D21-13: God Is NOT Concerned About The Racial Purity Of His Chosen People

“When you go out to war against your enemies, and Adonai your God hands them over to you, and you take prisoners, and you see among the prisoners a woman who looks good to you, and you feel attracted to her and want her as your wife; you are to bring her home to your house, where she will shave her head, cut her fingernails and remove her prison clothing.”-Deuteronomy 21:10-13

In ancient times, there was one striking difference between Hebrew law in comparison to other nations’ laws when it came to the status of female prisoners of war.

When we examine the laws dealing with human spoils of war found in the Greek classics, the Code of Hammurabi or the Mari law code documents, we’ll find that female prisoners of war were considered as nothing less than chattel.

They were on the same level as animals or furniture.

However, not so with Hebrew law.

The Torah gives female prisoners of war the status of human beings of value.

This was a revolutionary notion in a time when it was common in most ancient societies to take women and children as captives and turn them into slaves as their spoils of war.

The issue we’re dealing with from verse 10 of Deuteronomy Chapter 21 is that of a soldier who sees one female prisoner of war and is so attracted to her, he decides he wants to make her his wife.

Now let me make something clear here.

We are ONLY talking about Israelite soldiers taking gentile women to be their wives and NOT the other way around.

This also leads me to another important point and it’s actually something that is demonstrated from way back in the Book of Genesis.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about the idea of genealogical purity or more accurately the lack of genealogical purity as it pertains to the Hebrews.

First, understand that before God selected Abraham to be set apart as one of His, he was a gentile.

However, even after God chose Abraham, there was always a way for a foreigner to become a part of Abraham’s clan if he so desired to do so.

And once a foreigner officially joined Abraham’s clan, he was no longer considered a foreigner.

That’s right.

The person who used to be a foreigner or gentile, once grafted in, from that point on would then be considered a Hebrew.

Let’s take a look at what I think is a really good example of foreigners joining Israel.

Recall when Abraham’s grandson Jacob returned back to his native land Canaan after living up in Mesopotamia for close to two decades where he had worked for his uncle Laban.

Jacob and his family ended up settling outside of an area called SHECHEM and it was there that a tragic incident occurred that multiplied the size of Jacob’s family literally overnight.

I’m talking about the incident when King Shechem’s son raped Jacob’s daughter Dinah.

Do you remember how her brothers responded?

They deceived King Shechem by telling him that if the men of Shechem circumcised themselves, they could join Jacob’s tribe.

King Shechem and his sons fell for the ploy and agreed to have all the men in his kingdom circumcised

Well, to make a long story short, when all the men were lying in pain waiting to recover from what must have been a very painful surgical operation in those days, Dinah’s brothers attacked them.

They ended up killing every adult male and taking all the women and children of Shechem to be their slaves.

Do you know what this resulted in?

In one fell stroke, pretty much all of the Canaanite inhabitants of Shechem became part of one Hebrew clan or another.

Again, understand that in those days, it was par for the course for a tribe or nation to take prisoners of war as a means to increase the size of their tribe or tribes while decreasing the size of the enemy’s tribes.

In those days, the size of a tribe was the determining factor of how wealthy and powerful it was.

This is simple math.

The more people in a tribe, the stronger that tribe was, plain and simple.

However, the main point I want to stress here is that as a result of the avenging raid on Shechem, Jacob’s family, the family that would become what we today know as Israel, instantly transformed into a very ethnically mixed family composed of Hebrews descended from Abraham’s loins AND also comprised of…

…Canaanites who would in time become fully naturalized members of Israel.

Actually, before Jacob even moved with his family down into Egypt where he would stay for about 400 years, the population of Israel was comprised of about 50% “genealogical Hebrews” with the remaining half being gentiles!!!

I’m not even kidding!

And when the Hebrews were sojourning in Egypt, there was a ton of intermarriage happening between Jacob’s family and not only just with the Egyptians but with the other foreigners residing in Egypt at the time.

That’s right man.

Egypt had a humongous foreign population living within its borders at the time.

Later on, even Moses married a Midianite woman.

It’s also been said that the size of the mixed multitude of non-Hebrews outnumbered the native-born Hebrews who they stood shoulder to shoulder with when the Law was given at Sinai.

So what we’re seeing here in Deuteronomy is simply an extension of this.

Here we have a set of laws that would make it legal for an Israelite soldier to take a female foreign prisoner and make her his wife.

Per the Torah,  once the marriage ceremony was concluded, that former gentile female prisoner was considered fully grafted in.

In other words, she became a Hebrew.

Hence, the gene pool that started with Abraham’s stock became even further watered down once this happened.

Honestly speaking, I’ve always found this idea of a pure Hebrew genealogical pool to be quite nonsensical.

Heck, when I travelled to Israel a couple of years ago, I encountered native-born Israelis of literally every shade of skin color under the sun.

Check out this picture of a couple of female IDF soldiers I took.

One of them is obviously I guess an Ethiopian Jew and the other girl looks kind of Hispanic.

In fact, to share another quick anecdote, my father is Japanese and my mother is European French.

This year when I celebrated Passover at the Jewish Community Center here in Tokyo, I was seated at the table with an Asian couple, a family from Israel, and couple of American Jews.

Now get this.

When we were all introducing ourselves, the wife of the Israeli family looked at me and said “You’re Israeli, right?”.

I laughed and politely informed her I was from the United States.

But she was right, because wherever I went in Israel, before I opened my mouth, everybody and I mean EVERYBODY including the tourists thought I was a native-born Israeli.

If I could speak Hebrew fluently, I so felt like I could fit in, in Israel.

Again, my point is if an ethnically-mixed bro like me can look like a native-born Israeli, the idea of genealogical purity in Israel is hogwash.

So here’s the big takeaway that I want you to take away from all this.

It is this.

God does NOT give two hoots about the racial purity of His Chosen People.

It was never His concern.

What God is concerned about is the spiritual purity and the faithfulness to Him…

…regardless of your gene pool or your racial background.

I’m done.

CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

“Also, if you belong to the Messiah,
you are seed of Avraham
and heirs according to the promise.”
-Galatians 3:29

“And don’t suppose you can comfort
yourselves by saying,
‘Avraham is our father’!
For I tell you that God can raise up
for Avraham sons from these stones!”
-Matthew 3:9

 ^“There is neither Jew nor Gentile,
neither slave nor freeman,
neither male nor female;
for in union with the Messiah Yeshua,
you are all one.”
-Galatians 3:28