In most of the ancient world, the order-nonorder contrast was defined in terms of urbanites versus nomadic outsiders. . . .but for the Israelites order is not defined in terms of the city but in terms of the covenant. Thus "those who live outside the covenant" will be described in pejorative and dehumanizing terms.

. . . .The point of the rhetoric is not to objectively describe the behavior but to generate a negative profile of those who live outside the established order, for the purposes of promoting the established order as the ideal state of being: "By marginalizing certain groups of society defines its own idenitty, which finds its expression also in a specific conception of the world." This is what most of the ancient world did for the established order of the city and what Israel does fo rthe established order of the covenant.