Is interracial marriage a sin?
The world seems to be getting smaller and Americas claim to be a cultural melting pot proves truer every year. Interracial marriages, once extremely uncommon here and still taboo in many other nations, are no longer an oddity in any part of America. Because of some Old Testament history, however, the question arises: Is interracial marriage a sin? If your name is something like Azariah and you are a Jew living in 1000 B.C. Israel, it most certainly is. Before entering Canaan, the Jews were warned, When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son (Deut. 7:1-3). Gentiles, however, were free to marry non-Jews under the original authority of Genesis 2:18-25. All Gentiles, whether they were fair-skinned or dark, were at liberty to marry one another in the Lord. Under the New Testament o
A. No, in fact the Bible permits it. Moses married an Ethiopian (Numbers 12:1). Some interpret this to mean he married a Saudi Arabian or Lybian, but the word “Ethiopian” was used in ancient times to denote anyone who had dark skin, not just people from Ethiopia. An Arabian or Lybian wouldn’t have been any darker than an Israelite, and there would have been no call for people to make fun of her dark skin, as was the case with Moses’ wife. God punished the people who made fun of Moses and his dark skinned wife, and this shows God approves of interracial marriage. The verses in the Bible instructing Israelites not to marry foreigners are about not polluting Judaism with idol worship. They don’t have anything to do with race.
