Does the Bible condemn interracial marriage?

There are a lot of people on the internet these days talking about interracial marriage. Especially on , where hateful, unbiblical, and satanic views about race seem to have taken a hold with disaffected men. These views seem wicked at face-value, but they purport to be Biblical.

There is a lot said about bloodlines, and honoring your ancestors, cherry picking some very out-of-context Bible verses, and even a lot of quoting of American theologians from the 1800s and early 1900s - though, oddly enough, nothing from much older theologians, magisterial reformers, or patristic sources (hm… 🤔).

So let’s take a moment to look at the issue of interracial marriage from a Scriptural, Christian perspective.

Faithfulness to God - The Priority of Scripture.

The strongest testimony in scripture against interracial marriage comes from Deuteronomy chapter 7, which reads as follows:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to possess and has driven out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them before you and you strike them down, then you must utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. What is more, you shall not intermarry with them. You shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. 

• Deuteronomy 7:1-3, MEV

This is unambiguously the clearest condemnation of ethnic inter-marriage in the Bible. In fact, this scripture seems like a slam dunk condemnation of interracial or interethnic marriages. So why isn’t this the verse that is used by those who think interracial marriages are sinful? Because if you read even one verse more into the chapter you realize God isn’t forbidding these marriages because of ethnicity or race:

 What is more, you shall not intermarry with them. You shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will be inflamed against you, and He will quickly destroy you. But this is how you shall deal with them: You shall destroy their altars and break down their images and cut down their Asherim and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be His special people, treasured above all peoples who are on the face of the earth.

• Deuteronomy 7:3-6, MEV

God certainly did forbid the Israelites from marrying the people of the nations around them, but it had nothing to do with ethnicity or race. God’s primary purpose in forbidding interracial marriage for the Israelites was so that they would remain faithful to Him in worship. God, knowing all things, knew that if His people were allowed to marry pagans, then they themselves would be swayed by their paganism.

Anyone who is married understands this pretty well. Before you’re married, you have a lot of different habits and views. Quite a few of those things perish in gruesome fashion when you and your spouse move in together. You now have another person that you consider in your daily activities and living. Your habits and routines shift to accommodate this other person (as do theirs). Eventually you form a sort of synergy around all of the malleable things, wherein you come to a mutual understanding.

The problem, though, centers around those non-malleable things. The non-negotiables that your spouse has. You love your spouse and often times will find yourself negotiating on topics that are non-negotiable to them, but surprisingly squishy for you when push comes to shove.

I’ll give you a concrete example.

My wife and I knew this couple, some years ago, that we had befriended. We were both in the same place in our lives: Young and married, but no kids yet. We got along well, and would often go out to eat or hang out at each other’s houses, etc.

The major difference between my wife and I, and this couple, is that they were devout atheists, and we were devout Christians. The man had been raised an atheist. He was very intelligent and very well read philosophically. We enjoyed sparring back and forth about God. It was always friendly, and always done over cigars and bourbon. The wife, however, was raised Methodist. But she really loved this man. So when they decided they wanted to be married, she became an atheist.

Something she thought was a non-negotiable was suddenly very squishy.

We ended up drifting apart from this couple, but not before they had their first child. The strangest thing happened, though, when they had a kid: The wife was suddenly Methodist again! She wanted her baby baptized, and she wanted her baby raised Methodist.

Surprisingly, the very adamant, intelligent atheist husband… wait for it… became a Methodist!

He converted, started going to church, had their kid baptized. Whole nine. I asked him about it and he shrugged and said, “It was important to her.”

We see this very thing happening throughout Scripture. The prophet Nehemiah gives us a good (and passionate) example of this:

Moreover, in those days I also saw Jews who had married the women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. Half of their children spoke in the language of Ashdod, yet none of them could recognize the language of the Jews. This was true language by language. So I confronted them and cursed them. Some of the men I beat. Others, I plucked out their hair. Also, I made them swear an oath by God and said to them, “You shall neither give your daughters to their sons, nor marry their daughters to your sons or to yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, who made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women caused even him to sin. Should we then listen to you, the ones doing all this great evil, who are behaving unfaithfully against our God by bedding foreign women?”

• Nehemiah 13:23-27, MEV

The problem outlined by Nehemiah isn’t that foreign women pollute the bloodline of Judah, and thus those who take foreign wives dishonor their parents and ancestors. It isn’t that God created distinct nations that He has commanded to remain unmixed.

The problem outlined by Nehemiah is that foreign wives lead faithful men to whore after foreign gods. God says this explicitly to Moses in Exodus 34, when He warns Moses not to let the people take foreign wives, yet says that they will do so anyway:

Watch yourself so that you make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it become a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their Asherah poles (for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they prostitute themselves with their gods, and sacrifice to their gods, and someone invites you to eat of his sacrifice. And then you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters prostitute themselves after their gods. They will make your sons prostitute themselves after their gods.

• Exodus 34:12-16, MEV

Biblical Examples of Interracial Marriage

It is also important, in this discussion, to look at various concrete examples of known interracial marriage that we have in the Bible. You would imagine that if this is a sinful action, and the Bible has several examples of it happening, that it would condemn that action. And yet, none of the examples of interracial marriage that explicitly occur in the Bible are condemned.

It’s the opposite, actually! They are all praised, and in one case, those who condemn the marriage because it is an inter-ethnic marriage are themselves admonished for sinful behavior!

Ruth & Boaz

Ruth is a Moabite woman who famous marries a prominent Jew, Boaz, in the Old Testament book of Ruth. Ruth is important in the Jewish faith as being the reason King David, the greatest Jewish king, even existed!

As we are told in Ruth, Ruth is the mother of Obed, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David (Ruth 4:17, 21-22).

Why wasn’t Boaz’s marriage to Ruth sinful? Because Ruth wasn’t a pagan or worshipper of false gods! Ruth has a very dramatic conversion moment in Chapter 1:

Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and her gods. Return with her!” But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to turn back from following you. For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people shall be my people and your God my God.

• Ruth 1:15-16, MEV

The prohibition against marrying foreigners came from God’s jealousy and His desire to keep His people from worshipping the gods of foreigners. This is not a problem if the foreigner worships the One True God, and thus the prohibition does not apply.

Rahab the Prostitute

Rahab was a prostitute and inn-keeper in Jericho who aided Joshua’s spies by hiding them from the men of the land and helping them escape a search party sent after them. If you read the account (found in Joshua 2) it is pretty clear that Rahab very quickly became a believer in the One True God after the Fear of Him fell upon her city. According to Matthew, she then goes on to marry Salmon, of Judah, and gives birth to the aforementioned Boaz (Matthew 1:5).

What’s more interesting is that, of the 5 women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus, 2 of them are non-Jew foreigners.

Yet some folks out there would have you believe that God is vehemently against interracial marriage and considers it sinful and abominable, but for some reason allowed 20% of His own genealogy to be interracial?

And not only is she not a Jew, Rahab is a Canaanite. There are those out there who claim that anyone from the lineage of Ham ought to be a slave and is cursed by God forever. And yet Christ’s own ancestor is a Canaanite woman.

Christ is truly the curse-breaker and the death of death for all men.

Moses & The Cushite

Numbers Chapter 12 outlines a very interesting event where we’re told about Moses taking a Cushite woman (a black Ethiopian) to be his wife. His brother Aaron and his sister in law Miriam come to him and criticize him before all the people of Israel for taking a Cushite wife. They go so far as to entreat God on the matter, questioning whether or not Moses is the only prophet that the Lord has in Israel if he behaves in such a way (marrying a foreigner).

God’s response? He strikes Miriam with leprosy for seven days.

New Testament

Paul tells us in Galatians 3:27-28, “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, and there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

A major claim of those who oppose interracial marriage is that God created nations, put borders between them, and we must maintain those borders. Never mind the nonsense of that claim from a historical perspective (I’m sure none of those people care about the borders of the Native Americans, for example, or any of the other massive border shifts that have happened throughout history). From a purely biblical perspective, Paul makes it clear here that the previous boundaries that would separate people are fully dissolved in Christ. There are now just two nations with which we concern ourselves: Citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, and citizens of this world. Those in Christ, and those not. Sheep and goats.

Ethnicity is no barrier to marriage between two Christians. In fact, in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, Paul repeats God’s command from the Old Testament:

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what part has he who believes with an unbeliever? 

• 2 Corinthians 6:14-15, MEV

According to Paul, it is not sinful for an Asian woman and an Aboriginal man to get married, or a white man and a black woman, or whatever other ethnic combination you want. The sin, for Paul (who was writing under the inspiration of God the Holy Ghost), is when a believer marries an unbeliever.

Once again, God’s concern is not for your physical bloodline. For all men are created by God, given life and sustained by Him, and all men descend from His sons Adam and Noah. All bloodlines belong to the Lord. All were created by Him. And all were redeemed by the blood of His son Jesus Christ.

God’s concern is your faithfulness. He does not want you to be involved with anything that will lead you away from Him. I promise you that the podcasts you listen to, the movies you watch, and the books you read are of much more concern to the Lord than the skin color of your Christian spouse.