Deuteronomy 7:3

7:1-11 Here is a strict caution against all friendship and fellowship with idols and idolaters. Those who are in communion with God, must have no communication with the unfruitful works of darkness. Limiting the orders to destroy, to the nations here mentioned, plainly shows that after ages were not to draw this into a precedent. A proper understanding of the evil of sin, and of the mystery of a crucified Saviour, will enable us to perceive the justice of God in all his punishments, temporal and eternal. We must deal decidedly with our lusts that war against our souls; let us not show them any mercy, but mortify, and crucify, and utterly destroy them. Thousands in the world that now is, have been undone by ungodly marriages; for there is more likelihood that the good will be perverted, than that the bad will be converted. Those who, in choosing yoke-fellows, keep not within the bounds of a profession of religion, cannot promise themselves helps meet for them.

Neither shalt thou make marriages with them,.... Unless they became proselytes, as Rahab, who was married by Salmon, and so those of other nations, as Ruth the Moabitess, and so any captive taken in war; otherwise it was not lawful, bad consequences have followed upon it, which it is the design of this law to prevent; that is, being snared and drawn aside into idolatry, which was the case of Solomon: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son; for, according to the Targum of Jonathan, whosoever marries with them, it is as if he married with their idols: and this law, according to the Jewish writers (c), is binding with respect to other nations besides the seven; and whosoever marries any Heathen, of whatsoever nation, is to be beaten. (c) Maimon. Hilchot lssure Biah, c. 12. sect. 1.

Deuteronomy 7:3 . Neither shalt thou make marriages with them — From this prohibition it has been justly inferred that the Canaanites, as individuals, might be spared upon their repentance and reformation from idolatry. For on the supposition that nothing that breathed was to be saved alive, but that all were to be utterly destroyed, there could be no occasion for this injunction. What end could it answer to forbid all intermarriages with a people supposed not to exist?

Verse 3. - Neither shalt thou make marriages with them. Brought into intimate relations with idolaters, they might be seduced into idolatry; and where marriage was contracted with an idolater, the children might be brought up in idolatry. Such unions were forbidden. Deuteronomy 7:3

2-6. thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them—This relentless doom of extermination which God denounced against those tribes of Canaan cannot be reconciled with the attributes of the divine character, except on the assumption that their gross idolatry and enormous wickedness left no reasonable hope of their repentance and amendment. If they were to be swept away like the antediluvians or the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, as incorrigible sinners who had filled up the measure of their iniquities, it mattered not to them in what way the judgment was inflicted; and God, as the Sovereign Disposer, had a right to employ any instruments that pleased Him for executing His judgments. Some think that they were to be exterminated as unprincipled usurpers of a country which God had assigned to the posterity of Eber and which had been occupied ages before by wandering shepherds of that race, till, on the migration of Jacob's family into Egypt through the pressure of famine, the Canaanites overspread the whole land, though they had no legitimate claim to it, and endeavored to retain possession of it by force. In this view their expulsion was just and proper.

The strict prohibition against contracting any alliances with such infamous idolaters was a prudential rule, founded on the experience that "evil communications corrupt good manners" [1Co 15:33], and its importance or necessity was attested by the unhappy examples of Solomon and others in the subsequent history of Israel.

3 . neither … make marriages with them ] In the narratives in Genesis and Judges marriages are regarded as best when between members of the same family or tribe ( Genesis 28:2 ; Genesis 28:8 f.) and as unfortunate when the wives are foreign ( Genesis 26:34 f., Genesis 27:46 ; Jdg 14:3 ). But no law against marriage with foreigners is either assumed or implied. On the contrary, Moses ( Exodus 2:21 ), David ( 2 Samuel 3:3 ), Solomon ( 1 Kings 11:1 ), Ahab ( 1 Kings 16:31 ), all marry foreigners, and there are other instances (Bath-sheba and Uriah, etc.). The deuteronomic veto, therefore, may be assumed to be the earliest law against such marriages ( Exodus 34:16 is editorial) and to have become necessary by the experience of their evil consequences, conducive to idolatry ( Jdg 3:5 f., deuteronomic). At the same time D allows marriage with a foreign woman taken in war ( Deuteronomy 21:10 ). That the law was not kept is seen from the Book of Ezra.

As the Israelites were warned against idolatry in Deuteronomy 6:14 , so here are they exhorted to beware of the false tolerance of sparing the Canaanites and enduring their idolatry. - Deuteronomy 7:1 , Deuteronomy 7:5 . When the Lord drove out the tribes of Canaan before the Israelites, and gave them up to them and smote them, they were to put them under the ban (see at Leviticus 27:28 ), to make no treaty with them, and to contract no marriage with them. נשׁל, to draw out, to cast away, e.g., the sandals ( Exodus 3:5 ); here and Deuteronomy 7:22 it signifies to draw out, or drive out a nation from its country and possessions: it occurs in this sense in the Piel in 2 Kings 16:6 . On the Canaanitish tribes, see at Genesis 10:15 . and Deuteronomy 15:20-21 . There are seven of them mentioned here, as in Joshua 3:10 and Joshua 24:11 ; on the other hand, there are only six in Deuteronomy 20:17 , as in Exodus 3:8 , Exodus 3:17 ; Exodus 23:23 , and Exodus 33:2 , the Girgashites being omitted. The prohibition against making a covenant, as in Exodus 23:32 and Exodus 34:12 , and that against marrying, as in Exodus 34:16 , where the danger of the Israelites being drawn away to idolatry is mentioned as a still further reason for these commands. יסיר כּי, "for he (the Canaanite) will cause thy son to turn away from behind me," i.e., tempt him away from following me, "to serve other gods." Moses says "from following me," because he is speaking in the name of Jehovah.