In exploring what the Bible says about interracial marriage, we need to know the chronology and cultural context of applicable passages of scripture. In some Bible passages, intermarriage appears to be forbidden, while in others a more inclusive approach is adopted. Reconciling these differences requires interpreting the context and purpose of these instructions. The Bible does not even use terms like “black man,” “white people,” and “black woman.” It does not even define “race.”
Israel set apart
In the Old Testament, God established a covenant with Israel where the Israelites would be “set apart” from the surrounding nations and their practices. Consider the following verses:
“I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” (Genesis 17:7 NIV)
“I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” (Genesis 26:4 NIV)
By these decrees, the nation and people of Israel were holy to the Lord:
“Israel was holy to the LORD, the firstfruits of his harvest;” (Jeremiah 2:3a)
“you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:6a NIV)
Interreligious Marriage
One meaning of “holy” is to be “set apart.” Because the nation of Israel was set apart by the Lord, He established guidelines for its management and protection, and laws regarding marriage were among them. The following Old Testament verses list some of the marriage rules, as well as God’s rationale for them.
“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. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” (Deuteronomy 7: 1-6 NIV; emphasis added)
“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. And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.” (Exodus 34: 15-16 NIV; emphasis added)
“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.” (Malachi 2:11 NIV; emphasis added)
“The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.” (Judges 3:5-8 NIV; emphasis added)
A common denominator among these verses is the fear that Israelites would worship false gods. Therefore, the rules regarding intermarriage were a protective policy and a reminder of God’s first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3 NIV)
Additionally, God desires Godly offspring. “Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring.” (Malachi 2:15a NIV; emphasis added). A holy marriage provides the training ground for the next holy generation.
Marrying a Cushite
What is the difference between the terms race and ethnicity? VeryWellMind shares the following: “Commonalities such as race, national origin, tribal heritage, religion, language, and culture can describe someone’s ethnicity. Race is usually associated with biology and linked with physical characteristics such as hair texture and skin color.”
God created the Israelites as a holy ethnicity, not a holy race. They were to be a holy nation connected by blood, marriage, and religious practice. The descendants of Abraham are to be “as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17). God seems uninterested in their outward appearance, for He is the true God of all mankind, not just one tribe.
Knowing that, let’s explore the Old Testament story about Aaron and Miriam talking negatively about their brother Moses because of his marriage to a Cushite woman:
“Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. (Numbers 12:1)
“Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance to the tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam.” (Numbers 1: 5a NIV)
“The anger of the Lord burned against them, and he left them. When the cloud lifted from above the tent, Miriam’s skin was leprous—it became as white as snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had a defiling skin disease,” (Numbers 9-10 NIV)
Cushites were an African people, descendants of Noah’s son Ham, and it’s obvious that God was not angry with Moses about his marriage to a Cushite woman. Rather, He disciplined Miriam for whatever negative she had to say about Moses’ Cushite wife. We don’t know if the comments were about her skin color, because the Bible does not mention the skin color of anyone involved.
It’s worth noting that Moses married Zipporah, while living in exile from both his Hebrew and adopted Egyptian families. This marriage, made in full view of the Lord, produced two sons worthy of circumcision and service in the Lord’s priesthood.
Marriages to Hamites to Expand God’s Nation
Despite Noah’s curse against his son Ham (Genesis 9:24-25), God’s chosen people, the Israelites, choose Ham’s descendants as wives several times. Israel’s own son Judah takes Tamar, a Canaanite, as his wife (Genesis 38), they become the ancestors of the tribe of Jude.
It seems likely the other sons of Israel took wives from the Land of Canaan, perhaps because no other women were available. Israel’s exiled son, Joseph, marries Asenath, daughter of an Egyptian priest, who gives birth to two Israelite tribal patriarchs, Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 48).
King Solomon, who built the Lord’s temple, was himself son of Bathsheba, who had been previously married to Uriah, of the Hamitic Hittites. Solomon would take an Egyptian Pharaoh’s daughter as his bride in a political marriage in 1 Kings 3:1.
Clearly, marriage to the daughters of Ham was sometimes an essential part of expanding God’s people through natural reproduction. The curse of Ham must be considered in light of this cultural context.
A Moabite woman
In the Old Testament, a widowed Moabite woman, Ruth, chooses to stay with her widowed Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi.
Ruth travels to Judah with Naomi and embraces Naomi’s people and Jehovah as God. Naomi states the importance of like-minded faith in relationships. “Your people will be my people and your God my God.” (Ruth 16c NIV)
Ruth ultimately marries a Jewish man, Boaz, and with him becomes an ancestor of King David and Jesus himself.
U.S. Bans on Interracial Marriage
Even apart from the issue of interracial marriage, Christian Europe barely acknowledged the distinctions of racial differences before the 1500s. Muslim Moors and Jews were distinguished by their non-Christian religion, but after conversion, they were free to marry Christians, including into the nobility.
Bans on marriages have existed in many cultural contexts, such as between different castes in Hindu culture. There have also been bans on marriages between men and women based on class or other social differences, which might leave the children produced by such unions as “illegitimate,” without the legal ability to inherit their fathers’ status or wealth.
In fact, this is one of the motivations of Richard Loving to have a legal marriage in the state of Virginia, so that his Black/Native American wife, Mildred, and their three children could inherit the house he built for them. Aside from this, legal marriage would allow them to live together as a family, which was denied them because Richard was a White man, and Mildred was not.
Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws were a product of the 1924 Racial Integrity Act, which banned interracial marriages and forced most Virginia Indians to be declared “Colored.” It also forced apart already existing marriages by reclassifying one or both of the spouses by race.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Virginia’s interracial marriage ban in 1967, the court’s opinion was that the only purpose served by the ban was to uphold “white supremacy.” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that depriving Americans of marriage on an “arbitrary basis,” such as race, was unconstitutional.
The Commonwealth of Virginia had argued that God had separated the races, and Virginia law merely codified the separation. But the Court nullified that argument by calling race an arbitrary distinction.
The Supreme Court recognized that “race” is not in the Bible. The American concept of race is a tool of white supremacy, not an ordinance in God’s word.
A New Covenant for the Family of God
Jesus expands God’s covenant beyond the Israelite tribes to all who believe in Him, and accept him as their Lord and Savior. All are welcome to receive the Holy Spirit.
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,“ when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.” (Jeremiah 31:31 NIV)
“But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.” (Hebrews 8:6-7 NIV)
(Read Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Hebrews 8 for more context and information about the new covenant.)
Jesus Christ arises as Lord and Savior of the new covenant, fulfilling a prophecy and ushering in a new era of grace. The word of God says “For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” (Romans 6:14 NIV)
The Bride of Christ
God’s new covenant offers familial belonging to all. Several scriptures refer to the body of Christ, or the Church, as the bride of Christ:
“Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.” (Revelation 19:7 NIV; emphasis added)
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:25; emphasis added)
In addition to providing a marital analogy of Christ and the Church, the following New Testament Verses shape believers’ identity and how it transcends race, ethnicity, and national origin:
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28 NIV; emphasis added)
“you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:5 NIV; emphasis added)
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9 NIV; emphasis added)
The Church transcends racial distinctions. The Holy Spirit comes to Jew and Gentile alike.
“And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” (Revelation 5:9-10 NIV; emphasis added)
“There is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” (Colossians 3:11 ESV)
God’s salvation ignores social differences.
These verses connect the Old and New Testaments and the chronology of the Bible. Belief in Jesus Christ is what unifies all believers as children of God, allowing them to be potential spouses for each other.
Finally, the following verse from the Apostle Paul, says that honoring and worshiping the Lord is the key question when considering an interracial or cross-cultural marriage: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14 NIV)
Even before Paul, the Lord promises Abraham “through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed,” (Genesis 22:18, NIV). This is a universal message for all people, with no arbitrary distinctions such as “race.”
God’s people are a family of all humanity, so how can anyone be excluded?
While Christ made all things new, one concept remains the same in both the Old and New Testaments: God desires for us to marry those who share the Christian faith and reverence for Him, regardless of skin color and cultural differences.
God’s people are a family of all humanity, so how can anyone be excluded from marriage, the foundation of family?
It’s about spiritual unity, not racial purity.
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