Are the common arguments against marrying an unbeliever valid? Or are we binding on people a requirement that God never gave?
In posting this series, I do not wish to offend anyone who has strong views on this topic. Recently, I discussed this theme with a friend and was also asked about it by a couple of others. So, to clarify my thoughts, I decided to write them down. I also felt it would be good to present them here to fuel your own thinking.
First, I will say that I have a lot of respect for many who hold to the view that it is a sin to marry an unbeliever. Their arguments are often well thought out and reasonable. However, for now, I remain unconvinced by their position and I believe that is ok. And, I believe we can still be brothers and sisters in Christ, even if we disagree on such topics.
Finally, I hope you also think beyond the topic and consider your approach to understanding and interpreting scriptures more. It is not enough to read at a surface level and form a position. Reasonable interpretation requires careful study and healthy debate.
In this article, I want to discuss whether it is sinful to marry a non-Christian? Notice I mention sinful. Sometimes there is a difference between what is sinful and what is unhelpful or unwise. Paul recognised this in 1 Corinthians 10:23-24. Just because something is technically acceptable doesn’t necessarily mean you should do it. Perhaps it might lead to offending another’s conscience. Or it might place you at greater risk of sinning. Or it might make your life and spiritual walk much harder than they need to be. In this article, I want to address whether or not marrying a non-Christian is sinful.
Many Christians, including myself for many years, believe that marrying someone who isn’t a Christian or specifically a part of the Church of Christ is wrong. Of course, many of the arguments for marrying a Christian and the verses presented in support of this view sound quite reasonable. Undoubtedly, the motive behind teaching and promoting the idea that marrying an unbeliever is sinful is often pure. Marrying someone with a different core belief can be burdensome and may cause you to wander from your faith in Christ. But again, considering whether something is a good idea or not is a different question from whether something is sinful.
Proponents often rely on three main scriptural arguments to support the belief that marrying a non-Christian is sinful. These include: the Jewish intermarriage prohibition law found in the Old Testament, Paul’s comments on being unequally yoked in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18, and references in the Epistles about Christians marrying in the Lord. In this article, part 1, I want to consider the argument based on the Jewish intermarriage prohibition law. This position argues along the following line: God prohibited the Israelites from marrying foreigners unless they were converted to the Jewish race. Since the Church is now considered spiritual Israel and Christians are included in the lineage of Abraham by faith, then Christians, like Jews under the Old Covenant, are forbidden from marrying anyone who is not part of spiritual Israel. To be fair, it sounds logical and airtight. The problem with this view is that most who hold to it haven’t considered the prohibition law regarding Jews marrying foreigners carefully. I would dare say that many rely on assumptions about what is said and have not read those passages for years.
When you look at the prohibition passages in the Old Testament and read them carefully, you will notice that initially, there wasn’t a general command forbidding the Jews from marrying foreigners. Instead, we find that God very specifically names certain foreign people whom the Jews were not to marry. These were people who occupied the Promised Land before the Jews. It is also worth noting that marriage wasn’t the only thing the Jews were prevented from doing with these people. In Exodus 23:31-33, God says, “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River. I will hand over to you the people who live in the land and you will drive them out before you. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. Do not let them live in your land, or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you”. Notice that the Jews in no way were to have agreements with the people that they were to drive out of the Promised Land.
In Deuteronomy 7:1-6, Moses writes, “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, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you” (Also see Exodus 35:15-16, Joshua 23:12 & Judges 3:6). When it comes to most passages that mention the Jewish prohibition law against intermarriage, you find listed particular nations connected to the promised land that the Jews were to avoid having any relationship with them. This law seems pretty harsh, but God had judged these nations because of the extent of their evil, particularly regarding their religious practices. These nations were so vile that they even offered children sacrifices to their false gods. It wasn’t as if God had neglected to give these nations the opportunity to change their ways. He certainly had. God gave the original inhabitants of the promised land four hundred years to repent, but instead, their sins continued to reach to the fullest measure (Genesis 15:16). Due to their great sinfulness, God wanted these people driven from the land and the Jews to have nothing to do with them or their practices. It is worth noting that these people are a far cry from many atheists and agnostics today. Many non-believers can be upright and decent people despite their lack of faith.
In 1 Kings 11:1-4, we learn that King Solomon sinned against God not by marrying foreign women in general but by marrying specifically from nations God commanded the Jews not to marry. The passage says, ‘King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter – Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 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.’ Notice that these were from nations God had forbidden Israel to marry. Then, of course, we find the addition of Egyptians, Moabites, Ammonites and Edomites added to nations the Jews were banned from marrying*. The reason for this is that the Jews had likely begun to interpret Deuteronomy 23:1-8 as prohibiting intermarriage with these four nations by the time 1 Kings 11:1-4, Ezra 9:1-2 and Nehemiah 13:23-27 were written. It is not until about 440 BC to 300 BC, after the exile, when the book of Ezra was written, that we begin to see a shift towards a more general concern about marrying foreigners. That means for much of the history of the Old Testament, the law against marrying foreigners were restricted to the original habitats and few neighbouring nations.
To some extent, it is understandable that Ezra and Jews would reach such a conclusion. Israel was decimated and sent into exile because of their rebellion against God and the worship of foreign gods. The last thing Ezra and the others who had finally returned to the promised land wanted to do was go back to any of the practices that caused them to become expelled from their home. With what they had been through, you can see why Ezra became so upset about Jews marrying foreigners, especially pagans. Although Ezra acknowledges the prohibition command in the books of Moses were about the original inhabitants of the promised land in Ezra 9:10-15, in chapter 10, it seems Ezra is against the Jews marrying anyone outside of Israel. Ezra’s zeal for Israel to be holy caused him, along with other leaders, to order anyone who had married foreigner spouses to divorce them and send them, along with their children, away. (Ezra 10:1-44). It is the first time in scripture you see such drastic action taken.
But before anyone says, “See, we were right all along. Jews were not to marry foreigners in the Old Testament”, you need to consider Ezra’s attitude and actions further. Although Ezra was a righteous man and sought to please God, he may have been overzealous. I wonder this because his attitude and action raise several issues, especially his proclamation to divorce foreign spouses. Firstly, although Ezra initially acknowledges some of the specific nations that God prohibited the Jews from marrying, his eventual attitude towards marrying foreigners seems to go beyond that which God initially commanded. Secondly, Ezra’s command to divorce the foreign wives and send the children away does not seem to consider whether the spouse was a convert or not. That is problematic because there are famous Biblical stories about Jews marrying foreign converts throughout the Old Testament. Ruth is one of them. In studying Jesus’ physical lineage, you find some of these converts are His ancestors. There is Tamar (a Canaanite), Rahab (a Canaanite) and Ruth (a Moabitess). Even Moses’ wife was a Cushite (Numbers 12:1-3). Then there is Uriah the Hittite, the husband of Bathsheba, he also seemed to be a convert. Uriah was from a nation forbidden by God for the Jews to marry. If remaining married to a Hittite was so sinful and warranted divorce as Ezra instructed, why could not David ordered Bathsheba and Uriah to have been divorced and then taken Bathsheba to have been his wife? Doing so would have been a lot less messy and evil than arranging for Uriah to be killed. If you are going to rely on the Old Testament and refer to passages found in the book of Ezra forbidding marriage with foreigners, then, to be consistent, you probably should tell Christians to divorce their unbelieving spouse. Of course, doing so will place you at odds with other Old Testament stories and the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 7). Thirdly, what about Esther. Esther married a pagan. Was it sinful for her to do so? If so, should she not have chosen death or imprisonment rather than disobedience to God. Would Ezra have told her to divorce her husband? Interestingly, nowhere in the Bible do you find her condemned for marrying a pagan. She is even held up as a hero of the Jews because she used her position of royalty to save her people. Perhaps she isn’t condemned because she didn’t marry a foreigner forbidden for a Jew to marry in the Old Testament. Fourthly, another Old Testament passage that would clash with Ezra’s command for Jews to divorce foreign wives is Deuteronomy 21:10-14. This unsettling passage seems to endorse the marrying of foreign women if they are taken captive due to war with an enemy of the Jews.
So, where does all this leave us? The Old Testament prohibition law against marrying foreigners is not as clear cut as we would like them to be. For the most part, they mainly relate to specific nations that once inhabited the Promised Land. Later on, after the books of Moses had been completed, it seems the probation was extended to include Egyptians, Edomites and Moabites, even though the book of Ruth would suggest otherwise. In addition to this, Ezra’s stance and even command to divorce foreigners raises many concerning issues and seems to contradict many examples of Jews marrying converts or spouses from different nations. For these reasons, I believe we need to be very careful trying to make an argument suggesting marrying a non-Christian is sinful based on the Old Testament intermarriage law.
Does that mean there is nothing that we can glean from the Old Testament intermarriage law and examples of intermarriage? Of course not! We learn that when God explicitly states that something is a sin, we need to avoid doing it. However, if God hasn’t, we should be very careful about what we bind on people. Sometimes we can be so zealous for God’s laws that we make commands where God hasn’t and end up causing more harm than good (The Pharisees and religious leaders during the time Jesus walked on earth did this). There is no clear and specific law in the New Testament that states it is a sin to marry an unbeliever.
Admittedly, we also learn that spouses can negatively influence our relationship with God, particularly if they are actively involved in false religious practices or sin. Even if it isn’t technically a sin for a Christian to marry such people, it can definitely be an unwise action. We also learn that despite some of God’s laws, He will never turn away anyone who wants to make Him their God. We also learn that as long as we remain faithful, He can bring good out of any situation, including marriages to pagans (Think of Esther). It might even be that God uses us to influence our ungodly spouse to think about Him and move towards a relationship with Him (If Naomi’s son had not married Ruth, would she have ever thought to make God her God?).
Using the Old Testament intermarriage law as an argument to say that marrying a non-Christian is sinful is a weak argument and doesn’t help to prove that marrying a non-Christian is sinful.
* The Edomites and Sidonians are not mentioned in Deuteronomy 7:1-6. The Sidonians generally fall under the category of Canaanite as they lived in the Promised Land and were descendants of Canaan (Genesis 1:15-18). The father of the Edomites was Esau, who married two Hittite women (Genesis 26:34-35). Hittites were also descendants of Canaan (Genesis 1:15). That means the Edomites were as much Hittite as they were of the line of Isaac. The Ammonites and Moabites are a different story. They were descendants of Lot but mistreated the Jews as they travelled to the Promised land. The Jews and Egyptians also had a turbulent history. So, it isn’t hard to see why the Jews began to include these in the list of nations to avoid marrying.
