
Which is why those who falsely proclaim piety must be called out again and again by those who have spent their lives studying these texts.
Next time, please leave the biblical scholarship to the professionals.
(Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of “Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi” and “Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously.” See more of his writing at his Substack page, “In This Moment.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)