Question
What does the Bible say about interracial marriage?
Analysis
The passage that was historically misused, and what it actually says
Deuteronomy 7:3-4 forbids Israel from intermarrying with the seven Canaanite nations. The text supplies its own reason in the very next clause: 'because they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods' (BSB, Deuteronomy 7:4). The stated concern is religious allegiance, not ancestry.
Two lines of evidence inside Scripture confirm that reading. First, the same law code commands Israel to love the foreigner (Deuteronomy 10:19) and makes provision for outsiders to join the covenant community (Exodus 12:48-49). Second, Ruth, a Moabite, from a people under a specific exclusion (Deuteronomy 23:3), is welcomed, married to Boaz, and becomes the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:13-17). What changed was not her ancestry but her allegiance.
2 Corinthians 6:14 ('do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers') is likewise about faith, not ethnicity; the contrast drawn in the verses that follow is believer/unbeliever, light/darkness, Christ/Belial.
The main views, attributed
| View | Position | Held by |
|---|---|---|
| No biblical prohibition | Ethnicity is never a biblical barrier to marriage. The restrictions in the Law are religious in stated purpose, and the New Testament dissolves ethnic division in Christ. Believers should marry in the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:39), which is a question of faith. | The overwhelming consensus across Christian traditions today |
| Shared faith is the real question | Same conclusion, with added pastoral counsel that couples consider cultural differences and the pressures a mixed-culture family may face, as prudence, not prohibition. | Common pastoral counsel across traditions |
⚠️ A historical note this question requires
For roughly a century, some churches, chiefly in the United States and South Africa, used Deuteronomy 7, the Babel narrative (Genesis 11), and Acts 17:26 to defend segregation and anti-miscegenation laws. That reading is now rejected across the mainstream of Christian scholarship and by the denominations that once held it, several of which have issued formal apologies.
We record this because a reader searching this question may still encounter that material, and because it is a documented case of Scripture being pressed into service for a conclusion the text does not support, Acts 17:26, in particular, was quoted to argue for separating nations when its own sentence argues that all nations share one origin.
Contested / interpretive points
- Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13 record the dissolving of marriages to foreign women, which is sometimes raised here. In both books the stated concern is idolatry and covenant faithfulness after the exile (Ezra 9:1-2; Nehemiah 13:23-27, which points to Solomon as the warning). How far those emergency measures are normative is disputed among scholars; no major tradition reads them as an ethnic rule.
- Genesis 11, the tower of Babel, describes the scattering of peoples. Whether it is prescriptive (nations should stay separate) or descriptive of judgement is the interpretive hinge; the New Testament's answer at Pentecost, where the languages are understood rather than re-divided (Acts 2:5-11), is read by most as the reversal of Babel.
- This entry states the consensus rather than balancing two live views, because on this question the traditions are not meaningfully divided. Where Christians do differ is over prudence and pastoral counsel, not permission.