Deuteronomy
7:1-4 – When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are
entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites,
Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and
stronger than you—and
when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you
have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them,
and show them no mercy. Do not
intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons
or take their daughters for your sons, for they will
turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
Malachi 2:11 – Judah has been
unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel
and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by
marrying women who worship a foreign god.
Exodus 34:15 – “Be careful not
to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for
when they prostitute themselves to their gods and
sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices.
Judges 3:6 – They took their daughters in
marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.
Joshua 23:12-13 – “But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors
of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you.
Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your
eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you.
1 Kings 11:2,4,6,11 – They were from
nations about which the Lord had
told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with
them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.”
Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love…As Solomon grew old, his wives
turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to
the Lord his
God, as the heart of David his father had been…So Solomon did evil in
the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely,
as David his father had done…So the Lord said
to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and
my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the
kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.
Nehemiah 13:26 – Was it not
because of marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the
many nations there was no king like him. He
was loved by his God, and God made him king over all
Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women.
Application:
- · Marriages to women who worshiped a foreign god were strictly forbidden in the covenant law, not for ethnic or cultural reasons but because they would lead to apostasy.
- · Partaking of food sacrificed to a pagan deity invites compromise.
- · The Lord’s command against intermarriage with foreigners was not racially motivated but was intended to prevent spiritual contamination and apostasy.
- · The degenerating effect of such intermarriage is well illustrated in Solomon’s experience.
- · The Lord prohibited alliances, either national or domestic, with the peoples of Canaan because such alliances would tend to compromise Israel’s loyalty to the Lord.
- · Foreign women indeed did turn the Israelites hearts after their gods.
- · Solomon’s wives turned Solomon’s heart after the foreign women’s gods, as the Lord had warned.
- · Although David committed grievous sins, he was repentant, and he was never involved in idolatrous worship.
- · Solomon had broken the most basic demands of the covenant and thereby severely undermined the entire covenant relationship between God and His people.
- · In later years Solomon’s foreign wives led Solomon to worship other gods, so that he built a high place for Chemosh, the god of the Moabites.
All Scripture verses taken from NIV
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