In order for neo-Babelists to make their lies plausible, they scour the Bible for examples of interracial marriage. The examples typically offered are Rahab, Tamar, Asenath, the "Ethiopian" wife of Moses, Ruth, the Shulamite woman, and Naamah. Most of their proofs fall flat, but the Bible certainly does record cases in which the Shemite, Japhethite, and Hamite lines cross. The Bible also records instances of adultery, murder, and theft, but an instance does not justify a principle. I've lost count of how many times I've heard that Moses married a black woman, therefore interracial marriage is acceptable. Moses was a man, and he sinned, and his sins kept him from entering the Promised Land. We must ask what God requires of us. But first, let us consider the examples presented to us.

According to Genesis 6:9, Noah was "perfect" in his generations. This is not a reference to his moral fortitude but to his heredity and ancestry. The Hebrew word toledoth ("generations") is defined as family history, and the word tamim ("perfect") means without blemish, just as a sacrificially pure animal is described as being without blemish. Noah was unique at a time when the lines of Seth and Cain were engaged in miscegenation that led to the destruction of the world.

The post-Flood chosen line diversified very slowly. Abraham married his half-sister. Abraham's brother Nahor married his niece, and these were the grandparents of Rebekah. Isaac was specifically forbidden from marrying a Canaanite and was paired instead with Rebekah, his cousin. Abraham commanded his chief slave, "I want you to swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living, but will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac" (Gen. 24:2-4). This was centuries before the law of Moses was given, and Abraham did not mention a word about theological belief or godly fidelity (his relatives were pagans), but exclusively limited the search to kith and kin. His daughter-in-law would be chosen from no other people. From Isaac and Rebekah came Esau and Jacob. Faithless Esau loved the Canaanite women, but Jacob married his cousins. In Hebrews 12:16, Esau is called a fornicator, and the conventional understanding is that his disobedience lay in wedding himself to unbelievers. But in Romans 9:13, Paul writes that God hated Esau from the womb. The problem was not that an unbeliever married unbelievers but that Esau was a miscegenist.

Some argue that Tamar was a Canaanite, and since she was in the line of the Messiah, interracial marriage is acceptable. Actually, Tamar was the daughter of Aram who was the son of Kemuel who was the son of Nahor of Mesopotamia, the brother of Abraham (Genesis 22:21). Judah did marry a Canaanite, but it was not Tamar. He had three mixed sons, and in the providence of God, their lines did not continue. When Tamar had lost two husbands, both of whom were brothers, and was refused the remaining youngest brother, she still had the courage to demand her rights to motherhood by law. It was the duty of Judah, her father-in-law, to fulfill the Levirate (kinsman redeemer) law of marriage, just as Boaz would do later for Ruth. In both cases, the royal tribe of Judah was spared, and both women are given prominent mention in the genealogy of Christ. Tamar's subversive action was righteous, though she disguised herself as a prostitute, and her son Perez was legitimate. Judah acknowledges Tamar as "more righteous than I" for claiming her right to bear the child, and he acknowledges his own guilt in fearfully withholding his son from her.

It is no coincidence that the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife follows the story of Judah and Tamar. There is a striking contrast between the two.

When Tamar travailed in childbirth, it was discovered that there were twins in her womb. The child Zarah put out his hand, and the midwife tied a scarlet thread around his wrist. The hand was withdrawn, and Perez (meaning "breakthrough") was born first. This prenatal struggle brings to mind Jacob grasping his twin Esau's heel when they were born.

Judah apparently took Tamar into his house, but not as his wife. Perez and Zarah, and presumably Tamar, joined Judah and the company of 70 who went down to Egypt. In just four generations, these 70 souls would become a nation of about 2 million.

Joseph married an Egyptian girl, Asenath, in an act of providence and a token of peace with Pharaoh, who was quite possibly converted, similar to Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and other pagan kings. Nevertheless, Joseph tells his family to announce themselves as shepherds when they meet Pharaoh. He knew that this would ensure their segregation in the land of Goshen since shepherds were abominable to Egyptians. (The Egyptians probably worshiped sheep.) Joseph wanted his people segregated precisely because he did not want them to intermarry with the natives. The Egyptian rulers of that time were Shemitic Hyksos, not Hamitic Nubians, as in southern Egypt. This explains why Joseph's brothers did not recognize him; he looked like the Egyptians. Later, the Nubians reconquered Egypt and expelled the Hyksos. The Hebrews were enslaved for fear that they would naturally ally with invading Asiatic cousins. This explains why Joseph was purged from Egyptian records, and it also explains why the validity of the Goshen land grant was rejected.

It is commonly asserted that Moses married a black woman. Actually, there is nothing prior to Numbers 12 about the death of Zipporah, and so we must assume that the chapter refers to her. Zipporah was a Midianite, and her people were related to the Hebrews through the fourth son of Abraham's wife Keturah. The Midianites lived in the land of Cush, which is modern-day Ethiopia. This does not mean that Zipporah was a descendant of Ham. The 1599 Geneva Bible agrees: "Zipporah, Moses’ wife, was a Midianite, and because Midian bordered on Ethiopia, it is sometimes referred to in the scriptures by this name." As Matthew Henry wrote, the sedition of Miriam and Aaron was "because of Zipporah, whom on this occasion they called, in scorn, an Ethiopian woman, and who, they insinuated, had too great an influence upon Moses in the choice of these seventy elders." Miriam and Aaron, consumed with jealousy, tried to slur Zipporah by calling her an Ethiopian. The Book of Jasher gives an alternate account (33:31-34): "...they [the Cushites] gave him [Moses] for a wife Adoniah the Cushite queen, wife [widow] of Kikianus [deceased king of the Cushites]. And Moses feared the Lord God of his fathers, so that he came not to her, nor did he turn eyes to her. For Moses remembered how Abraham had made his servant Eliezer swear, saying unto him, 'Thou shalt not take a woman from the daughters of Canaan [brother of Cush] for my son Isaac.' Also what Isaac did when Jacob had fled from his brother, when he commanded him, saying, 'Thou shalt not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan'..." (Though not inspired, the Book of Jasher is mentioned twice in the Bible, and is therefore difficult to dismiss. It is also difficult to dismiss Tobit 4:12-13: "Beware, my son, of all immorality. First of all, take a wife from among the descendants of your fathers and do not marry a foreign woman, who is not of your father's tribe; for we are the sons of the prophets. Remember, my son, that Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our fathers of old, all took wives from among their brethren. They were blessed in their children, and their posterity will inherit the land. So now, my son, love your brethren, and in your heart do not disdain your brethren and the sons and daughters of your people by refusing to take a wife for yourself from among them.")

God did not allow His twelve tribes to blend into one, even though they all had the same religion. In Numbers 36, a special rule was created for the daughters of Zelophehad to protect the inheritance of heiresses. Matthew Henry infers: "Each tribe was to keep to its own inheritance... Let the people of God learn how suitable and proper it is, like the daughters of Israel, to be united only to their own people." Likewise, in Lev. 21:14, God commands that a priest should take a wife from "his own people," or his own tribe. If the nation of Israel had intermarried with surrounding nations, there would have been no nation for Jesus to claim as His own.

There is no evidence that the "Rachab" of Matthew 1:5 is the "Rahab" of Joshua 2:1, but for the sake of argument, let us assume that it is the same person. Since the Rahab of Joshua 2:1 is listed in the Israelite Hall of Fame (Hebrews 11:31), she must have been a Hebrew slave in Jericho, or possibly a descendant of a slave. Why else would the two Israelite spies seek for her, and why else would the king of Jericho go to her for information on the two spies? If she was both Canaanite by race and a harlot, it is simply unthinkable that Salmon, a prince of the royal tribe of Judah, would have even considered marrying her. Both Joshua 6:25 and the Antiquities of Josephus 5.1.2-7 state that Rahab was given land in the midst of Israel for her heroic deed, but neither mentions marriage to Salmon. Furthermore, the Israelite armies suffered no further curses as a result of breaking God's law for at least 30 years, which means that there were no illicit marriages for at least that long afterwards. If Salmon had married Rahab shortly after the fall of Jericho, and if Boaz had been born shortly after that, then Boaz would have been about 115 years old when he married Ruth! The New Testament genealogies list only four generations covering the 460 years from the fall of Jericho to the birth of David. The gap in time is simply too long to make the two Rahabs the same person.

It is commonly believed that the Song of Solomon is about a Shemite/Hamite union between Solomon and the Shulamite woman. It is true that Solomon married many foreign wives and led Israel astray, but I think the Song makes far more sense when interpreted as a love triangle: Solomon, the Shulamite woman, and her Beloved. It is far more in keeping with the character of a man like Solomon, who had 1,000 women at his disposal. If I were a neo-Babelist, I would be reluctant to have Solomon on my side. He blatantly disobeyed the command of Moses to abstain from marrying foreign women and was the inspiration for ethnic cleansing under Ezra and Nehemiah, as we shall see.

The Ammonites and Moabites were both descended from Lot's incestuous relationship with his daughters. Read Nehemiah 13:1: "On that day they read from the Book of Moses in the hearing of the people, and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever come into the assembly of God..." In about 1450 BC, the Moabites were destroyed by the Amorites, led by King Sihon (see Numbers 21:26-29), and then the Israelites destroyed the Amorites (Deuteronomy 2:32-34, Numbers 21:33-35). According to Deut. 2:34, 3:12-16, and 29:8, the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh came to occupy the land formerly inhabited by kings Sihon and Og, which included the "border of the Children of Ammon." See also Numbers 21:30-35. Joshua 13:32 records this territory as "the plains of Moab," which lay to the north of the Arnon River and east of the Jordan River. Three hundred years later, we have proof in Judges 11:12-26 that the Israelites were still in possession of this land, and there were no ethnic Ammonites or Moabites remaining in it. In Ruth 1:1, we are told that Elimelech and his family went to live in the "country," or region, of Moab. The word Moab refers to the territory, not the blood nation, which means that Ruth was a geographic rather than an ethnic Moabite.

There is an interesting story in Joshua 22. It is said that these two and a half tribes built an imposing altar on the other side of the Jordan, and the other tribes sought to make war against them because it was interpreted as an act of rebellion against God. But it was built as a witness for future generations that the far tribes still had "a share in the Lord," despite the Jordan being a boundary between them. In time, the far tribes did become estranged, as seems to be anticipated in Joshua, if for no other reason than the geographical boundary of the river.

In Ruth 2:2, it is Ruth's idea, not Naomi's, to search for Boaz, her kinsman-redeemer. If Ruth had been an ethnic Moabite, how would she have known to initiate this custom? Also keep in mind that the Levirate Law of Marriage only applied to Israelites. No one of foreign blood (as some assume Ruth to be) could have inherited land within Israel, according to this law. Though there were always strangers in the land, this law was intended to prevent the dispossession of the native population. The significance of the book of Ruth, therefore, is the rescue and restoration of the royal lineage, not an apologia for miscegenation, as we hear from most Christians today.

"Naamah the Ammonitess" can be compared to "Ruth the Moabitess" and probably even to "Uriah the Hittite." Names were given to those who came from faraway lands, just as those in Galilee were called "Galileans." They were still ethnic Israelites.

Deut. 23:2 is inaccurately translated as: "One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD." According to Strong's Concordance, the Hebrew word mamzer means not what we would call a bastard but a person of mixed lineage, or "mongrel." God commands that a mongrel must not enter the congregation of Israel. Jephthah was the son of a harlot (Judges 11:1-2) and a bastard, but he was not a mamzer, or mongrel, since he was allowed to enter the congregation.

Some have said that Perez, the son of Judah and Tamar, was a bastard child, which would prevent the next ten generations from admission to the assembly. The trouble with this theory is that David is actually nine generations removed from Perez, and so the genealogy at the end of Ruth does not make much sense if it intends to show that those who are listed prior to David were excluded from citizenship. No, the reason for the genealogy from Perez to David in Ruth 4 is because of the blessing in verse 12: "May your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah." As I said, both of these were Levirate marriages. Judah and Boaz are kinsman redeemers. It is also said that Ruth's Moabite ancestry would have prevented subsequent generations, until David was born, from entering the assembly. In other words, no Moabite would be allowed to enter the assembly for ten generations after Moses commanded it in Deut. 23, and after this they could be admitted in the first generation. But remember that Ezra and Nehemiah divorced Hebrews from non-Hebrews even though the ten generations had elapsed. I've heard that rabbis have no logical way around this either, and so they actually say that Moabite women could be welcomed to the assembly. Yet in Nehemiah 8:2, the foreign throng consists of both men and women.

Ruth was David's great-grandmother, three generations removed. Egyptians and Edomites were admitted to the assembly in the third generation, but there are specific reasons for this. (This is important to remember.) Edomites were closely related to the Israelites through Esau, and the Israelites were themselves foreigners in the land of Egypt. Ammonites, Moabites, and mamzers were not admitted to the tenth generation, but even this is controversial because Deut. 23:3 includes the word "forever," implying that they will never be admitted but will, like the Amalekites, be completely cut off. Don't forget Nehemiah 13:1: "...no Ammonite or Moabite should ever come into the assembly of God..." Therefore, the theory that Ruth was an ethnic Moabitess is contradicted by Scripture. There would have been no King David if this were true.

There is also a law regarding female captives in Deut. 21:10-14. The Israelites are told in Deut. 20:15: "This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby." The Canaanite nations nearby were to be utterly destroyed (Deut. 20:16-18). Thus we are left with two or three possibilities. One is that the rule applied to wars among the Israelites themselves (see the sacking of Gibeah in Judges 20 and 21). Another possibility is that it applies to nations such as Syria, Assyria, and Babylon. The trouble facing the neo-Babelist is that those were defensive wars, and foreign women were nowhere in the vicinity of Israel. Israel was never engaged in conquest except in the region given to them by God. According to John Gill, the cities far off "were without the land of Israel, even all in their neighbouring nations, the Moabites, Edomites, Ammonites, Syrians, &c. for the children of Israel never went to war with any very distant nations, unless they came unto them and invaded them; nor did they seek to carry their conquests to any great distance..." In addition to fellow Israelites, the rule also applies to near kinsmen, such as the Midianites. In Numbers 31, for instance, 32,000 Midianite virgins are spared from destruction. There is some important background information on this story. A few chapters earlier, in Numbers 25, Phinehas is praised as a hero for skewering a Hebrew man and a Midianite woman in the very act. God rewards Phinehas with a "covenant of peace" and "an everlasting priesthood." Notice that the enemies are called Moabites at the beginning of that chapter. Also remember that the Midianites are kinsmen to the Israelites, related through Abraham's wife Keturah. The problem in Numbers 25 is that the Midianites had allied themselves with the Moabites whose king, Balak, had hired the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites. Moabite and Midianite women seduced the Israelites, and this led the Israelite men to the worship of false gods (and temple sex). In Numbers 31:16, Moses declares that a curse upon Israel had come "through the counsel of Balaam." Phinehas leads the way in turning back God's wrath, and judgment is pronounced on the Midianites. Moses is angered that the women are spared alive, but he allows the 32,000 virgins to survive since they were not of foreign race and could not continue the Midianite line.

An example given of a Shemite/Hamite union is that of Abraham and Hagar, but this resulted in banishment. God blessed Ishmael, but Ishmael would never have been born if Abraham had faithfully awaited the child of promise. There were countless wars and countless deaths between the Israelites and the Ishmaelites as a result. Other apparent Israelite/Egyptian marriages may be found, such as when Sheshan's daughter is given to Jarha the Egyptian in 1 Chronicles 2:35 and when Mered marries Pharaoh's daughter in 1 Chronicles 4:18. These examples seem to be out of keeping with the rest of Scripture, but as mentioned earlier, God made special provision for the Egyptians and Edomites, and both peoples were Shemitic.

The pattern seen elsewhere in Scripture is as disastrous as Solomon's multiracial marriages. See, for example, Ahab's marriage to Jezebel, who was Phoenician. While Jacob's sons only pretended to give their sister, Dinah, to a Canaanite prince who had raped her, "disastrous" is a good word to describe that episode.

According to 1 Chronicles 2:16-17, David's sister Abigail married Jether the Ishmaelite, but this is actually the result of an error in the Septuagint manuscript. Her husband's name is correctly recorded in 2 Samuel 17:25 as Jithra the Israelite.

There are also possible examples of Shemite/Japhethite marriages. Esther marries King Ahasuerus, a Persian. (Some early church fathers argued that Esther should not be included in the canon of Scripture.) Felix, a Roman official, marries Drusilla, the great-granddaughter of Herod the Great. Timothy is called the son of a Hebrew mother and a Greek father, however, Alexander the Great conquered Israel in 332 BC, and since that time, many of the "Greeks" were in fact Hellenized Israelites (see Acts 6:1). We know from Acts 2:5 that "there were dwelling in Jerusalem" Hebrews, "devout men, from every nation under heaven." Timothy was likely a pure Hebrew but with parents from different countries.

We must focus on what God commands of us, and to this end, it is wise to turn to Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra 9-10 and Nehemiah 13 record the Hebrew men returning from exile and taking wives from foreign nations. Nehemiah "contended with them and cursed them, struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, 'You shall not give your daughters as wives to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things?" The common interpretation is that Christians should not marry non-Christians, yet if we understand such passages as Ezra 10 to condemn only inter-religious marriage, we will be unable to explain God's apparent change of heart in 1 Cor. 7:10-16. Ezra tells the people to divorce their unbelieving wives. Paul tells us not to divorce unbelieving wives. This is a contradiction, unless Ezra protested race-mixing. The goal in view must have been separation from foreign nations (races). Without such separation, the nation of Israel was sure to be corrupted by pagan influences, just as Solomon, the wisest man in the world, was corrupted by his foreign wives. The lesson to be learned is that interracial marriages are wrong because they lead men astray. God does not say that they are wrong if they lead men astray, or that marriage to foreign women is wrong unless the women agree to convert. Deuteronomy 28 tells us the inevitable price of disobedience: "The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail."

Recently, I was asked, "why should we be obligated to obey precepts specifically given to the Old Covenant Hebrews as the 'holy seed'?" If "these precepts were to keep the Hebrews, especially the Levites, from mingling with outsiders, then why should they be applied to all people of all times, particularly when there is no longer a Levitical priesthood?" This is a very good question. Many of the neo-Babelists will concede that racial purity laws were in effect under the old covenant, but Pentecost has overturned the judgment at Babel.

In the first place, notice the contradiction of recognizing that laws protecting racial purity were a temporary measure designed to maintain a pure priesthood and a pure lineage for the Messiah, but at the same time maintaining that the lineage of Christ was polluted. Both propositions cannot be true.

Secondly, men such as Doug Wilson contend that Pentecost has reversed Babel because language was confused at Babel, and at Pentecost it was unconfused. We kinists certainly agree that after Pentecost, in a sense, the world was taught to speak a common "language." There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. The gift of Pentecost was unity through diversity, which simply reflects God's own Trinitarian nature. Diversity is still needed to protect us from ourselves. That was the whole purpose of judgment at Babel, and that judgment is still in effect. It is not logical to conclude that Pentecost erased the distinctions that God imposed from the beginning. Prior to Babel, the Gentiles had been "separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations" (Genesis 10:5).

"Just as there are in a military camp separate lines for each platoon and section, men are placed on the earth so that each nation may be content with its own boundaries. [In this manner,] God, by his providence reduces to order that which is confused." ~ John Calvin

"It may be said that, in general, nationalism is best for the world in its present state of sin and that to destroy those national boundaries is contrary to God's present will. It may also be said that God's wrath will fall on those people who by creating empires provide conditions that facilitate the increase of sin and so weaken men. God even causes empires to come to an end to hold down the increase of sin." ~ Harold Stigers