In spite of the Biblical commandment instructing Hebrews to NOT marry gentiles AND…
…in spite of what many Rabbis would like us to believe about how the Hebrews kept their gene pool pure for long stretches of time…
…the Biblical and historical reality in terms of what actually happened is much much different.
The truth is from the very beginning Hebrew men were constantly tempted by foreign gentile women to the point where they constantly brought them home much to the chagrin of their parents and tried to get them integrated into Hebrew society.
A perfect example of this is Samson’s story in the Book of Judges.
Before he started going on his whoring rampage, Samson attempted to marry a Philistine woman and his parents were none to pleased about it.
The following joke well expresses this sentiment:
A young Jewish man calls his mother and says,
“Mom, I’m bringing home a wonderful woman I want to marry.
She’s a Native American, and her name is Shooting Star.”
“How nice,” says his mother.
“I have an Indian name, too,” he says.
“It’s Running Water, and you have to call me that from now on.”
“How nice,” says his mother.
“You have to have an Indian name, too, Mom.”
“I already do,” says the mother.
“Just call me Sitting Shiva.”
An important thing we need to consider is that in the ancient Middle East (including Israel), a girl wasn’t given much freedom of choice when it came to marriage.
It was usually the father who determined who his daughter would marry and the decision was usually made based on how much money a man could offer the father in return for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
Not only would a father usually offer his daughter to the highest bidder (which was bad enough), but he would also let gentiles participate in the bidding.
From a Torah perspective, that is a big no-no…yet it was a frequent occurrence.
Why was it such a problem for a Hebrew man to marry a foreign woman?
The reason is because a foreign woman would bring the pagan ways of her tribe into Israelite society.
In addition, there was always pressure from her family that was put on her Hebrew husband to at least be tolerant and respectful of her heathen beliefs.
“Tolerant” and “respectful“?
Hmmm…those seem to be the two main operative words the liberal churches just love to bang those over the head with who disagree with their BS political correctness.
Even King Solomon who married literally hundreds of foreign wives fell for this trap.
Due to the influence of his gentile wives, he became openly tolerant of their worship of pagan deities to the point where he even arranged for altars to be built so his wives could sacrifice to their false gods.
However, as bad as it was for a Hebrew man to marry a gentile woman, it was much much worse for a Hebrew woman to marry a gentile man.
If a Hebrew woman married a gentile man, she was no longer considered an Israelite AND…
…any children she bore with her gentile husband would be considered gentiles and separated from the commonwealth of Israel.
To make matters worse, the redemption she had possessed as her birthright was lost with her children losing that future right as well.
The Lord knew what He was talking about when He commanded Israel to stay away from the seven named people groups here in Deuteronomy 7.
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