Strangers at the Covenant Gate: Gibeon, Israel, and Nations from Sinai to New

Who was allowed to stand inside Israel's covenant life-and what did "inside" actually mean?Strangers at the Covenant Gate begins with a deceptively narrow question. When Joshua assigned the Gibeonites to become "hewers of wood and drawers of water," was he applying the foreign-worker language already found in Deuteronomy 29?From that textual hinge, Stephanie Gentry follows the evidence from Abraham, Passover, Sinai, and Moab through Rahab, Ruth, Gibeon, Israel's prophets, the ministry of Jesus, Acts, Paul, and Revelation.Scripture does not portray covenant membership as the unrestricted erasure of every boundary. Neither does it teach that people from other nations were absolutely barred from Israel's worship, obligations, protection, promises, or communal life. Instead, the biblical record presents regulated incorporation: genuine participation under defined conditions, often without erasing ancestry or conferring every tribal, landed, priestly, marital, or governmental status.This investigation directly addresses the most contested claims: - Did "no stranger shall eat" exclude every foreigner from Passover?- Did "one law" transform foreign participants into genealogical Israelites?- Were Paul's Gentiles merely scattered Israelites?- How do Romans 9-11 preserve both Israel and Gentile inclusion?- Does Acts 15 require Gentiles to observe Israel's complete calendar?- What roles will Israel and the nations occupy in God's kingdom?- How should Isaiah 56, the "other sheep," fellow heirs, prophetic beasts, and New Jerusalem's twelve gates be understood?The conclusion is neither ethnic replacement nor absolute exclusion. Israel's historical identity remains intact while people from the nations enter genuine covenant blessings through Israel's Messiah and the Spirit.Includes an eight-covenant architecture, Hebrew and Greek lexical analysis, priesthood and law distinctions, kingdom horizons, prophetic-beast symbolism, servitude and governance, the Queen of the South, Gentile fellow-heirship, extensive notes, glossary, Scripture roadmap, bibliography, and Scripture and subject indexes.