By Januarius Asongu, PhD

Abstract

Deaths at sea have become a recurring feature of contemporary migration governance. Across the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Pacific, deterrence-based policies expose migrants to lethal risk through pushbacks, interdiction, and abandonment in maritime spaces. While such practices are frequently justified in legal or security terms, they raise deeper questions about the moral status of human life under conditions of vulnerability. This article argues that biblical theology offers an important framework for evaluating these practices by examining three interrelated scriptural motifs: the sea as a morally charged space of chaos and danger, the stranger (gēr) as a socially vulnerable figure who generates ethical responsibility, and prophetic critiques of systems that normalize harm. Drawing on migration-informed biblical interpretation and close readings of texts from the Torah, Prophets, and New Testament, the article shows that the routinization of migrant death at sea conflicts with core biblical patterns of moral reasoning. Rather than treating maritime space as morally neutral, biblical texts portray the sea as a location where vulnerability intensifies and where responsibility toward life becomes most urgent.

Keywords: migration deterrence, maritime borders, biblical theology, gēr, prophetic critique, asylum, externalization, forced migration, Book of Jeremiah, Psalm 107, structural violence

1. Death at Sea and the Crisis of Biblical Moral Imagination

In recent decades, deaths at sea have become a persistent feature of global migration governance. Boats carrying migrants capsize in the Mediterranean, drift across the Caribbean, or disappear in the Pacific with alarming regularity. These tragedies are widely reported yet almost always treated as unfortunate but unavoidable consequences of migration management. Within policy discourse they appear as the predictable price of deterrence strategies designed to discourage irregular movement.

This routinization of death raises a question that is not primarily legal or political but theological: how should communities formed by the moral imagination of Scripture interpret deaths that occur in maritime spaces as foreseeable consequences of political policy?

Biblical theology approaches moral questions through narratives, symbols, and communal memory rather than through abstract ethical principles alone. As Bruce Birch (1991) has shown, the ethical vision of the Hebrew Bible takes shape in stories that reveal how communities respond—or fail to respond—to vulnerability and injustice. These narratives repeatedly situate moral testing at borders and waters, places where human fragility becomes visible and where the exercise of power stands exposed.

Recent scholarship has increasingly recognized that migration and displacement are not peripheral themes but constitutive elements of the biblical tradition. Daniel Smith-Christopher (2002) has demonstrated that Israel's theological imagination was profoundly shaped by experiences of exile and forced migration. Pikka Pitkänen (2014) similarly observes that questions of land, identity, and belonging emerge repeatedly in biblical narratives of movement and settlement. Migration has thus become an important interpretive lens for understanding how Scripture addresses strangers and outsiders (Joachimsen, 2018).

The book of Jeremiah has proven particularly fruitful for migration-informed interpretation. As the essays collected in a special issue of Political Theology demonstrate, Jeremiah's grappling with the realities of imperial power, the devastation of war, and multiple forms of involuntary migration offers a powerful resource for constructive theological reflection on current events ("Migration, political power and the Book of Jeremiah," 2018). Steed Vernyl Davidson (2018) has shown how the book portrays Judahites fleeing to Egypt in terms that closely resemble our contemporary understanding of refugees, while also exposing how narratives of victimhood can be co-opted to marginalize other groups. C. A. Strine (2018), drawing on Jeremiah 29, has argued that the letter to the exiles provides three key principles for a theological approach to migration and integration, emphasizing that proximity between migrants and hosts is required to make mutual embrace possible. Anna Rowlands (2018) has documented how destitute asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom turn to Jeremiah—the "biblical detainee par excellence"—to narrate their experiences of hope denied and time distorted.

Yet within this developing field of migration-informed interpretation, surprisingly little attention has been given to the sea as a setting for migration. Biblical scholarship on displacement has focused largely on wilderness wandering, exile, and diaspora communities. These themes are undoubtedly central, but the biblical corpus also preserves significant narratives of maritime movement. Prophets board ships, traders risk storms for livelihood, prisoners travel under guard. The sea thus becomes a location where mobility intersects with danger and where the moral character of communities is revealed.

This article explores that intersection. It does not treat Scripture as a source of direct policy prescriptions. Rather, it asks how biblical narratives shape moral perception regarding vulnerability, responsibility, and the use of power. Three themes guide the analysis: the sea as a space of existential danger, the stranger as a figure of ethical testing, and prophetic critiques of systems that normalize harm.

Taken together, these motifs suggest a distinctive moral claim that runs counter to much contemporary policy logic: within the ethical imagination of Scripture, vulnerability intensifies responsibility rather than diminishing it. The sea—precisely because it is dangerous—becomes a place where the obligation to preserve life becomes most urgent.

2. The Sea in Biblical Theology: Chaos, Boundary, and Human Vulnerability

Within the biblical canon, the sea is never merely a geographic feature. It is a space charged with symbolic meaning, theological reflection, and existential danger. Meric Srokosz and Rebecca Watson (2020), in their collaborative study The Blue Planet and the Bible, have recently demonstrated that the Bible's focus on the sea raises questions not only about ecology and the natural world but also about economics, the interconnectedness of communities, and human fear of chaos and disaster. Unlike modern political discourse, which tends to treat maritime space as a legally ambiguous frontier or neutral transit zone, biblical texts portray the sea as a site where human vulnerability becomes inescapably visible.

Grasping this symbolic landscape is essential for evaluating contemporary practices that rely on the dangers of maritime crossing to regulate migration.

2.1 Creation and the Primordial Waters

The opening verses of Genesis situate the sea within the drama of creation itself. Before the ordered world emerges, "darkness covered the face of the deep" (Gen 1:2, New Revised Standard Version). The Hebrew term tĕhôm evokes primordial waters associated with chaos in ancient Near Eastern cosmology. Creation is narrated as God's act of establishing order within an environment of potential disorder (Westermann, 1994).

Scholars have long recognized that this imagery draws on broader ancient Near Eastern traditions in which divine authority subdues chaotic waters. John Day (1985) has shown that biblical references to the sea preserve echoes of mythological conflict between divine power and primordial chaos. Yet the Hebrew Bible simultaneously demythologizes these traditions. The sea remains part of creation rather than a rival deity.

This tension between symbol and location gives the sea its distinctive theological function. It represents both metaphorical chaos and the literal environment where human vulnerability becomes most acute.

2.2 The Sea as Human Peril

Biblical texts repeatedly emphasize the existential danger associated with maritime environments. Psalm 69 portrays drowning waters as an overwhelming threat:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me (Ps 69:1–2, NRSV).

Psalm 107 describes sailors who venture onto the sea in ships and encounter storms that reduce human skill to helplessness:

They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their anguish; they reeled and staggered like drunkards, and were at their wits' end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress (Ps 107:26–28, NRSV).

The literary structure of this passage is significant: God "spoke and raised a tempest" (v. 25); the sailors mount to the heavens and sink to the depths (v. 26); they reel and stagger (v. 27); they cry to the Lord (v. 28); and God calms the storm (v. 29) (Bible Hub, n.d.). The narrative highlights the fragility of life within maritime spaces and the complete dependence of sailors upon rescue—whether human or divine.

Claus Westermann (1994) observed that such passages reflect a theological awareness that human beings remain vulnerable within the created order. The sea thus becomes a symbol of the limits of human control. Cuneiform tablets from Ugarit (thirteenth century BCE) record Mediterranean storms feared as acts of the deity Yamm; Psalm 107 recasts that cultural memory, asserting that Yahweh—not a sea-god—commands the chaotic deep (Bible Hub, n.d.).

Importantly, these texts do not interpret maritime danger as punishment. They simply acknowledge the sea as a domain where vulnerability becomes unavoidable.

2.3 Divine Boundaries and Human Limits

Another perspective on maritime space appears in the divine speeches of Job. In Job 38 God asks:

Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped"? (Job 38:8–11, NRSV).

The rhetorical question makes clear that the boundaries of the sea belong to divine authority rather than human power. Human attempts to dominate maritime space are therefore limited and provisional.

This theological insight challenges modern assumptions about technological mastery over natural environments. Even highly advanced societies remain vulnerable to the unpredictable forces of the sea.

2.4 Maritime Narratives of Migration

Several biblical narratives illustrate how maritime danger intersects with human movement.

The story of Jonah depicts a prophet attempting to flee divine responsibility by boarding a ship bound for Tarshish. When a violent storm threatens the vessel, the sailors struggle desperately to preserve life:

Then the sailors were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them (Jonah 1:5, NRSV).

The narrative portrays the sailors—foreigners who do not belong to Israel—as morally serious individuals who refuse to treat human life lightly. Even after learning that Jonah's disobedience has endangered them, they resist throwing him overboard until no alternative remains: "they cried out to the Lord, 'Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man's life'" (Jonah 1:14, NRSV).

A similar dynamic appears in the Acts of the Apostles, where Paul's journey to Rome culminates in a dramatic shipwreck. Acts 27 recounts how sailors, soldiers, and prisoners struggle together to survive a violent storm. The centurion, despite having authority over prisoners, prevents soldiers from killing them: "the centurion, wishing to save Paul, kept them from carrying out their plan" (Acts 27:43, NRSV). The text emphasizes that every individual on board survives: "they all reached land safely" (Acts 27:44, NRSV).

Joel Marcus (2000) has noted that such narratives highlight both the unpredictability of the sea and the ethical importance of preserving life in dangerous circumstances.

2.5 Migration Across Water

When these maritime narratives are read alongside biblical accounts of migration, an important pattern emerges. Movement across water frequently occurs under conditions of extreme vulnerability. Travelers depend upon fragile vessels, uncertain weather, and the goodwill of strangers.

The sea thus becomes not merely a cosmological symbol but a setting where mobility intersects with danger in ways that closely resemble contemporary migration across maritime borders.

3. The Stranger and the Ethics of Vulnerability

If the sea represents a space where vulnerability becomes visible, the stranger represents the human figure who most consistently embodies exposure within biblical ethics. Across the Hebrew Bible, the treatment of strangers functions as a central moral test. The presence of outsiders reveals how a society understands power, responsibility, and justice.

3.1 The Stranger as a Test of Communal Justice

Concern for the stranger appears repeatedly within Israel's legal texts, narrative traditions, and prophetic critiques. The ethical treatment of outsiders becomes a defining characteristic of covenantal identity.

Bruce Birch (1991) has argued that the biblical ethical tradition consistently centers on the protection of vulnerable persons—particularly widows, orphans, and strangers. These figures represent individuals lacking social power or kinship protection. Their treatment reveals whether a society embodies justice or exploitation. As an early twentieth-century commentator in the American Journal of Sociology observed, the prophets' emphasis was upon justice rather than charity: the poor and vulnerable could ordinarily eke out a livelihood if they were not defrauded or injured ("Sociology of the Old Testament," 1903).

This concern emerges directly from Israel's historical experience. The foundational narrative of the Exodus portrays Israel as a people who once lived as strangers in a foreign land. As Christopher Wright (2004) has shown, the memory of Egypt becomes a moral paradigm shaping Israel's understanding of justice. The obligation to protect strangers arises not from abstract ethical theory but from remembered vulnerability.

3.2 Distinguishing Between gēr and nokrî

A more precise understanding of biblical migration ethics requires attention to the terminology used for foreigners. Biblical Hebrew employs several words to describe outsiders, the most significant of which are gēr and nokrî.

The gēr refers to a resident foreigner living within Israelite territory but lacking land inheritance or tribal affiliation. Because economic security in ancient Israel depended heavily on kinship networks and property rights, the gēr occupied a structurally vulnerable position. Without extended family protection, such individuals could easily be exploited.

For this reason, the Torah frequently groups the gēr with widows and orphans. These categories represent persons whose vulnerability arises not from ethnicity alone but from their lack of social protection: "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse any widow or orphan" (Exod 22:21–22, NRSV).

The nokrî, by contrast, generally refers to a foreign national who remains outside the covenant community. While biblical texts sometimes portray the nokrî with suspicion, the ethical focus of Israelite law consistently concerns the treatment of the resident stranger living within the community.

John Barton (2006) has observed that Israelite legal traditions placed unusual emphasis on protecting socially vulnerable persons, including foreigners residing within Israel's borders. This concern reflects a distinctive ethical orientation in which vulnerability becomes the basis for moral obligation.

3.3 Memory and Ethical Responsibility

The ethical obligations toward the stranger are repeatedly grounded in Israel's collective memory of displacement.

Deuteronomy instructs:

You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Deut 10:19, NRSV).

This command reveals that biblical ethics emerges from historical memory rather than abstract philosophical reasoning. Communities that remember their own vulnerability become capable of recognizing the suffering of others.

Walter Brueggemann (2001) has described this dynamic as a form of "moral remembering," in which historical memory shapes ethical responsibility. Forgetting such experiences risks reproducing the oppression that communities once endured.

Kristin Joachimsen (2018) has shown how biblical texts transform experiences of displacement into theological reflection, shaping Israel's ethical commitments toward outsiders.

3.4 Legal Protection of the Stranger

The ethical concern for the gēr is embedded within Israel's legal tradition. Several passages explicitly prohibit the mistreatment of resident foreigners.

Exodus commands:

You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Exod 22:21, NRSV).

Leviticus goes further:

The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God (Lev 19:34, NRSV).

These texts do not abolish communal boundaries. Israel remains a distinct covenant community with its own identity and institutions. Yet the laws impose significant constraints on how authority may be exercised within those boundaries. The vulnerability of the stranger functions as a moral limit on political power.

Christopher Magezi (2019), in a study published in Verbum et Ecclesia, has argued that God's promises to judge and punish his people when they oppose his care for the vulnerable—including aliens, widows, and orphans (Exod 22:21–27)—provide a theological foundation for encouraging responsible migration response within contemporary churches. The interplay of fear of divine judgment and responsibility compulsion, he suggests, creates a nexus for ethical engagement with migration.

3.5 Debates Concerning Foreigners in the Biblical Tradition

The biblical canon does not present a single, uniform perspective on foreigners. Certain texts reflect genuine tensions concerning the presence of outsiders within Israelite society.

The reforms described in Ezra–Nehemiah, for instance, emphasize separation from foreign populations. Ezra 9–10 recounts the dissolution of marriages between Israelites and foreign women, while Nehemiah 13 similarly enforces boundaries between the returned exiles and surrounding peoples.

Scholars such as Mark Brett (2003) have argued that these debates reflect struggles over communal identity during periods of political instability. The post-exilic community, newly returned from Babylonian exile and facing the challenge of rebuilding national identity, adopted stringent measures to preserve distinctiveness.

Such tensions illustrate that the biblical tradition contains multiple perspectives on foreign identity. Yet even within these debates, concern for vulnerable persons remains a recurring theme. As John Collins (2014) has observed, the ethical discourse of the Hebrew Bible consistently returns to questions of justice for those lacking social power.

3.6 Prophetic Critique of the Oppression of Strangers

The prophetic literature intensifies the ethical demands found in the Torah. Rather than merely prescribing laws, the prophets condemn societies that fail to uphold justice for vulnerable populations.

Jeremiah warns that divine judgment will fall upon communities that mistreat the stranger, the orphan, and the widow:

If you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place (Jer 7:6–7, NRSV).

Ezekiel similarly indicts Jerusalem for exploiting resident foreigners:

The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery; they have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the alien without redress (Ezek 22:29, NRSV).

Walter Houston (2021), in his analysis of social justice in the Hebrew prophets, shows how prophetic writings condemn social injustice in their context and offer unfulfilled visions of social justice. Houston draws attention to the rhetoric of the prophets as contesting the rhetoric of the oppressors and unmasking their lies and misleading descriptions. Abraham Heschel (2001) famously described the prophets as voices of moral protest who refuse to accept injustice as inevitable. Walter Brueggemann (2010) has similarly emphasized that prophetic critique exposes political systems that render suffering invisible in the name of stability.

When deaths at sea become routine features of migration governance, the prophetic tradition offers a powerful lens for interpreting such normalization.

3.7 The Stranger in the Teaching of Jesus

The ethical vision of the Hebrew Scriptures continues within the teaching of Jesus. Rather than presenting a completely new ethic of hospitality, the Gospels reaffirm themes already present within the biblical tradition.

In Matthew 25, welcoming the stranger becomes one of the criteria by which nations are judged:

I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matt 25:35, NRSV).

The passage continues with the startling identification between Christ and the vulnerable: "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me" (Matt 25:40, NRSV).

Gerhard Lohfink (2012) has argued that Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God consistently centers on the inclusion of socially marginalized persons. The presence of the vulnerable becomes the place where divine justice is revealed.

The life of Jesus itself reflects patterns of displacement. The Gospel of Matthew portrays the Holy Family fleeing political violence and seeking refuge in Egypt: "Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod" (Matt 2:14–15, NRSV). During his ministry Jesus lives as an itinerant teacher without permanent home or institutional protection.

These elements reinforce a recurring biblical insight: vulnerability and divine presence are closely intertwined.

3.8 Migration and Maritime Vulnerability

When the biblical ethics of the stranger are read alongside maritime imagery, their significance sharpens. Migrants crossing water embody the convergence of two biblically charged realities: extreme vulnerability and moral testing.

The sea intensifies exposure. The stranger intensifies ethical obligation.

For biblical theology, these realities cannot be separated. Communities encountering vulnerable persons in dangerous environments face a fundamental moral question: will they respond with protection or exploitation?

4. Prophetic Critique, Power, and the Normalization of Harm

If the sea reveals vulnerability and the stranger tests ethical response, a third dimension of the biblical moral imagination addresses how entire systems can render such testing invisible. The prophetic critique of political orders that normalize harm is essential for understanding contemporary migration deterrence.

4.1 Prophetic Critique and the Structures of Injustice

The prophetic literature repeatedly exposes systems in which suffering becomes routine. Rather than focusing exclusively on individual wrongdoing, the prophets direct attention to broader patterns of power that produce injustice.

Long before modern social theory introduced the concept of structural violence, biblical texts recognized that harm can emerge from political and economic arrangements rather than from direct acts of cruelty.

4.2 The Banality of Injustice

The prophetic critique frequently targets societies in which injustice becomes socially accepted. Amos condemns communities that "sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way" (Amos 2:6–7, NRSV). Isaiah denounces elites who accumulate land while others are displaced: "Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!" (Isa 5:8, NRSV).

These passages describe societies in which human suffering becomes an ordinary consequence of economic and political organization. What makes such arrangements morally troubling is precisely their ordinariness.

Walter Brueggemann (2010) has described this phenomenon as the "royal consciousness"—a form of governance that renders suffering invisible in the name of stability and order. Within such systems, injustice appears normal because it is embedded within institutions that are themselves taken for granted.

This insight bears directly on contemporary migration governance. Deaths at sea are rarely described as acts of violence. They are framed instead as tragic but inevitable outcomes of dangerous journeys undertaken by migrants themselves. The prophetic tradition challenges precisely this form of moral distancing.

4.3 Law and the Corruption of Justice

Another recurring theme concerns the distortion of law. The prophets do not reject legal systems as such; they criticize laws that protect the powerful while exposing vulnerable populations to exploitation.

Isaiah declares:

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey! (Isa 10:1–2, NRSV).

Here injustice emerges not from lawlessness but from legal frameworks that institutionalize inequality. John Barton (2006) has noted that biblical ethics repeatedly measures the legitimacy of law by its capacity to protect the vulnerable. When legal structures expose marginalized persons to suffering, they cease to fulfill their moral purpose.

This observation has clear implications for contemporary migration policies. Maritime interdictions, pushbacks, and detention regimes typically operate within formally legal frameworks. Yet legality alone does not guarantee moral legitimacy. Biblical theology insists that authority remains accountable to the preservation of life.

4.4 Ancient Deterrence and the Weaponization of Geography

The use of environmental danger to regulate human movement is not unique to the modern world. Ancient states also developed strategies designed to discourage migration by exploiting natural hazards.

Historical research on Egyptian border policy illustrates this dynamic. Ellen Morris (2019) has shown that Egyptian authorities often relied on the harsh conditions of desert frontiers to deter unauthorized movement into imperial territory. Rather than constructing continuous barriers, imperial administrators allowed the desert itself to function as a defensive mechanism. Migrants attempting to cross these regions faced dehydration, starvation, and exposure. Geography became an instrument of governance.

Such practices demonstrate that deterrence through environmental danger has deep historical precedents. Yet from a biblical perspective they raise profound ethical questions. When authorities deliberately rely on environmental hazards to regulate human movement, vulnerability becomes a tool of policy.

4.5 The Sea as a Medium of Empire

While biblical texts often portray the sea as a space of vulnerability, they also recognize its role in facilitating imperial power.

The prophetic oracles against Tyre in Ezekiel 27–28 provide a vivid example. Tyre's wealth derives from maritime trade networks connecting distant regions across the Mediterranean:

Your borders are in the heart of the seas; your builders made perfect your beauty. . . . Your rowers have brought you into many waters (Ezek 27:4, 26, NRSV).

Ships transport luxury goods, creating vast economic prosperity. Yet the same text condemns Tyre's arrogance and exploitation. Maritime power becomes associated with imperial pride and moral corruption:

Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor (Ezek 28:17, NRSV).

This dual portrayal reveals something important about biblical maritime imagery. The sea functions both as a space of vulnerability for ordinary travelers and as a medium through which powerful states extend their influence.

Recognizing this duality is essential for understanding contemporary migration politics. Modern states possess technological capacities—satellite surveillance, naval patrols, border enforcement systems—that allow them to monitor maritime movement on an unprecedented scale. Yet migrants crossing water remain exposed to the same unpredictable dangers that biblical texts describe.

4.6 Structural Violence and Diffused Responsibility

Modern social theory uses the concept of structural violence to describe situations in which harm emerges from the organization of social systems rather than from direct acts of aggression. Individuals may not intend harm, yet institutional arrangements produce predictable patterns of suffering.

Biblical texts diagnose similar dynamics. The prophets describe societies in which injustice becomes embedded within everyday practices and therefore difficult to confront.

Amos condemns economic systems that "trample the poor" (Amos 5:11, NRSV). Isaiah denounces administrative decrees that produce displacement. These critiques reveal an awareness that moral responsibility does not disappear simply because harm is distributed across institutions.

Migration deterrence regimes often operate through precisely such diffusion of responsibility. Deaths at sea result from a combination of restrictive visa policies, maritime interceptions, delayed rescue operations, and the absence of safe migration pathways. No single decision appears directly responsible for any particular death. Yet the overall system produces predictable outcomes.

From a biblical perspective, this diffusion does not eliminate moral accountability.

5. Maritime Deterrence and the Ethical Challenge of the Sea

The preceding sections have traced three interconnected dimensions of the biblical moral imagination: the sea as a space of heightened vulnerability, the stranger as a figure who generates ethical responsibility, and the prophetic critique of political systems that normalize harm. Read together, they offer a framework for evaluating contemporary migration governance.

This final section reads modern maritime deterrence regimes through these biblical lenses. The aim is not to derive policy prescriptions from Scripture but to ask how the ethical imagination formed by biblical narratives illuminates present realities.

5.1 Maritime Deterrence in the Contemporary World

Migration across maritime borders has become a defining feature of global mobility. From the Mediterranean to the Caribbean to the Pacific, migrants undertake dangerous voyages in fragile vessels seeking safety, economic opportunity, or refuge.

In response, many governments have adopted deterrence strategies designed to reduce irregular migration. These strategies rely on maritime interdiction, pushbacks, offshore detention, and restrictions on rescue operations. Although mechanisms differ across regions, the underlying logic is consistent: migration will decline if crossing becomes sufficiently dangerous.

Alison Mountz (2015) has argued that contemporary border governance increasingly involves the externalization of migration control—states manage migration by shifting enforcement beyond their territorial boundaries. In her book The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago, Mountz (2020) traces this genealogy of externalization to the late 1970s, going against the grain of presentist discourse on the "refugee crisis." She shows that asylum offshoring began at sea in the Caribbean in the early 1980s, when the United States intercepted, detained, and returned Haitian and Cuban nationals. The US interceptions of Haitians in the late 1970s, the Golden Venture vessel in 1993 with 286 Chinese migrants, the Australian Tampa incident in 2001 and subsequent Pacific Solution, and Frontex deployment on the Canary Islands—these episodes are landmarks of what has now been consolidated as a politics of migration containment (Tazzioli, 2021).

Mountz (2020) argues that there has been a death of asylum comprising three dimensions: physical death, ontological death, and political death. "It's exactly the realm of the political that leads me to write about the death of asylum," she explains, "because it's so easy to make people disappear from sight and disappear from public discourse" (UCLA International Institute, 2017, para. 12). Maritime spaces become central to this disappearance. As she puts it, "there's a geography to rights and a geography to access, and externalization is designed precisely to prevent people from accruing the rights and access that they accrue when they land on sovereign territory" (UCLA International Institute, 2017, para. 14).

Within policy discourse, deaths at sea are typically framed as tragic but unavoidable consequences of these strategies. They appear as unfortunate outcomes of risky journeys rather than as direct products of political decisions.

This framing is precisely what biblical theology calls into question.

5.2 Deterrence and the Amplification of Risk

The ethical structure of deterrence rests on the deliberate amplification of risk. By allowing or increasing the dangers associated with migration routes, authorities hope to discourage future attempts.

In maritime contexts this strategy may involve restricting rescue operations, forcing vessels to take longer routes, or returning migrants to unsafe conditions. Although policymakers rarely intend deaths as explicit goals, fatalities become foreseeable consequences of policies designed to exploit environmental danger.

Biblical theology approaches such situations differently. Throughout Scripture, vulnerability in dangerous environments generates an obligation to preserve life—not an opportunity to impose additional risk.

Psalm 107 portrays sailors caught in violent storms who cry out for deliverance. The narrative does not interpret maritime danger as a useful instrument for regulating human movement. The preservation of life is the only appropriate response.

Deterrence policies thus invert a central biblical intuition: where Scripture sees danger as a reason for rescue, modern governance treats danger as a mechanism of control.

5.3 The Sea as Moral Buffer

One reason maritime deterrence has proven politically attractive is that the sea functions as a buffer zone. Unlike land borders, maritime spaces often exist beyond immediate public scrutiny and within complex legal jurisdictions. Actions taken at sea can obscure responsibility.

Pushbacks conducted far from shore, offshore detention facilities in remote territories, and delayed rescue operations illustrate how maritime geography can distance political authorities from the human consequences of their decisions.

Mountz (2020) and others have described this as the spatial externalization of border control. By relocating enforcement to distant spaces, states create zones where accountability becomes difficult to assign.

Biblical theology challenges this form of moral distancing. In Scripture the sea is not a morally neutral frontier but a location where human vulnerability becomes most visible. The waters are places where cries for rescue demand response.

5.4 Patterns Across Maritime Migration Routes

Although migration regimes differ across regions, similar patterns emerge in major maritime corridors.

In the Mediterranean, thousands attempting to reach Europe have died during sea crossings over the past two decades. Policies involving coordinated interceptions, restrictions on humanitarian rescue missions, and returns to unsafe conditions have made crossings more dangerous. The EU Pact on Migration in September 2020 marked a further step in migration containment, with accelerated asylum procedures, migrants' detention upon landing, and multiplication of bilateral agreements with third countries (Tazzioli, 2021).

In the Caribbean, interdiction practices have long prevented migrants from reaching North American shores. Boats are intercepted and returned before migrants can access asylum procedures.

In the Pacific, Australia's offshore detention system combines maritime interception with relocation to remote island facilities. The explicit aim is to ensure that migrants attempting sea crossings will not be allowed to settle in Australia.

Despite their differences, these systems share a common logic: environmental danger becomes an integral component of migration governance. From a biblical perspective, this reliance on danger as a policy instrument raises serious ethical concerns.

5.5 Diffusion of Responsibility

Another characteristic of contemporary deterrence regimes is the diffusion of responsibility across multiple actors. Coast guards, international agreements, private contractors, and supranational institutions all participate in migration control systems. As a result, no single authority appears directly responsible for deaths that occur at sea.

Biblical texts repeatedly critique similar patterns. The prophets describe societies in which injustice emerges not from explicit cruelty but from complex systems that obscure accountability. Brueggemann (2010) has argued that prophetic discourse exposes political arrangements that normalize suffering while concealing the responsibility of those in power.

Biblical theology insists that moral responsibility cannot be dissolved simply because harm is distributed across institutions.

5.6 Fear and the Ethics of Security

Deterrence strategies ultimately rely on fear. The expectation is that migrants will abandon dangerous journeys if the risks become sufficiently severe.

Yet biblical traditions consistently challenge the legitimacy of fear-based governance. Psalm 72 offers a vision of political authority grounded in justice rather than deterrence:

May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. . . . For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper (Ps 72:4, 12, NRSV).

Here stability arises not from the manipulation of fear but from the protection of vulnerable persons. Christopher Wright (2004) has noted that biblical ethics consistently links legitimate authority with the defense of those lacking social power. Security rooted in justice contrasts sharply with systems that rely on suffering to maintain order.

6. Conclusion — The Moral Claim of Life at Sea

Deaths at sea have become a tragic but familiar feature of contemporary migration politics. Boats capsize, migrants drift without rescue, vessels disappear beneath the waves. In policy discussions these deaths appear as unfortunate but inevitable outcomes of migration management.

This article has argued that such normalization represents a profound challenge to the moral imagination shaped by biblical theology.

Throughout the biblical canon, the sea appears as a space where human vulnerability becomes especially visible. The waters threaten life, yet they also reveal divine concern for those exposed to danger. Biblical narratives repeatedly portray rescue, solidarity, and the preservation of life as appropriate responses to maritime peril.

The biblical figure of the stranger reminds communities that vulnerability generates ethical responsibility. Israel's own experience of displacement forms the foundation of its obligation to protect outsiders.

The prophetic tradition exposes systems in which suffering becomes routine. Societies that allow harm to become ordinary—whether through economic structures, legal decrees, or administrative policies—stand under moral critique.

When these themes are read together, a consistent pattern emerges. In the moral world of Scripture, vulnerability never diminishes the value of human life. On the contrary, vulnerability intensifies the obligation to preserve life.

The sea—precisely because it is dangerous—becomes a place where this obligation becomes most urgent.

Contemporary deterrence regimes invert this moral logic. By relying on maritime danger to discourage migration, such systems transform vulnerability into an instrument of governance. Death becomes a predictable outcome rather than an unacceptable failure. As Mountz (2020) observes, the progressive deterioration of asylum is culminating today in the social, political, and ontological death of asylum.

Biblical theology does not offer detailed migration policies. Yet it shapes moral perception in ways that challenge the normalization of such practices. Within the symbolic and ethical universe of Scripture, the idea that certain lives become expendable once they cross water cannot be sustained.

Within the moral imagination of the Bible, no human being becomes killable by crossing water.

References

Barton, J. (2006). Ethics and the Old Testament (2nd ed.). SCM Press.

Bible Hub. (n.d.). Psalm 107:26: God's power, human frailty? Retrieved March 9, 2026, from https://biblehub.com/q/Psalm_107_26_God_s_power_human_frailty_2.htm

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